This oral history interview is a project of the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The legal rights of this material remain with the Outrigger Canoe Club. Anyone wishing to reproduce it or quote at length from it should contact the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The reader should be aware that an oral history document portrays information as recalled by the interviewee. Because of the spontaneous nature of this kind of document, it may contain statements and impressions that are not factual. A full transcript of the video may be found below.
An Interview by Marilyn Kali
May 19, 2017
MK: Today is Friday, May 19, 2017. We’re in the Board Room of the Outrigger Canoe Club. I’m Marilyn Kali (MK), a member of the Club’s Historical Committee. One of the Historical Committee’s projects is to do oral histories of longtime members. Today, it’s my pleasure to be talking to Ron Haworth (RH). Good morning, Ron.
RH: Good morning, Marilyn. Nice to see you.
MK: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your family? When and where you were born, and where you grew up.
RH: I was born in Los Angeles Memorial Hospital in November 1931. My father was English, had immigrated to Australia before World War I, and settled in Perth with the whole family actually. He was an Anzac. He served in the Australian army in the First World War. Then, later, after the war, in about 1926, they all immigrated to California. That’s where he met my mother-to-be. We lived in Hollywood Hills. My aunt, who was my father’s sister, had a very good job at Paramount Studios. I didn’t realize this until maybe 20 years ago, but we never suffered during the Depression because the whole family worked at Paramount Studios, including me. I started when I was nine months old.
MK: As an actor?
RH: No, as an extra. Just an extra in mob scenes, or whatever. Later, I became a stand-in for Baby LeRoy. I did that until I was about 11 years old with the little off and on. My dad was a prop man. My aunt had an excellent job. She was the head school teacher at Paramount. She was the woman that got the state to mandate that children on the set had to have so many hours of school per day. Before that, they didn’t.
MK: Was that studio where Mickey Rooney and-
RH: Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple, I can’t think of them all. Judy Garland was on the sets because I have a picture with Judy and Bob Hope when I was about seven years old
MK: Did you go to school with them?
RH: I have pictures in the school with some people. I don’t even know who they are, but I’ve been friends with Baby LeRoy my whole life. He is now deceased but he was six months younger than I am.
MK: Did you go to the school on the set?
RH: On the set. I can’t remember how many hours, but we did have to go to school every day on the set. I lived a lot of my school year at Paramount on the set, not the entire time. I remember going out to the ranch, the Paramount Ranch in San Fernando Valley when they were shooting the movie, Geronimo. I have pictures of me in the movie Geronimo by the stagecoaches. I’ve got a lot of good stuff to remember it by. Anyway, then, my dad was always moving. He always thought the grass was higher on the other side of the fence. We came to Hawaii in January of 1941. That’s when I had one of my greatest 18 months of my youth was when I was here.
MK: You said you lived in Waikiki.
RH: I lived where the Pacific Beach Hotel is today where it has the huge indoor aquarium. We had a duplex there. We lived next door to people called Saminelli. They were from Brooklyn, of all places. Frankie was about three years older than I was. We were surfing buddies. I went to Thomas Jefferson Elementary for the third grade and part of the fourth. We surfed Queen’s all the time. One of the interesting things we found, after Pearl Harbor, we walked across to Kuhio Beach about seven in the morning, and we found a one-man raft covered in oil, washed up on the beach with a drawstring bag in it filled with perfectly edible white rice. The Star Bulletin came out and took a picture of us looking at this one-man raft. I figure it might have come from the midget submarine that was sunk by the Ward, the first American ship to fire a shot in World War II. It could have been off that submarine, but there’s no way of knowing.
MK: Wow. On the morning of December 7th, you were-
RH: I was home, probably in bed. Our neighbor Saminelli came over yelling, and I won’t use the term he used right now, but “We’ve been bombed by the Japanese.” My father who predicted it was going to happen said, “They wouldn’t dare.” I watched it from under the banyan tree at Kuhio Beach with no supervision. I couldn’t surf. It was a beautiful day at Queens, just beautiful day, but nobody was surfing, of course. You could not see the Waianae Mountains because of the black, oily smoke. In those days, of course, the other hotels weren’t there. You had a clear view of the Waianaes. I stood there, practically, at least, until noon, one o’clock just watching this.
MK: Did you see planes flying overhead?
RH: I did see planes flying over. In fact, I saw one silver fighter drop a bomb on a small freighter that was either coming in or going on, I don’t know which direction. I saw the splash. It missed. It was probably a Japanese zero, I imagine, or something like that.
