CHAPTER 2

From Here to Honolulu

Discovering the Secrets of the Sea • The World War II Years

Woody Brown Goes Hawai’ian, 1940s: Lean and tan, Woody Brown rides a wave on Oahu. (Mary Sue Gannon and David L. Brown Productions)

Hawai’ian Wave-Riders, 1940: Surfing in a Honolulu Star Bulletin Christmas gift print by Hawai’ian artist Lionel Warden. (Voyageur Press Archives)

Up until the 1940s, Hawai’i was a distant dream to most mainland Americans—the stuff of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road movies; exotic isles too far off in time and money for anyone but the wealthy.

World War II changed all that.

Japan’s surprise attack on America’s naval fleet at a then-little-known base called Pearl Harbor in Hawai’i drew the United States into a war that would expose millions of Americans to the secrets of the sea. The war gave millions of young American men and women a free ride through Hawai’i and out into the Pacific. The armed services trained and transformed city slickers into sailors, laze-abouts into Marines, farmboys into frogmen. Those that came home did so with new ideas on how to live life—and many had firsthand experience on how to get your kicks on top of a wave.

Before 1940 with Hawai’i as remote as Timbuktu, swimsuits made of itchy wool, and surfboards hewn from heavy hardwoods, wave riding was a secret thrill enjoyed by just a coterie of surfers scattered in the Islands, California, and certain select spots around the rest of world. Following the war, the thrill was a secret no more.

My soul is full of longing for the secrets of the sea, And the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Secret of the Sea, 1850

For every million people who experienced the war there’s a story, but of all those millions of stories there is one boy whose personal, perilous course through these years linked together the experiences of many. Woody Brown was a rich kid who became a wanderer, adventurer, vegetarian, pilot, sailor, conscientious objector, and surfer. From New York City to La Jolla to Honolulu and now Maui, he usually found himself on the edge of history—sometimes witnessing it, sometimes aiding it, and often times changing it. While most of what he did he did just for fun, along the way he had a profound effect on sailing and sailboats, surfing and surfboards.

This spread, Waikiki Surfing Postcards, 1940s–1950s (Voyageur Press Archives)

Woodbridge Parker Brown was born in 1912 into a wealthy New York City family, the kind of Social Register clan that produces doctors, lawyers, and presidents. His father had one of the original seats on the New York Stock Exchange, so Woody’s life was founded on privilege. And yet he rejected the life of a “rich man’s son” early on.

Quitting school at sixteen, he ran away from home to pursue his love of flying. He hung around Long Island’s Curtiss Field, sweeping hangars and cleaning up oil leaks. It was here he met Charles Lindbergh in 1927 when the soon-to-be-legendary aviator was training for his historic transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis. “I helped Lindy with his airplane before he took off for Paris,” Woody remembers. “He was my hero.”

Wave-Riding in Hawai’i, 1940s: Woody Brown sliding left, in the Hawai’ian Islands at Waikiki or Yokohama Bay. (Mary Sue Gannon and David L. Brown Productions)

Woody soon became more interested in gliders than powered flight. As he was learning how to glide, he met Englishwoman Elizabeth Sellon. Together, they ran off to California, driving a Chrysler Airflow and towing a glider behind. “We left New York in ’35,” Woody says. “We drove to La Jolla and lived there five years—the happiest time of my life!” And at La Jolla Beach, Woody launched his gliders right off the sand, Elizabeth faithfully piloting the tow car.

While riding the thermal waves above the beaches, Woody couldn’t help but notice all the cool, green waves breaking down below him. He wondered about riding the ocean the way he rode the air, and that lead him to use his glider-building skills to make surfboards: “I first made these solid redwood planks, you know, like a Boogie board,” Woody says. “But I wanted to ride waves standing up, so I made a hollow little plywood box. About 9 feet long and about 4 inches thick, but it was hollow so it didn’t weigh much. It was great. I could paddle out there and catch the waves and ride.” Woody made an educated guess about surfboards in 1936; nearly seventy years later, his design still stands as a sophisticated guess.

