FORT PIERCE FOLKS
STORY AND PHOTO BY GREG GARDNER
Bruce “Spunky” Strunk plans to go surfing every
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chance he gets “until the Lord takes me away.”
The 56-year-old owner of Spunky’s Surf Shop
in For Pierce is something of an activist and legend
in local surfing circles. Strunk has paddled out at the
Fort Pierce Jetty since 1971 when he came from Virginia to
attend Indian River Community College.
Ever since, he has been both mentor and merchant to
generations of surfers. Asked if he closes shop to go surfing,
Strunk said, “Are you kidding? I am famous for that.
I haven’t missed a swell in 39 years. I put up a sign.
‘Gone surfing. Come back later.’ I am a surfer first and a
businessman last. If there’s waves, the shop is closed.”
Oddly enough, the nickname “Spunky” doesn’t have
anything to do with Strunk’s last name. When he was in
the fourth grade the teacher required each student daily
to tell the class about something from current events.
Growing up with a father in the Army, Strunk was a
latchkey kid. “I didn’t read the newspaper in the fourth
grade, but I did watch the show ‘Spunky and Tadpole’
and I used tell about their daily escapades. My friend
David started calling me Spunky and it stuck.”
Strunk was hooked the first time he and his friends drove
to Ocean City, Md., and rented surfboards for $5 a day from
a guy with a bread truck. “When my dad was in Vietnam, I
took his car every weekend to surf,” he said. “I played football,
baseball and played in a band, but surfing is the fountain
of youth. It keeps you getting up in the morning. It
keeps the stoke going, the exhilaration, the passion. There is
no better thrill than surfing with your friends.”
Strunk moved to Fort Pierce in 1971 to escape the cold
waters of the mid-Atlantic states and ever since has set
out on many exotic safaris, surfing in Hawaii, California,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, France, Spain,
Portugal, Morocco and Cape Hatteras, N.C. “I’ve tried to
move from Fort Pierce only to move back.” He and his
wife of 31 years, Melody, moved away twice, but they
always gravitated back to Fort Pierce.
Strunk opened his first surf store, Moonlight Surf Shop
in Avenue H in Fort Pierce, in 1972 with a $400 loan from
a friend. Two years later, thieves broke in and stole everything.
“There was no insurance back then and no security
Eternal
PHOTO BY GREG GARDNER
Bruce ‘Spunky’ Strunk holds forth in his new location in Fort Pierce.
Bruce ‘Spunky’ Strunk is barreled at Off theWall, North Shore Oahu, Hawaii.
The
Surfer