MK: Wow. That was quite a day.
RH: It was quite a day. I just turned ten by seventeen days. It’s engraved in my memory.
MK: You mentioned that you surfed at Waikiki.
RH: I surfed at Queen’s. I hung out at the Waikiki Tavern. I taught myself to surf. I never owned a surfboard, but there was a little short board that was there that belonged to somebody that I used, and it had a little crack in the nose. When I was on the wave, the spray would come up and hit me in the face sometimes. I wasn’t surfing the big hollows or the balsa boards that were so common in those days. I might have been one of the first people to ever really surf a board the size of what they’re using today.
MK: Oh my goodness. What was it made out of?
RH: Wood. It was a light green color. It was just made out of wood. I wish I still had it, of course. I didn’t own it anyway, but I’d love to have had that board. I learned to surf off the backwash of the Waikiki Tavern when it was high tide and big surf> I’d catch the backwash and surf out. That’s how I learned to surf.
MK: Yeah. A lot of kids did that.
RH: Probably did.
MK: During the war, were you here or were you one of those that moved?
RH: Yes, we were here. We left in June in convoy. We left, I believe it was the President Grant, if I remember correctly because Tracy, my daughter has gone back on the family tree and found all these shipping manifests and all this stuff. The fact is another member was in that convoy. It was Ron Sorrell who was on the Sank. His ship had trouble, and they had to turn back. Ron Sorrell was in the same convoy with me. We had a submarine scare. Because I was young, I was up in a cabin with six women, one of them being my mother. My father was down in the hammock in steerage. One night, we had a submarine scare, and we all went to our lifeboat stations with our life jackets. It proved to be false, I guess, but those things happen.
MK: You went back to the mainland?
RH: Went back to Los Angeles for a little short while. When I was in the sixth grade, we moved to San Diego. I stayed there. I went to junior high school there. Then, my father, again, on the move, came back to Hawaii. I graduated from Robert Louis Stevenson in junior high school. It’s the old Robert up in Punchbowl. The auditorium was condemned. We all had to go to McKinley High School for the graduation ceremony. I was barefoot. I have a picture of me at graduation. I was not wearing shoes.
MK: That was graduation from what grade?
RH: Ninth grade. Then, we went back to San Diego. I was there for the 10th and half of the 11th at San Diego High School. Then, my father thought, “Ronald, you have to go to an English prep school,” because I was a terrible student. I had an uncle in New Zealand. He puts me on a freighter out of Vancouver to sail down to New Zealand to meet my uncle in Wellington, who I knew. I had my 17th birthday, four days at sea. That’s how young I was. I was 30 days from Vancouver to Wellington. My uncle met me. Thank goodness, there was no head master on the pier. I was appearing in short pants because in those days, kids didn’t wear short pants. I was rescued. My uncle had a friend that was working for the New Zealand lumber industry. We went up to a place called Putaruru, and he got me a room in his boarding house. I stayed in that boarding house for six months, playing the horses. I met people that owned the sheep farm. They had two race horses. Every Saturday, I’d go to the local country races. I worked in a panel beater shop, which is what we would call a body and fender shop to supplement my income. I supported myself when I was 17 years old in a foreign country.
MK: You never went back to school?
RH: I never went to school in New Zealand, no. My father finally came down after I’ve been there six months to haul me back. By then, we were living in Los Angeles. I finished my school at University High School in West Los Angeles.
MK: That’s a very famous school, lots of athletes coming-
RH: It’s called Uni High because it was proximity I think to UCLA. It’s very close to Westwood Village. I think that’s where it got its … When it was built, it was called Hoover High School, but Hoover didn’t have a good name. They got rid of his name and made it University High School.
MK: Now, Hoover High School is in Glendale.
RH: Is it? Is it the one in Glendale?
MK: Yes.
RH: Okay.
MK: Did you graduate from high school from Uni?
RH: I graduated from Uni, but I had to wait another semester because of my six months in New Zealand. I was actually graduated in January of ’51. I should have graduated in June of ’50, but they made me do that last six months.
MK: Did you go to college?
RH: Not then. I went right into the army. I went to college later on the GI bill.
MK: Was that during Korean War?
