A surfer takes the names of passed love ones out to sea for one last wave

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:

After Dan Fischer lost his dad to cancer, he was looking for a way to cope with his grief and turned to a pastime he'd done since a young age - surfing. At the start of this year, he wrote his father's name on his surfboard as a way to bring him along as he rode the waves of Newport, R.I. And that experience inspired something that has affected a much wider community.

Fischer posted a video to TikTok, inviting people to comment with the names and stories of loved ones they'd lost. He offered to put their names on his board, like he'd done with his dad, and take them out on the ocean. He's since been flooded with thousands of names and has filled two surfboards already. He calls it the One Last Wave Project. Dan Fischer is planning to get more longboards and imagines other surfers joining his project, the better to memorialize even more people and take them out for one last wave.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOAN SHELLEY'S "OVER AND EVEN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.