Air Surfer, 1930s: Woody Brown with a few of his favorite things: His first wife Elizabeth Sellon, her daughter Jennifer, and Woody’s glider, the Swift. (Mary Sue Gannon and David L. Brown Productions)

Wave-Riding at La Jolla, 1930s: There wasn’t much surfing at La Jolla in the 1930s—except for Woody Brown and a few of his far out friends. (Mary Sue Gannon and David L. Brown Productions)

Woody’s second board was thicker and wider than the first—and it had a small skeg for stabilization. That skeg started a revolution. Some historians credit Woody Brown with the invention of the surfboard fin, but Woody humbly points to Tom Blake. “I didn’t know anything about Blake and his experiments with adding fins to surfboards,” Woody says. “See, we were all separated out. I was in San Diego and he was in L.A., way up there.”

Woody also started a small surfing craze in La Jolla. He and friends Towny Cromwell and Don Okey pioneered places like Windansea, Pacific Beach, Bird Rock, and Sunset Cliffs. Through the second half of the 1930s, it was virgin territory.

By 1939, Elizabeth was pregnant. Woody was slated to travel to Texas for a glider competition. “I told my wife I’d stay with her, but she told me to go,” Woody says sadly. “She said, ‘It’s important because everybody’s expecting you to be there. You’re the top man! They all want to compete with you!’” So Woody went.

At Wichita Falls in 1939, Woody flew his Thunderbird glider 263 miles to national and world gliding records for altitude, distance, maximum time aloft, and goal flight. A telegram of congratulations awaited him from President Herbert Hoover when he finally came down to earth.

Then fate interceded. Driving back to California as fast as he could, Woody arrived in time for Elizabeth to begin labor. She gave birth to a boy, but she herself died in childbirth. “And, boy, I just cracked up,” Woody remembers. “I just couldn’t take it ’cause we were so happily married. Our boy lived but I couldn’t take care of him. I couldn’t take care of myself. I couldn’t sleep; quit flying; quit everything. I told the Lord: ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ So, He goes: ‘Why don’t you go to Tahiti? You’ve always wanted to.’ You know, we always hear about the magic of the South Seas. Next day, I was on the boat. I got my passport and everything. I left my car, the garage, my home, glider, everything. I don’t know what happened to them. I just walked out and left everything. When you’re off your rocker that way, you know, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

You catch the wave as it curls. We take it earlier, perhaps half a dozen yards away from the point of turning, and accumulate speed by scooping the water with the right hand and using the left in the ordinary way, putting in the while at least the speed you saw me finish my world record in last Saturday afternoon. Then the velocity of the shoot is materially increased and its duration rendered greater. We begin on our sides and find we get more control over the effort, then we turn on our backs or breasts as fancy suggests.

— Duke Kahanamoku, 1915

Going Native

A Revolution in Beachwear and Swimsuits

In 1912, Hawai’ian waterman Duke Kahanamoku swam on the edge of modesty when he competed in a sleek swimsuit with bikini-like underdrawers. It was a good thing that swimsuit went on easy, because Duke almost missed his heat when he overslept the start of the 100-meter freestyle. A last-minute dash to the pool and pleas to officials to delay the race until Kahanamoku could get into his swimsuit succeeded, and he won the gold medal, the first of his six Olympic awards.

Duke’s victory was not just one for a great waterman. It also signaled a revolution in men’s swimwear.

During World War I, American soldiers saw European soldiers wearing comfortable and lightweight cotton undershirts on summer days. Who knows what the Europeans termed them, but they caught on with the Americans who started calling them “T-shirts.” The word made it into Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in 1920, but T-shirts were still considered underwear for several more decades.

Still, despite Kahanamoku’s display and the debut of the T-shirt, the American Association of Park Superintendents posted “Bathing Suit Regulations” in 1917 stating that men’s suits had to be worn with a skirt “or a skirt effect” outside of the trunks, or flannel knee pants with a vest and a fly front. While men wore less than women in public, it was still considered improper for men to bare their chests.

Life in Hawai’i was more relaxed. Hawai’ian kanakas bared their chests in and out of the water, and the increasing trickle of tourists who came to the Islands by steamer created a growing market for “aloha shirts.” In the 1920s, tourists swept up armfuls of cotton, rayon, and silk shirts printed with paintings by famous artists, tropical scenes, and elaborate Hawai’ian patterns.

