Saving the Surf

Trials and triumphs of the last 50 years

“Well, how about it Clear Lake?” begged Editor and Publisher Joe Roth in the Feb. 11, 1970 edition of the Clear Lake Mirror-Reporter. 

Roth penned a column hoping to catch the eye of someone—  anyone in town to save the Surf from becoming anything but a ballroom.  The days of hosting ballroom dancing were waning and the current owner had closed the venue twice. 

One of the owners over the course of Surf Ballroom history reached out to us this week with his memories of partnering with others to keep the building afloat for 25 years and eventually selling to others who have now reached their own 25-year milestone of keeping the ballroom in business.

by Robert Halford

Last week’s Clear Lake Mirror-Reporter had a couple facts that stirred my wanting to write another story. The facts that caused my action appeared in the story about the Surf Ballroom. It told about Buddy Holly’s plane crash and the story about Snyder’s spending $500,000 to repair the Surf.  Mr. Olson told about his visiting the crash site with Carroll Anderson and how they identified the bodies. It is factual that the Snyder’s have done a sensational job of re-doing the ballroom and deserve all the credit in the world.  I also want to say in the beginning that the Mirror does a good job of reporting both the news and adding interesting articles about our school and community.

I want to add some facts about the Surf.  On the night of the crash, I was at a Junior Chamber of Commerce meeting.  We met above what is now Starboard Market.  That upstairs was at one time the office of the Clear Lake Telephone Company in about 1954 and before. After the meeting, Jerry Dwyer called Roger Peterson, who was at the Jaycee meeting.  We were playing cards.  Roger came back and said that he was going to have to fly a group that were playing at the Surf that night.  Roger was a pilot for Jerry Dwyer. We continued the game. The weather was very cold and it was windy

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and ground storming.  Roger Peterson was a young man that we all respected and liked.

"Clear Lake wanted to keep the Surf alive and they weren’t interested in having it be a grocery store and evidently the insurance company president understood."

What I actually wanted to write about before this story came in was this:

The year 2020 came in and it reminded me of the fact that it had been 50 years since the Surf had been closed due to some discrepancy with either the state or the federal authorities.  There was a notice on the door proclaiming this fact.  “Sorry but, WE ARE CLOSED.”

At the time, Lutheran Mutual of Waverly, Iowa held the mortgage of the land and building and they wanted to sell their holdings.  Super Value Grocery Company, of Des Moines, had made an offer to buy the property and make a grocery story out of the ballroom. This fact became known by Marc Arneson, the president of Clear Lake Bank & Trust. 

Marc happened to be a friend of the president of the insurance company and he asked if the offer that Super Value had made could be met, would they sell it to his group.  He stated Clear Lake wanted to keep the Surf alive and they weren’t interested in having it be a grocery store and evidently the insurance company president understood.  This was 1970.

Marc got busy and started to put his group together. At the time there was quite a famous band leader that lived in Clear Lake named Harry L. “Tiny” Hill.  Tiny was a friend of Marc’s and was considered a member of a circuit band that played in the upper Midwest of our country. Tiny had played at the Surf and at all of Carl Fox’s ballrooms. Tiny was eager to join.  Lawrence Welk was also a circuit band at the time. His next partner to join was his very good friend and attorney, Louis Schuler. Another friend of Marc’s was Jim Connell, who was also interested in the success of the Ballroom.  I was numbered five of the group.

It wasn’t as easy as just selecting a group. We had to come up with $50,000 to buy the ballroom.  We had to put a $40,000 down payment to make the deal. So, if we were going to be equal partners, we each had to invest $10,000. That left us $10,000  for operating expense.  I really don’t want to go into all the financing we had to construct, but I can say that it was not pretty and we were lucky Marc was a banker.  Each year required more cash from each of us.  We could just come in and sign a note when we needed additional funds.

Our motive was to keep the Surf open and operating.  We didn’t do anywhere near the job that the folks do now that are running the Surf. 

We, in the 25 years that we owned the business, had several managers. Some good and some bad.  I don’t want to go into a lot of detail, however, early on Tiny had a friend that managed ballrooms in Chicago. We had him come out and interview. I remember he stayed at the old Park Hotel on Main Street. He was maybe one of the last guests to stay at the old hotel; we hired him. He stayed with us for a while and did a fairly good job.

Tiny played some dances for us. He used his own music and hired local musicians. Actually, Tiny was quite popular in the area and drew fairly good crowds. He wrote some songs that were popular and I think the favorite hit he had was “Skirts.”  On one occasion we had hired Chubby Checkers and unfortunately we had a terrific blizzard that night and nine paying customers showed up. This ate up some cash that we didn’t have.

Tiny was not in very good health.  That is probably why he had retired in Clear Lake. On very short notice, unfortunately, Tiny died.  He left his share of the Surf to the manager from Chicago.  I cannot remember the manager’s name, but he decided to move to California shortly after Tiny’s death. That left us wondering what we should do, so we contacted him and bought his shares. 

We are now down to four.

We were constantly trying to find a buyer to take over and keep it open. On one occasion there was a group from Wisconsin that came and had big plans to restore the property and we were excited that they might succeed with their super plans.

It didn’t happen.

Another of our ideas was if we had lake access, we could maybe have more success in finding a buyer. This solution, the Blue Horizon Motel, came up for sale. We bought it. Now we were running a motel in addition to a ballroom.  We kept the motel for a couple years and had a chance to sell it for a small profit.  Joe Minard was the buyer.  He tore it down and built condos on the property.

Our journey was coming close to an end. It was a long time ago and I don’t remember all the details. Let’s just say it was 1994.

Dean Snyder was a friend of all of us and someone that I had gone to high school with. He was a year behind me in school. In 1994, Dean was running a successful contracting business. His three sons were in business with him. Marc was Dean’s banker and Louis his attorney. Seems to me this made an impact on Dean’s decision. Dean’s statement was, “my wife liked to dance, so I bought the Surf.” Maybe I can believe that was his reasoning, who knows? Anyway, the fact of the matter was he and his family bought it.

At the time the Snyder family bought the Surf, the needs for remodeling were enormous. The roof was bad, the air conditioning and the furnaces were not good. The dance floor needed work, the booths were in bad shape. They did it all. They even repainted the pineapples on the wall. It seemed like the whole family took over and went to work. I believe the story about them spending $500,000.  It could have been more.

Another extremely good decision the Snyders made was to develop a non-profit organization. I don’t know how they did it, but, they organized a group of some of Clear Lake’s smartest young people to help them run the ballroom.  They have done a great job and have the organization in the best shape it has ever been in. Now, my whole point in writing this story:

In the beginning I talked about the year 2020. That is exactly 50 years ago when the building was going to be a grocery store if it hadn’t been for Marc Arneson.  In his infinite wisdom, he put together a group to buy the Surf and who continued to run it as a ballroom. They certainly didn’t do a super job, however, they did keep it together for 25 years.  They found a buyer, a great buyer, who kept it running for another 25 years. Total 50 years, a great number.

Clear Lake’s greatest asset is obviously the lake.  Running a distant second is the Surf Ballroom.  It continues to operate with excellence and it brings many people to enjoy Clear Lake. It is today much more important and in much better condition than it was 50 years ago. Thanks to Marc and Dean and the whole Snyder family.

I neglected to mention, the Surf is now run by an outstanding group of young upcoming citizens of Clear Lake: Jeff Nicholas, the leader, Paul Stevenson, Dale Snyder and Shane Cooney, and their CEO Laurie Lietz and her staff.

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