RH: Korea. Actually, I was drafted four or five days out of school. My dad, one of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me, he said, “Why don’t you enlist? You might get better service.” I went down, and I told the sergeant, I gave him my draft notice, I said, “I want to enlist.” Instead of being drafted for two years, I enlisted for three. It proved to be very smart because I went to Fort Ord for basic. After six weeks, they took all the RAs, which were the men that enlisted, and sent us to Schofield Barracks, Quad D, the 20th battalion, the first battalion to go through there for the Korean War. We were infantry. We were cannon fodder. There was no doubt about it. We knew where we were going. At least, I did. One day after a forced march coming down from Kolekole Pass, we were standing at ease. The company commander said, “Does anybody here want to go to truck driver school? You have to have a driver’s license.” I raised my hand, and it kept me out of the infantry, put me behind the steering wheel of a two-and-a-half-ton truck, and maybe saved my life, who knows.
MK: Did you actually get to Korea?
RH: I went to Korea for nine months. In Korea, they had a system where you got a certain amount of points. If you’re in a combat zone, you got four points a month. I rotated in nine months. It was in a combat zone. I rotated out, and went to Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California. Then, they couldn’t send you overseas again if you came from Korea, unless you volunteered. Then, they put me in the MPs. I was a military police. I didn’t like that at all. I had to go out and make roll call for the dirty dozen in the morning and all this stuff is terrible. They asked me, “Would you like to go to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Paris?” I said, “You’re darn right.” Off I went. Then, from there, I went to Germany, which was, of course, still occupied by American forces, and just served out my three years.
MK: When did you get out of the military?
RH: December of 1953.
MK: Then, what did you do next?
RH: Then, I went to school on the GI Bill. I worked too. I worked for Douglas in Santa Monica and in Long Beach. Before they were bought by Boeing, they were still Douglas. Then, I went to Long Beach.
MK: What did you do there?
RH: I was a plastic laminator. I put laminate over molds. When you sit on a plane, and you’re sitting next to a window, the frame is plastic. I did a lot of those. I did hundreds of things. Then, you’d put them in this big oven to cure. Then, I usually worked the graveyard shift. I liked the graveyard shift because that way, I could go to school at the same time. I went to school in the GI Bill.
MK: Where did you go to school?
RH: Long Beach City College, two years.
MK: Then, you did what after?
RH: Then, got laid off. See, I was married then. It was common in those days. I heard that Convair in San Diego was hiring. Sure enough, they were. We moved there. We got a trailer, rented a trailer, dragged everything down to Pacific Beach in San Diego, went to work for Convair for three months, and they went bankrupt. Then, I was going to the Famous Writer School because I always wanted to be a writer maybe because I had this speech impediment when I was young. I don’t know. I sold my first story, a fiction to Men’s Pulp Magazine when I was living in the Pacific Beach. When I lost that job, four or five months on unemployment, I said to my wife, Dee, I said, “Let’s go to Hawaii. I have no future here that I can see. “We got in a car. We drove up to Long Beach. I went into the United Airlines reservation counter. I said, “I want to buy a one-way ticket for my wife, and my daughter, and myself to Honolulu.” She said, “Don’t you want a round trip?” I said, “No. I’m never coming back,” and I never did.
MK: What year was that?
RH: That was 1962, June of 1962.
MK: That got you back to Hawaii.
RH: That got me back to Hawaii for good.
MK: What kind of work did you do when you got here?
RH: I couldn’t find a job. We came in here, if you really want the dirty, I had $360 to my name, and a crumpled pack of cigarettes. I smoked in those days. A daughter, a wife, no place to live, no job, no nothing. We found that we took a taxi from the airport. I just saw a for-rent place in the jungle, Waikiki jungle. I said, “Let’s go here, Dee.” We were in there, and stayed a couple of nights, and we found a place to rent. I finally got a job at TH Davies in the warehouse, architectural hardware warehouse. I was there for five months, six months. I moved into estimating. I learned to estimate off of blueprints on new construction. Then, from there, I started my own company doing the same thing, which my son, Rex, still runs today.
MK: That’s very-
RH: Hawaii made me.
MK: When did you retire from your business?
RH: I’ve been retired now about … I’ll tell you when I retired. I was 62 and a half when I retired. Now, I’m 85. You do the math.
MK: Twenty-three years.
RH: It’s twenty-three years.
MK: Yes. You didn’t join the Outrigger until 1967.
RH: That’s right. When I was working at Davies, there was a fellow in the general hardware department, who wanted me to join the Elks Club. Then, Waikiki Surf Club wanted me to join Waikiki Surf Club because, then, I was writing my column, Surf Spray. Then, I did a column once, about my third column actually, on Dave Rochlen at Surf Line. I went to his office and interviewed him. It was a good column. Dave asked me to join the Outrigger. I had all these offers. Dave actually was my sponsor. Fred Schwartz was my second. That’s why I joined the Club. In January of ’67, it was.