Meanwhile, back on the mainland in 1933, Duke Kahanamoku’s friend and fellow Olympian Johnny Weissmuller was hired by the BVD Company as a model and consultant. Like Duke, Weissmuller suggested less material and more movement: extra-low-cut armholes on tank tops, a natural waist, and an extra-full seat. In a time when it was still bad taste and even against the law for men to bare their chests in public, this became the first pair of bathing trunks. To win the public’s acceptance, swimsuit companies tried to make these trunks look like proper dress, adding fake flys and belt buckles—perhaps to divert the eye from those unsightly bulges.

In the 1930s, the introduction of a synthetic rubber yarn called Lastex allowed swimsuit manufacturers to contour their suits to hide immodest bulges with athletic supports sewn directly into the trunks. Gantner Wikies introduced in 1939 a line of wool surf trunks that featured “Alpine ribbed Zephyr wool,” and also provided a “De luxe non-chafe supporter” with “4 point suspension” that made a surfer “socially acceptable” as those four points assured “a smooth, smart, non-bulging front.”

By 1940, men were baring their chests in public, but women were not yet allowed to bare their navels. It all reflected the fashion—and passion—of the time.

The Aloha Shirt

Wearing Hawai’i Proud

The aloha shirt is a true product of modern Hawai’i—a combination of Polynesian images, Asian fabrics, and haole technology and marketing.

In the late 1920s, Chinese merchant Ellery Chun ran King–Smith Clothiers & Dry Goods in Waikiki. Among his inventory were rolls of kimono fabric for his Japanese customers. At some point, a Chinese lantern flashed over Chun’s head and he began cutting and sewing shirts from the leftover pieces. The first notice for Chun’s newly named “Aloha Shirts” appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper on June 28, 1935.

Aloha shirts were an instant hit with locals, tourists, military personnel, and surfers. Within a couple of years, small tailor shops throughout the Islands began manufacturing and selling aloha shirts en masse.

“Aloha Shirt” became a registered trademark in 1936. Hawai’ian resident Herbert Briner saw the alarming production of these shirts, bought an existing uniform manufacturer, and transformed it into Hawai’i’s first ready-to-wear garment manufacturer. He named his firm for the great Island king, and Kamehameha aloha shirts became famous.

In 1937, Nat Norfleet and George Brangier got in on the act at 1704 North King Street, next to one of the pioneers of Hawai’ian garment manufacturing, Wong’s Products. “We began like nearly everybody else in the business—not with a pair of shoestrings but with one shoestring between the two of us,” says Norfleet. “Red McQueen had brought back from the 1932 Olympics in Japan some shirts made out of silk kimono cloth. We copied them to produce our first aloha shirts. They were absolutely horrible, but Elmer Lee had a stand in front of the old Outrigger Canoe Club where he sold coconut milk and pineapple juice, and he sold our horrible shirts.” Norfleet and Brangier called their company Kahala. In 1939, they moved into a factory on Kapiolani Boulevard, perfectly situated to supply the endless line of servicemen soon flocking to the Islands to fight the Japanese.

World War II was ended by a man who liked aloha shirts. President Harry S. Truman was just one of many celebrities and public figures who proudly wore aloha shirts and inspired their worldwide popularity. John Wayne and Duke Kahanamoku endorsed major designer labels while Bing Crosby, Arthur Godfrey, and Johnny Weissmuller entertained in their loose, flowing sportshirts printed with everything from palm trees to ukuleles to wave-riders.

In 1948, seventeen-year-old California surfer Walter Hoffman took his first trip to Hawai’i. “The first thing I did was go to Kahala and buy my trunks and shirts. Then I spent the summer surfing,” he remembers. That trip changed Hoffman’s life. He returned to California with a steamer trunk full of aloha prints to steer the family business—Hoffman Fabrics—away from woolens and into the brave new world of rayon and polyester. Hoffman Fabrics went on to supply material to almost every major clothing company, including start-up money for Ocean Pacific, which would become the mother of all surfwear firms.

Out of the 1940s, the aloha shirt’s popularity grew as travel to Hawai’i became easier with faster ocean liners and then air travel. From Here to Eternity also gave the aloha shirt a kick in the pants. The movie was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards including Best Costume Design—a good call as costume designer Jean Louis made Montgomery Clift look good lying dead in a ditch in an aloha shirt. In black and white.

