Raising A Soul Surfer Read online

  Tom found a room to share with some other mainland transplants. Surfing the North Shore with them, Tom increased his skill level in bigger waves. Within two years, his roommates would become legendary big-wave surfers.

  A friend suggested that Tom shouldn’t leave the islands without checking out a more remote island in Hawaii. “Go visit Kauai,” he said. “That’s where you’ll find a more relaxed, slow-paced life.” And so it was his destiny, in response to a suggestion by a friend, and with just a few days left in his trip, that Tom landed at the Lihue airport on Kauai.

  At the time, the runway wasn’t big enough to handle jets, so you had to fly in on noisy, rattling prop-planes. The gate was a pavilion with a few benches and a chain-link fence. The luggage carousel was just a 20-foot-long steel-covered piece of plywood.

  Tom couldn’t help but contrast the Garden Isle to bustling Oahu. With his backpack and surfboards slung over his back, Tom hiked out onto the main street, a one-lane road that didn’t even circle completely around the whole island. To this day the sheer cliffs of the Na Pali coast make a connecting road impracticable, so not a whole lot has changed since that time.

  Tom didn’t know anyone, nor did he know where anything was; he just knew one name: Hanalei Bay, where the waves were supposed to be the best. But he was a resourceful young man with a sleeping bag, a little cash and a surfboard. It would be an adventure. So naturally he stuck his thumb out for a ride.

  It wasn’t long before an older Hawaiian guy in a pickup asked in thick Pidgin English, “Where you like go?”

  “Hanalei,” said Tom, mangling the pronunciation like so many tourists do.

  The driver motioned to the back of the truck and Tom climbed in. To his amusement, he found that he was sharing the ride to Hanalei with a couple of caged pigs and a load of pig slop.

  Amazingly, the guy (who happened to be Henry Tai Hook, the honorary mayor of Kauai’s North Shore) dropped him off in the center of Hanalei town. Tom thanked him, grabbed his gear and headed to the beach. For the next couple of days, he camped out and surfed the north shore of Kauai, hiding his belongings in the bushes while surfing.

  It took only those few days of breathtaking beauty, lush jungle, majestic waterfalls and crystal-blue waves to get Tom thoroughly hooked. He had his roommate in San Diego ship over the rest of his belongings. Then he enrolled in the small junior college and declared Kauai his new home.

  The early seventies were the beginning of a dramatic demographic shift for the state of Hawaii. The chieftains had eventually made surfing strictly a royal sport; commoners were forbidden from surfing under penalty of death. The local islanders, heavily made up of a pan-Asian and Polynesian people, had outnumbered the haoles, as Caucasian people are called.

  But the hundred-year-old agricultural economy that had made the island a melting pot by importing labor from Portugal, China, Korea, Japan and the Philippines was being superseded by a new boom to an old industry: tourism.

  Tourism not only brought visitors from the mainland, but also people who liked what they saw moved to the islands. For a while the outer islands were mostly immune, but during the time when Tom and I separately and unrelatedly moved to Kauai, there was a surge of mainland surfers coming to Hawaii.

  Maybe it had something to do with surfing going beyond a simple craze of the early sixties; maybe it had to do with the political and sociological turbulence of the times. Whatever it was, those who considered themselves “local” (even though the undiluted indigenous Hawaiian population had shrunk to a tiny percentile) found themselves swamped by young strangers from the mainland showing up at surf spots dominated for years by locals.

  Needless to say, sparks often flew.

  Since the time when Captain James Cook first made contact in the late 1700s, Hawaii had become a melting pot of cultures as successive waves of immigrants came in; but by the second or third generation, they had become firmly rooted in closely interconnected relationships—people who had known each other since birth, the famous family, or ohana—where everyone was somehow related to everyone else. They even spoke a unique dialect: Pidgin English.

  Throw a bunch of surfers and hippies into the mix, fresh from the craziest period of American cultural change, the sixties, and you had a recipe for conflict.