MK: When you were here as a kid, did you have anything to do with the Outrigger Canoe Club?
RH: No. I had nothing to do with Outrigger Canoe Club whatsoever. I knew of it, but I didn’t know anybody there. No, I didn’t know anybody there.
MK: You didn’t sneak in and-
RH: No, I did not sneak in. As I said earlier, it’s funny that I never met someone like a Ron Sorrell because Ron was surfing, but he was out at canoes maybe. I don’t know.
MK: Where did you surf?
RH: Queens, Queens was just right off the Tavern.
MK: Did you ever learn to paddle a canoe?
RH: I never paddled. My children did. I paddled once. We had a canoe surf fest where the press was against the City and County, and the State employees. I stroked the press canoe, a quarter mile. That cured me.
MK: You mentioned that you wrote a column. How did you get interested in writing about ocean sports?
RH: It just seemed like a natural. I started writing. My first publication was in Surf Guide, which was a fiction called Wipe Out for Wendy. I got into writing for a surfer, mainly for Surfer Magazine. It struck me that we’re the capital of big wave surfing, Oahu. We don’t have a column. I know you wrote a column in Southern California at one time. I know that Corky Carroll wrote a column in Southern California. I went into the Star Bulletin. Then, I talked to Jim Hackleman, who was the sports’ editor. I introduced myself. I said, “I write for Surfing Magazine and all that,” and I sold the idea to him. I had a weekly column from then on, every Friday. I never missed a week. I would go down on Wednesday. Of course, those days, it was typewriters. I typewrite it down, and I was a terrible speller. My wife was always telling me how to spell things. I used to kid her, I say, “Dee, how do you spell,” and she’d come running into the other room. I said, “That’s why you’re still in bikinis at your age because you get a lot of exercise.” That’s how I started with Star Bulletin. I did it for seven years.
MK: You wrote just about surfing?
RH: No. I started that way. Then, joining the Outrigger, I thought, “Why don’t I expand this?” I started covering the canoe regattas in the summer season. Then, I started covering Harry Huffaker’s channel swims. Some of that was front page. I had my byline on the front page of the Star Bulletin with Harry. One of the things Jim Hackleman said, “Okay, Ron. When I took this other job …” We haven’t gotten there yet, have we? Go on. I started doing the PR for the Outrigger. I was already. Jim said, “You can’t put Outrigger in everything just because.” I said, “Don’t worry, Jim. I won’t.” Of course, I snuck them in, and it got more and more Outrigger as I went along. In those five years that I was doing that for Outrigger, doing the public relations for them, they got more press than they’ve ever had since and all the years since, I think. Their name was in everything. We had a clipping service then. They’re all up in the store room. Every time Outrigger was mentioned, their clipping service would cut it on the paper.
MK: Did you write for any other publications?
RH: No. No. I never wrote for another newspaper. I just wrote for the magazines. I began writing for Rascal Magazine. It was a pulp. I sold about five or six short stories to them, all fiction. Then, I had about 25 or so stories for surfing magazines. I wrote one for the Makaha Program, Makaha contest one year. No, I never ventured beyond that.
MK: When you joined the Outrigger, you got involved quite quickly in things.
RH: I did, yes.
MK: I remember you accompanying Harry (Huffaker) across the (Kaiwi) channel. How did that happen?
RH: I was on the Hau Terrace one day, probably having a beer with Cline Mann or somebody. Bill Brooks walked up with this stranger in tow. He said, “This is Harry Huffaker, and he wants to swim the Molokai Channel.” Of course, we know it’s really not the Molokai Channel, but the Kaiwi Channel but everyone calls it the Molokai. I said, “Really?” Because I was doing the public relations for the Club, it was only natural that Bill Brooks bring him over to me because the Club was going to sponsor him. We’ve been friends ever since. I escorted him on all his channel swims.
MK: How many did he have?
RH: He had a lot of unsuccessful ones. I know he had two Alenuihāhā, one he made, one he failed. He had two trying to get to Molokai, one he made, one he failed. Probably, it was maybe six or seven, something like that.
MK: What was your job when you had-
RH: I was on the paddleboard. There were always Club members that escorted him. Rick Steere did it once. Mike Holmes did it once. John Marshall did every one but one. I did every one. Bruce Ames did every one and Charles “Bob” Londer several. We paddled. During the day, there’d be one paddleboard next to him. We had a shark gun mounted on it, which you would supposedly jab at the shark at a 12 gauge, and it would explode. At night, there’d be two of us. We would have him in between us. We had little lights on our board, a little red light. That’s how it went, and the most boring thing in the world.