By 1959, the world was bubbling for the Islands and aloha shirts. The first passenger jet arrived in Honolulu that year as Hawai’i became a state. Hawai’i’s tourist industry was about to explode: Kahala did one million dollars in sales in 1959 while in 1960, Kamehameha shipped thirty-five tons of garments to the mainland.

Gidget hit the big screen in 1960, but strangely, few of the movie’s California surfers were wearing aloha shirts; madras was the rage at the time. That fashion changed a year later when Kahala introduced a Duke Kahanamoku line of aloha and t-shirts advertised in Surfer magazine featuring surfers like Greg Noll, Fred Hemmings, and Paul Strauch.

And then in 1961, Elvis Presley starred in Blue Hawaii as Chad Gates, a young Hawai’ian who gets out of the Army and returns to the Islands to surf, chase chicks, and hang out at his shack at Haunama Bay, playing the ukulele and slack key guitar with his buddies. Elvis was in his prime in 1961, and he made the aloha shirt look even better.

In vivid Technicolor.

In September 1940, Woody Brown caught a ship for Tahiti, but the tensions that would soon pop at Pearl Harbor were bubbling all over the South Pacific. “They wouldn’t give you a passport to get out of the country,” Woody says. He made it only as far as Hawai’i, arriving in the U.S. territory at the start of interesting times.

Woody Brown at Makaha, 1950s: Accidents would happen to Woody Brown. He crashed a few gliders in his day and nearly drowned on Oahu’s North Shore. Here’s Woody stepping into oblivion at Makaha. (Mary Sue Gannon and David L. Brown Productions)

Fran Heath and Tom Kelly 1934 “Cutdown” Surfboard: Fran Heath and Tom Kelly were frustrated by the performance of their slab board, so they cut down the tail one day in 1934. The result was immediate; as Kelly remembers, “I caught a wave and the tail just dug in and I went right across, and we figured something had just happened.” (© Malcolm Wilson)

SPECIFICATIONS: 10' 10" LONG; 19 1/2" WIDE; 3 1/4" THICK; 60 POUNDS

Flying was not available in Hawai’i at that time, so Woody tried to surf the sadness out of his system: “Surfing saved my life because I’d go out all day—Waikiki. I’d just go out on my board in the morning and sit out there all day long and surf. Lunch time, I’d dive down and get seaweed off the bottom to eat and just stay there ’til late evening, sunset. Then, I’d go in and I’d be able to sleep a little ’cause I was so damn tired from being in the sun and surfing all day. And, I survived!”

Akin to T. E. Lawrence in his prewar years as a student archaeologist in Arabia, Woody wandered the Islands on foot and bicycle, seeing places at ground level, meeting people, and enjoying an aloha that doesn’t really exist anymore. “The old Hawaiians were such wonderful people,” Woody said. “I’d stop in front of a house and ask if I could stay for the night and they’d say, ‘Oh sure! Sure! Come in!’ They’d treat me like a king and didn’t want me to go.”

Then Pearl Harbor was attacked. Every able-bodied man and woman fell in to avenge the Day that Would Live in Infamy. Woody, however, was a pacifist. He had family contacts he could have used, a name and reputation as a flyer, and even his age could have leveraged him into any position he wanted in the military. But Woody stood firm as a conscientious objector when that was a dangerous thing to be in Hawai’i, as some objectors were beaten and even killed by Hawai’ian natives and military personnel enraged by the Japanese.

During the war years, Woody lived on Waikiki Beach, surfing with a small band of friends including John Kelly, Fran Heath, and Wally Froiseth. They surfed everything Oahu’s South Shore had to offer, including some big days when ships couldn’t even get out of Honolulu Harbor.

The boards they rode were clunky, ten- to twelve-foot-long creations with wide tails and no skegs. They worked okay in the small surf but in the big stuff they’d slide ass, which meant a long swim back to the beach. Just before Woody arrived in Hawai’i, Kelly, Froiseth, and company came in from a day of sliding ass in big waves and decided to take action: “Kelly got mad, picked up his axe and said, ‘I’m gonna start chopping the board right here!’” Woody says. “He hit it and he whittled the tail down to about this big and said, ‘Now I got it.’” What John Kelly created with his axe was an innovation called the Hot Curl. He reshaped the wide tail to a pintail; now the boards would hold in: “That changed the whole of surfing, see,” Woody says. “Now, you could go out in big waves and control it.”

