Mickey Chapin and the Death of Gard

Mickey was sent to St. John's Military Academy, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy nuns. Miklos felt that Mickey living with Gard and Ramona was in a situation that Mickey needed to be removed from. There's even a story of him putting fiberglass shavings from shaping a surfboard in the head nuns' co-text. When Mickey Dora became a famous surfer in the 1960s, an interviewer for Surfer Magazine asked him why he had dropped the name Chapin. "For my own peace of mind, I felt it would be safer to use my given name."