MK: You just paddled at his pace?
RH: At his pace, exactly, yes.
MK: You talk to him or?
RH: Yes, we would talk to him. We would feed him like he was a baby. He liked canned peaches because the syrup would cut away the salt that was in his throat, salt water. He didn’t need an awful lot. Of course, a drink of water, but he would just swim. In fact, in my first account of him successfully being the second man to swim from Molokai to here, and set the record, by the way, I said he swam like a mechanical man, and he did. Of course, he had the conditioning. He had that, but he also had the brain for it. He could shut everything out, the pain, the boredom, and just swim, 52 strokes a minute.
MK: Amazing.
RH: It is amazing. He was a sprinter (swimming) in college. He was an all collegiate at the University of Michigan for three years. He would have been four years, but in those days, freshman couldn’t swim varsity, but he was good enough as a freshman to make the varsity team. How he got into distance, it’s amazing.
MK: Yeah. We’re hoping to talk to him when he comes to visit in the fall.
RH: He will¸ yeah. Yeah, he’ll be here again.
MK: Did you escort anybody else in swimming or just Harry?
RH: No, I never did. Just Harry. I did the publicity for him really. I wore two hats because we’d finish his swim, and I’d get home tired, beaten by the sun, at three in the morning or something. I’d sit at my little typewriter, which was a Royal. I’d start typing this thing up. Then, I’d get in my car, and take it down to the Star Bulletin, which, then, was in the building down there, and hand it in. On his successful Sandy swim, just going from here to Sandy, which is going uphill, and never been done before, it had only been done once since, I said, “Harry,” I said, “If you make this swim,” I had a beard in those days, and I looked a lot like Abe Lincoln, everyone said, I said, “I’ll shave my beard off.” He said, “Okay. I’ll hold you to that.” He made it. I went home, and I shaved my beard off. I walked into the bedroom, and my wife jumped out of bed and screamed because she didn’t know who the hell I was.
MK: How long would the swim take?
RH: They varied in time. The first successful swim from Molokai to here was about 13 hours and 15 minutes. The worst was the first attempt. It was from here to Molokai where he got off Laau Point, and got caught in terrible currents, and couldn’t make any headway. That swim, if you can believe it, was 19 hours. The next day, we pulled him out the water about five or six o’clock in the evening, something like that. The next day, he was in his office. He was a dentist. In his office to meet his first patient of the day. That’s endurance.
MK: He swam all the major channels.
RH: He swam every major channel. He’s done the Triangle, Maui, Lanai, Molokai. He’s done, of course, the Molokai Channel, as we call it. He’s done Alenuihāhā from the big island to Maui from Upolu Point.
MK: You were with him on all of those?
RH: I was with him on all of those, yes. When he started to swim for the Rotary Club, which was later, I was not with him. I said I had enough.
MK: He hadn’t.
RH: As long as he was swimming for Outrigger, yes, I was always with him. In fact, after the second swim, I became his chief escort, if you want to call it, making some of the arrangements to get the escort boats, and does that, and anything. He actually did most of that.
MK: How many accompanying paddlers were there?
RH: We’d have anywhere from four to five, usually.
MK: So you could rotate every couple of hours?
RH: Yeah, we’d rotate every couple of hours, whatever it might be. It was always calm because that’s when he was going to swim. He’s not going to swim when it’s rough. We had flat conditions, but you know the story about the Man-of-War. I wrote about that in my-
MK: Tell us about it.
RH: We left from Makapu’u. It was his second attempt to swim to Molokai.
MK: Reverse?
RH: The reverse. Uphill, they call it. It had never been done, never been done. I don’t know if it had ever been tried because you’re going against the currents. Anyway, we left at four in the morning. We swam around Makapu’u Point, around the lighthouse. When dawn came, I was by his side. He swam through a flotilla of Portuguese Man-of-War that crippled him. They stunned me too. I got off the board. I just had to get off the board. He stayed in the water. For 20 minutes, he could hardly move. It got his face, his chest. Just terrible. He finally recovered from it. He went on to become the first man to make that swim in something like 17 and a half hours.
MK: Amazing.
RH: After all that pain. That’s why I say he had the mind for it. To be a successful long-distance swimmer, you have to have more than stamina. You need the mind.