  Tom was remarkably good at avoiding trouble. He understood that there was a pecking order in the surfing lineup, and that he would need to spend considerable time developing relationships with the locals in order to gain some kind of hesitant acceptance. It didn’t matter how well he surfed, he had to make good with them on another level. Besides, Tom naturally has a laid-back, non-confrontational kind of personality.

  That didn’t always keep him out of trouble.

  As he had done in New Jersey, Tom would unleash the “Trickster” at a pool hall whenever he needed to scrape together some extra cash. He wasn’t a fool about it; he’d just win a couple of bucks here and there so no one would notice that the lucky young haole surfer was actually a pool hustler.

  But one night, in Hanalei’s infamous Tahiti Nui Bar, Tom was naively cleaning out some of the local heavyweights using his skills with the cue ball. As these guys simmered they got quieter, so Tom didn’t see their anger escalating as they continued drinking. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of them swung a cue stick at Tom’s head. His quick reflexes saved him as he brought up his own stick in the nick of time. It shattered from the blow, but better that than his skull. Tom wisely decided to give the “Trickster” a rest for a while and got a job harvesting taro.

  On occasion, Tom’s red Kharmin Ghia (another uncanny coincidence?) broke down when he commuted to and from Kauai Community College. There weren’t many people with cars heading north at that time of the night, and even fewer were willing to stop for a longhaired hippie. Sometimes Tom would get stranded part of the way back with no prospect of getting home, and then the rain would kick in. Kauai is the wettest spot on earth, after all.

  Resourceful, as well as gutsy, Tom figured out that many of the churches along the way were seldom locked. He spent a number of nights stretched out on a pew with the minister’s robe draped over him to stay warm. Of course, Tom was always gone before dawn, having carefully hung up his makeshift blanket where he had found it, all ready for the next Sunday morning.

  It was as close to a church service as Tom had been for years.

  After finishing junior college on the GI bill, Tom headed to Oahu in order to continue his education at the University of Hawaii. While living at Rocky Point on the North Shore, he became a polished surfer. With his genial ways, he became friends with many of the iconic figures of surfing at that time: Steve Cranston, Tom Parish, Jackie Dunn and Greg Lohr. Tom shadowed Jerry Lopez to determine his takeoff from the lineup at Pipeline. He often surfed Sunset when Barry Kanaiaupuni and Eddie Aikau were out. These legendary Hawaiian surfers represented the heart and soul of the surfing community.

  Back in the ’70s, compared to Kauai, Oahu was a rat race. The surf spots were crowded and dog-eat-dog. Racial tensions were escalating, and episodes of intimidation were getting more frequent, culminating in the brutal beating of a group of famous Australian and South African surfers. There were even death threats serious enough to require police escorts to and from surf contests.

  On top of these conflicts, there were the drugs and drug dealers, and the slow unraveling of the “Summer of Love” into a fractured, territorial hostility. Yet, among the hedonist and hippie surfers, something powerful was taking place.

  Big-wave surfer Rick Irons was busy in his shaping room when Tom came in to have a custom surfboard made. Rick, uncle of the late world champion surfer Andy Irons and his accomplished brother Bruce, was a fascinating character who had been a U.S. champion in the sixties.

  “Say, Rick,” Tom said, “what’s up with all the little fish you draw on the boards you shape?” Rick smiled and told him the fish was a sign that he was a follower of Jesus Christ. He then proceeded to share Christ and the forgivene
ss that was his because Christ died for his sins on the cross. Tom recalls that this was the first time anyone had ever shared the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ with him.

  It wasn’t just Rick Irons sharing this “good news.” Other young surfers around Tom were discovering a powerful relationship with God as well. North Shore surfers Mike Stangel and Bill Stonebraker also became Christians and, along with Rick, went on to become pastors.

  Tom remembers hearing worship songs pouring out of the second story windows of Billy Barnfields’s place, another popular surfboard shaper. “I was curious and knew it was some kind of Bible study, but nobody had invited me, and I was too shy to ask,” Tom says, on reflection.

