Just click on this notice to see several photos and news clippings from the Waikiki Surf Club dance held at the Waialae Country Club. Master of Ceremonies–J. Akuhead Pupule, who, it seems, was a charter member of the WSC. It appears these folks knew how to throw a party. Check it out!
It’s a funeral. That’s obvious. Beyond that, I don’t know anything about this occasion. The photos were among my dad’s pictures and papers from the period around 1948. The top photo shows a group gathered around what appears to be a funeral wreath, all wearing Waikiki Surf Club and swim trunks. The middle photo is [...]
–>View the photos and news clippings about Gene “Tarzan” Smith In 1940, Gene “Tarzan” Smith paddled a surfboard from Oahu to the island of Kauai. The event was sponsored by the Hawaii Surfing Association which had been formed just a year earlier. When the Waikiki Surf Club was formed in 1947, Smith became its first [...]
Tags: Gene "Tarzan" Smith·Hawaii Surfing Association·John M. Lind·Waikiki Surf Club
[Update (December 8, 2010): Well, sometimes I'm just plain wrong. Today I found two columns by Honolulu Advertiser Sports Editor Red McQueen that provide the real story behind these photos. Turns out that the photos are actually from May 1959 and were not from the 1953 body surfing event as I originally believed. I made [...]
The Waikiki Surf Club was just a year old when they put on a winter event featuring a six-mile surfboard race that sent paddlers from Waikiki out around Diamond Head and back. The winners of that inaugural race posed for this photo. It’s just one of several photos from that long ago Christmas that I [...]
The temperature in Honolulu rose to 86 degrees on August 19, 1958, but it probably seemed hotter as members of the International Surfing Championship Committee began arriving at the old Pearl City police station for their first planning meeting looking ahead to the next annual event at Makaha, considered the premier and most prestigious surfing [...]
Tags: Makaha International Surfing Championship·Surfing history·Waianae Lions Club·Waikiki·Waikiki Surf Club
I received an email this week looking for additional photos or information about Abel Gomes, a 20th century cabinet maker and woodworker who became a well-known surfboard shaper, and his son, Allan Gomes, a well-known surfboard maker in his own right. Along with the note came three photographs. Click on any photo for a larger [...]
Tags: Abel Gomes·Allan Gomes·Surfing history·Waikiki Surf Club
This brief description of the founding of the Hawaii Surfing Association and the Waikiki Surf Club was written by my father, John M. Lind, a founder of both organizations. It was found, along with other notes, among his papers after he moved into a nursing home in 2008. After he retired from his business at [...]