Tom Blake 1940s “Cigar-Box” Surfboard: Built by surfer and shaper Tom Blake for Gene “Tarzan” Smith, this mahogany pointed-tail surfboard was known as a “cigar-box” for its hollow construction. (© Malcolm Wilson)

SPECIFICATIONS: 13' LONG; 23" WIDE; 45 POUNDS

We believe there is not another place in the world equal of Waikiki—that little cove lying in the shelter of Diamond Head—for surf shooting purposes, and thousands of travellers who call at our picturesque island every year endorse that opinion.

— Duke Kahanamoku, 1915

Although Woody and Tom Blake started putting fins on surfboards in the mid-1930s, the innovation was not accepted for another decade, and Hot Curl boards filled the meantime. “Blake first put those skegs on his hollow boards, which were no good in anything but small surf,” Woody remembers. “Those hollow boards were terrible and no one wanted anything to do with them or the skegs on the bottom. I think that is why it took us so long in Hawai’i to start using fins on our surfboards.”

Hawai’ians were riding Hot Curls when Woody arrived and he used his natural-born knowledge of aero- and hydrodynamics to improve the design: “I learned to whittle mine down like theirs, because mine would slide ass. Wally helped me, he showed me. Then, I perfected it more and more, because I was interested in the speed. From my aerodynamics, I knew that too steep a curl will suck air, will drag, eh? The more you flatten out the curve, the faster you can go. So, with my boards, I’d flatten out the belly and get it flatter and flatter. Well, that made it stiff and hard to turn, but it made it fast.”

Woody devised a board that was twelve feet long and weighed eighty pounds—Mack-truck heavy by today’s standards but featherlight for the times. Fashioned from chambered redwood, it had a three-inch vee tail, thin rails made of spruce, and a nose and tail of oak. It was greased lightning in the big stuff. “Boy, when that bugger would drop into the wave, man, you’d just have to hold on to stay with it,” he says. “You’d take off so fast, which is great when you’ve got a half mile of curl to get across!”

Woody rode out the war riding the waves of Waikiki. “I’ll tell ya: in the old days, only the kings were allowed to surf at Castle Surf. You know, when I used to ride my board out there, I’m telling ya the truth: I felt somebody on the board with me. Boy, I didn’t see anything, but, boy, it was there! With me, riding that wave…. It was spooky, I tell ya. Just like the king was there on my board, riding again….”

By 1943, Woody was married to a Hawai’ian woman named Rachel and they were raising their two kids above the Waikiki Tavern, dead center in the surf scene. Oahu’s South Shore is best for surfing in the summer months. During the rest of the year, Woody and his band of Merry Men—including Froiseth, Kelly, Fran Heath, Rus Takaki, and younger surfers like George Downing and Rabbit Kekai—explored other Island beaches looking for new breaks. The point at Makaha on Oahu’s West Side became a favorite for these pioneering big-wave surfers, and they all struggled to evolve surfboards that would handle the super-fast steep walls of the Point. There were a lot of waves breaking on Oahu’s North Shore as well, between the town of Haleiwa and Kahuku Point, and Woody was one of a small number of guys who bothered to drive all the way to Sunset Beach, which soon became the most popular break.

During the war, Woody was working as a surveyor for the Navy on Christmas Island, 1,160 miles south of Honolulu and just 105 miles north of the equator. He was probably there to check for surf on the Navy’s dime, but what he saw ended up being his main contribution to the twentieth century.

In the lagoon, Woody watched in amazement as two South Pacific natives sailed a double-hulled canoe. Over the years Woody has described those sailors as both Melanesians and Tongans, which is a little confusing, but whoever they were, they were flying in their little boat, and Woody loved to fly. He described how the outrigger canoe could outrun Navy motor launches it was so sleek and fast in the surf. As he swore, “I sailed sailboats, and there was nothing like this anywhere.” He made plans to build one of his own when he got home.

“Getaway”: Artist John Severson’s watercolor of a surfer’s getaway summed up the lure of the Islands. (Artwork © John Severson/surferart.com)

Modern “Outrigger,” 1947: Inspired by ancient Polynesian outrigger canoes, Woody Brown engineered his modern “outrigger”—a glorious catamaran sailboat christened the Manu Kai. Brown’s rediscovery of the ocean worthiness and speed of multihulls led to everything from the Hobie Cat to the Catalina Express. Woody waves from the rear while Ma Brown, in the big hat, grins at the launching of the Manu Kai in Hawai’i. (Mary Sue Gannon and David L. Brown Productions)

The art of the surfboard is coming back and the future will see contests and surf-riding that will rival any that took place for the old Hawaiian kings.