  Up and down the seven-mile stretch of North Shore beaches, God was working in the lives of young, healthy and talented men and women within the surfing community. Some of them, like Tom, were hearing the good news of Jesus Christ for the first time—and not from some glossy evangelist or at a stuffy church service, but from someone they knew and respected—surfers and shapers. The relationship was the most effective way for the message to be spread—organically, and friend to friend, in this ocean-minded community.

  While living at Rocky Point, Tom got to surf some of the most beautiful breaks on the North Shore. One day, he got a call from a friend back on Kauai telling him about a job as a banquet waiter at a resort there. The pay was great and the evening hours were perfect for a surfer. It was all the encouragement Tom needed to leave Oahu behind and catch a puddle jumper back to Kauai.

  I know that a 21-year-old girl heading off to Hawaii with some guy she barely knows was not the average thing to do. But I left for Hawaii with Chris, a surfing friend and traveling partner, who liked to do the same things I did.

  It was also a very strange era, with folk rocker Stephen Stills singing, “Love the One You’re With.” We would end up being roommates with . . . privileges.

  Once we were on Kauai, we stayed a couple of weeks with the friends that Chris knew well and grew up with. They let us stay in their attic. It was hot, dusty and full of spider webs. The only furnishing was a queen-sized mattress, but we were stoked because our only goal was to surf and hang out on the beach as much as we could.

  It was a surprise to us when the hostess said, “Well, two weeks is long enough to have visitors. Aloha!” Being young and self-absorbed, I guess we thought we could live in their home and eat their food indefinitely, especially because she was such a great cook.

  We decided to pool our money and eventually buy a van that we could live in, figuring that it would be a cheap and leak-proof way to surf all over the island. So we went out and camped on the beach until we were able to find a van. It didn’t take long to come up with the $500.

  It was summertime, when the surf is normally flat on the North Shore; but there were lots of other things to do: diving, fishing or hiking the Hanakapi’ai trail along the face of the sheer Napali Cliffs to a magnificent valley and huge waterfall.

  What we mostly did was pick up puka shells. These are small disk-shaped shells, actually the remains of a larger shell, with a hole (puka, in Hawaiian) in the center. They were strung together to make a puka shell necklace, which were, in the early seventies, all the rage. Islanders who had been walking over these shells all their lives suddenly realized that a can full of these fairly common little shells could net over $50—a significant sum at that time.

  Our van was parked across from the huge cave and right in front of a surf spot appropriately enough called Tunnels. Living in our van near Haena Beach Park, we saw that some families had roped off entire areas of the beach to keep others from mining their “claim,” not unlike the gold rush in early California.

  Chris and I decided that it would be simpler to find our puka shells underwater, so we spent much of the summer snorkeling around the shallows with an empty soda can in our hands, turning up the sand for the little shells. This activity kept us in shape and ready to surf when the waves returned.

  Tunnels reef was the first place I ever surfed in Kauai. It was about the only place on the north side of the island that had waves during the summer. I never liked the wave all that much, because it dumped on a shallow reef, and I always came back in with cuts all over my feet. The wave runs along a deep drop-off channel, which was very spooky and a haven for sharks.

  I couldn’t know then that this surf break would feature so largely in my life story; for it was at Tunnels that a shark attacked my daughter, Bethany, many years later.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Captured by Christ

  You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you

  would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that

  whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.

  JOHN 15:16, NASB

  I keep telling people who hear about our past that Tom and I were not hippies.

  The distinction to most people isn’t that great; but in my mind, even back then, it was important. What consumed me was the addiction of surfing, not dropping out, not political activism or communing with anything other than a nice glassy wave at an uncrowded beach or reef break.

  Every waking moment I spent strategizing my daily plan to find and catch the best waves. I was the epitome of a Soul Surfer.

  Hippies . . . well, hippies were the people living in Taylor Camp.

  In the late 1960s, Howard Taylor, brother of actress Elizabeth Taylor, bought a chunk of land way out near the end of the road on Kauai. He wanted to build a house, but the state wouldn’t grant him a permit to develop it; instead they wanted to condemn the empty land and then add it to nearby Ke’e Lagoon at the end of the road.

  Taylor got fed up with the grasping state when they told him to pay taxes on the land they were trying to condemn; so in 1969, Taylor invited a bunch of hippies to camp out on his property free of charge.

  Located near Tunnels Beach, Taylor Camp became a magnet for peaceniks who built lean-tos and bamboo tree houses out of found materials. They formed a primitive communal society, with few rules and even fewer clothing requirements, at the extreme edge of paradise.

  Elizabeth Tayor’s son joined Taylor Camp. On a visit to Kauai, her son presented her with a puka shell necklace. This touched off the puka necklace craze when she was photographed later while wearing the gift.

  Taylor Camp was razed by the state in 1977, but it still looms large in the North Shore legends.

  I spent my days scouring the North Shore looking for surf. Kauai’s natural beauty captivates you at every turn. From the end of the road on the north side, to the end of the road on the west coast, God’s creation rings loud and clear. We parked wherever we could, usually near surf breaks or free showers. But after a summer of close quarters, I decided to go back to California. As far as I was concerned, Chris was only a friend, and I was feeling claustrophobic.

  I thank God every day for His divine hand during this point of my journey, even though I was far from Him. There were few things constant in my life except for surfing, and it would serve no good purpose to itemize the foolish choices I made. Suffice it to say, I spent the next few years bouncing around from Kauai to California to Oahu to Maui and then back to Kauai, usually showing up with a bit of cash, a few belongings and an agenda for surfing adventures.

  Along the way, I collected my fair share of heartbreak, wounds, regrets and guilt. These emotions I stuffed down into the recesses of my soul. But they wouldn’t heal, and later bubbled up and burned like acid. The proverbial hole in my heart kept getting bigger. While a lot of my friends dealt with their purposelessness by diving headlong into alcohol or drugs, I found that surfing took away the emptiness for a while.

  In a way, surfing became my drug of choice. I lived for the rush of adrenaline when I flew across the waves. I lived for the challenge of ever-bigger surf. And I forgot my troubles in my exhaustion at the end of the day in a paradise filled with rainbows.

  By the time I
ended up back on Kauai, I was once again living in the back of a station wagon—not with Chris, but with another guy, in a very similar kind of relationship.

  While all this was going on with me, Tom was getting to be a well-known surfer in Kauai’s North Shore lineup. But unlike me, he was flying solo. In fact, with all the young male surfers migrating to Hawaii, the guy/girl ratio of our age group (under 35) was so skewed that many lonely guys referred to Kauai as “Monk Island.”

  Tom had landed a great job as a banquet waiter at a large resort called the Kauai Surf, a hotel that still stands, now a Marriot. The only problem was that he was living on the North Shore, and the hotel was all the way into town, quite a distance, particularly with a car like Tom’s VW van that wasn’t always working.

  I first noticed Tom as he pulled up into the dirt parking lot at Pine Trees. Actually, I noticed his car first, a clean-looking VW camper van. My interest in cars came from my dad’s after-hours job at a dealership when he would come home from work with a new car almost every night.

  The car made me take a second look at the handsome surfer boy.

  Tom knew my “boyfriend,” and we all went surfing together that day. The first thing I noticed was that Tom was goofy footed (right foot forward on the board). All the guys that I had ever had a crush on were goofy footers, so I thought to myself, Uh oh, what might this mean?

  I also took notice that he could surf quite well, especially in big waves.

  My living conditions had finally upgraded to a house instead of a station wagon, and I could actually cook an honest-to-goodness meal. As a result, we started inviting Tom over for breakfast from time to time after a morning surf session. (He still says I can cook up a “mean breakfast.”)

  I was strongly attracted to him from day one, but Tom assumed that I was romantically linked to my friend.