— Tom Blake, Hawaiian Surfboard, 1935

And he did. When Woody returned to Hawai’i he teamed up with Hawai’ian boatbuilder Alfred Kumalae, Hawai’ian boat designer Rudy Choy, and Californian Warren Seaman to establish C/S/K Catamarans. In 1947, they went to Hawai’i’s Bishop Museum to measure ancient double-hulled canoes, then used modern engineering and materials to build the world’s first asymmetric double-hulled sailing catamaran, the thirty-eight-foot Manu Kai.

Their catamaran was as fast as the sea bird for which it was named. “We went out and sailed circles around all the stuck-up guys from the Yacht Club,” Woody laughs. “They couldn’t go near that fast. They hated us!” Working with C/S/K Catamarans, Woody built multihulls from ten to one hundred feet in length, including one for the now famous Duke Kahanamoku. “Duke was a member of the yacht club and he used to race that catamaran I built for him,” Woody says. “So, I got to know him pretty well, but I never got to surf with him too much because by the time I came along, he was getting kind of old, already. He didn’t care to go out to Castle, anymore. He’d stay in there at First Break.”

From the 1940s into the 1950s, Woody was in heaven. His noodling around in the South Pacific brought a rediscovery of the speed and oceanworthiness of ancient multihull outriggers, leading to everything from the Hobie Cat to the Catalina Express. Woody had his family, business, and enough time to chase wind and waves. Woody and his buddies Froiseth, Kelly, Heath, Downing, Henry Lum, and a handful of others were surfing those big Waikiki and Makaha waves on progressively advanced equipment. Skegs had caught on—finally. “For big waves you need a vee in the tail for the board to hold in, but the smaller the vee the faster the board goes,” Woody explains. “Well, we wanted to go as fast as possible for Makaha and we also wanted to hold in, and eventually I dropped my rebellion against the skeg. George Downing and I made a super board for big waves at Makaha. It had a pretty flat back end, with little curves on the sides. Georgie said, ‘I’ll make a slot, so we can put a skeg in or take it out. We can try it and see the difference.’ So, we went to Makaha. They were about 15-foot peaks that day. He went out there without the skeg first, and he rode it. It rode beautiful; fine, oh, just no trouble at all. Georgie came in and said, ‘Well, let’s put the skeg in and just try it, anyway. See the difference. See what it’s about.’ So, he puts the skeg in and went back out. It looked like he was riding the same, but he came back in and said, ‘Hey, Woody, it’s much better with a skeg.’ I asked, ‘How is it better?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s not any faster, but it’s more solid and you can turn it real easy with a skeg,’ which we couldn’t do before. Our boards were real stiff turning.

The Infamous Waimea Bay Kapu

In December 1943, Woody Brown drove to Oahu’s North Shore with young Hawai’ian-born surfer Dickie Cross. These were pioneering years for surfers on the North Shore, yet the two were about to get involved in an incident that would resonate for a decade.

The most popular break on the North Shore was—and still is—the point at Sunset Beach. On December 23, 1943, Woody and Dickie Cross paddled out at Sunset during a rising swell. At that time, there were no satellite photos of weather reports to warn a surfer that a rapidly building swell was approaching, and Woody and Cross soon found themselves stuck outside at Sunset. “All of a sudden the waves were twenty feet,” Woody remembers. “So, we got caught out there! It kept getting bigger and bigger and finally, we were sitting in this deep hole where the surf was breaking on two sides and coming into the channel.

“Then, all of a sudden, way outside in the blue water, a half mile out from where we were—and we were out a half mile from shore—way out in the blue water this tremendous wave came all the way down the coast, from one end to the other. It feathered and broke out there! We thought, ‘Oh boy, so long, pal. This is the end.’ But, we were sitting in this deep hole and the huge swell came through, but didn’t break. Oh, boy! Scared the hell out of us!

“Well, there was a set of about five or six waves like that. So, after the set went by, we said, ‘Hey, let’s get the hell inside. What are we doing out here? This is no place to be! Let’s get in!’”

They couldn’t get in at Sunset Beach and their only option was to paddle west about five miles to Waimea Bay, a deep crescent that might give them a chance to get to the beach. Woody was thirty-one years old and wiser than Dickie Cross, who was only seventeen: “Dickie was just a gutsy young guy…. We dodged some big sets on the way to Waimea and when we got down there I wanted to sit in the channel and watch the sets. Well, Dickie just started paddling in and I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t pay any attention. It seemed like it was his time; just like something was calling him, you know? It was just like it was his time to go. I don’t know.”

Cross paddled in and lost his board, and as Woody was paddling in to rescue him, another giant set came, forcing him to turn around and paddle outside. “I told him, ‘Come out, come out!’ It sounded like he said, ‘I can’t, Woody, I’m too tired.’”

The last Woody Brown saw of Dickie Cross, the young Hawai’ian was swimming in through giant surf at Waimea Bay. Woody got caught inside again and lost his board. As the sun was setting, he took off his trunks for less drag and swam for the beach: “For a moment I thought about sharks and then I thought, ‘Well, that’s stupid. I’ll probably drown first.”

Woody Brown somehow made it to the beach, but Dickie Cross was never seen again. Woody remembers having to go to the Cross family home two days before Christmas to tell them their boy had drowned.

The death of Dickie Cross in giant surf at Waimea Bay put a kapu on the spot that stood for more than a decade.

If the Swell drives him close to the rocks before he is overtaken by its break, he is much prais’d. On first seeing this very dangerous diversion I did not conceive it possible but that some of them must be dashed to mummy against the sharp rocks, but just before they reach the shore, if they are very near, they quit their plank, & dive under till the Surf is broke, when the piece of plank is sent many yards by the force of the Surf from the beach. The greatest number are generally overtaken by the break of the swell, the force of which they avoid, diving and swimming under the water out of its impulse. By such like exercises, these men may be said to be almost amphibious.

— Lieutenant James King, logbook of the HMS Discovery, 1778

“Most surfers avoided the North Shore and looked to the point at Makaha to get their kicks,” he remembers. “Makaha was a better surf than the North Shore. We had nice, long lines! There’s a peak, see, and then you could slide all the way across the bay. I’ve seen 25 feet there, and you could make every damn one! In fact, we were making every one. We kept moving more over to the point, more in the boneyard. We kept moving over and still we were making ’em! Move further; still make ’em! And move wa-a-ay over ’til we were way out in front of that point and still make ’em across!”

In 1953, Honolulu photographer Skip Tsuzuki took a famous photo of Buzzy Trent, Wally Froiseth, and George Downing riding a fifteen-foot wave at Makaha. True to the rest of his life, Woody was probably on the beach or somewhere on the fringes when that photo was taken. Distributed by the Associated Press all over the United States, the image woke up a growing population of young California surfers to the possibilities awaiting them back in Hawai’i. Some had been in the Islands during the war and now longed to return; others were younger and the lure of Hawai’i was fresh.

Woody remembers those days: “California surfers started coming over, after that picture. That went to the mainland and, boy, that drove everybody crazy. They couldn’t believe that. So, they all wanted to come out here and see for themselves.

“But I didn’t know any of those guys. I didn’t go with ’em then. I just went with Wally and them. I just never got to know ’em. We were kind of separated into two bunches, then. Wally, Kelly, and me, and those guys. We would go to Makaha. California guys went more for the North Shore. I don’t know why—probably because the waves were more peaks and you could play around on the peak, where Makaha had this wall and, man, you had to have a good, fast board and had to really trim it to get going, to get across. That, maybe, didn’t appeal to them.”

Woody was happily on the fringes when the first wave of surfers flocked into Hawai’i from the mainland. As Ricky Grigg, Peter Cole, Greg Noll, and Buzzy Trent made names for themselves, Woody was happy to let it all flow past and enjoy what he had enjoyed all along—a free ride on the wind and waves.

Woody Brown, 2000: Still surfing after all these years: Woody Brown in California, ready to charge some waves. (Mary Sue Gannon and David L. Brown Productions)

Hawai’i Travel Posters and Decal, 1940s–1960s (Voyageur Press Archives)