MK: Especially in the ocean.
RH: Yes, exactly.
MK: Since you were interested in surfing, did you get involved in the Duke Kahanamoku Surfing Championship?
RH: No. That was 1965, I believe. No, I don’t believe I was involved with that. That was the year I started to write Surf Spray. I started to write Surf Spray in June of 1965. No, I wasn’t a member of the Club then.
MK: You also got involved in the International Professional Surfing Association-
RH: Yes, I did.
MK: … with Ron Sorrell and Fred Hemmings.
RH: Actually, with Bob Wilson, not with Fred. Fred came along later. It was Bob Wilson and Ron. We actually started it. Again, I was PR. The bulk of that work went to Ron Sorrell. He’s the guy that went to the mainland, and press, newspapers, and TV. We got it off the ground. Again, all Outrigger members were involved.
MK: Now, this was the very first professional surfing.
RH: No. No, it wasn’t the first one by any means. It was the first successful one. The Smirnoff, it was sponsored by Smirnoff, which in those days was Heublein, who was the owner of Smirnoff. They had tried one (professional surfing meet) in Santa Cruz, California. It was a failure. They were out there after dark. They couldn’t identify the riders. There was vandalism all over the place. It was just a disaster. Ron Sorrell got a hold of Greg Reynolds who was working for the publicity advertising company that was doing it for Heublein, and talked to him into bringing it to life, which he did. It was held in Makaha in 1970. It was the Smirnoff International Pro-Am, as it was called. It was a huge success because not only did Ron pull that off, but he and Bob Wilson looked for weaknesses. One of the glaring weaknesses as far as spectators went was nobody knew the score. It was the only sport where nobody knew the score.
MK: Explain what you’re talking about.
RH: Like heats, when you had a heat, who won the heat? How many points? What was it? Nobody knew until the finals, when it was over. What they did is they decided to announce the scoring as it went along. When they got to the finals after every ride, the score was announced from the judges’ stand. The spectators knew what was going on. In this particular meet, Nat Young of Australia edged Felipe Pomar of Peru, who was not yet an Outrigger member, on the 11th wave. It took 11 waves to get a winner. You can imagine the crowd excitement as they’re going up seven, eight, nine, all these rides, and they’re going back and forth, and back and forth. Finally, after the 11th wave, it was awarded to Nat Young.
MK: That made it exciting to be able to-
RH: Yeah, for the spectators, so they had someone to root for.
MK: Was this televised?
RH: No. It couldn’t be televised because it was sponsored by Smirnoff. Hard liquor could not be televised. It still can’t, I don’t believe, but beer could. That is why, as Fred Hemmings pointed out to me, beer owns the national football league because they can advertise beer but not liquor.
MK: How long were you involved with it?
RH: Just a year. I started my company, Hardware Trends Hawaii, in June of 1971. It took all my time. I just drifted off into the sunset because I just couldn’t take the time starting a company like that.
MK: Did you get to know any of the world champion surfers?
RH: Just Felipe Pomar, and, of course, Fred Hemmings. No, I didn’t know any of the others really. Even in those days, I wasn’t covering so much for the sport as I was covering for Outrigger members, to get Outrigger’s name in the press.
MK: When you joined the Club sailing was a really big deal.
RH: Yes, it was.
MK: Very popular. You got involved in sailing.
RH: I did in a small way, not like Cline and not like, say, Mike Holmes, or Norm Dunmire. Not those. I had a Dart. It was similar to a Sunfish. In those days, we started off with Sunfish. Then, we went and got Scorpions, which was almost the same. I bought a Dart from George Downing. I don’t know why but I did. I kept that for a year or two. It was out there with the moorings, I never really got into the competition because there wasn’t a class for Dart. They’d race all Scorpions, or all Sunfish, and whatnot, or Hobie 14s, whatever it might have been. That’s as far as it went.
MK: Did you enter any regattas?
RH: No, no, no.
MK: No. Cline was very involved in sailing, as you mentioned.
RH: Yes, he was. He was.
MK: As I recall, there were some very interesting challenges and dares that were made by the sailors on the Hau Terrace after a few Budweiser’s.
RH: I did a Kog Log on that, but when you interview Mike Holmes, he’s the one that will bring that all to light to you. Mike is the nicest guy to work with. He just sent me pages and pages of his memories, some of them I haven’t even used. Some of his memories when he was being coached by George Downing, and all those things. You ask Mike that.
MK: You don’t have any stories of-
RH: Not personally. I have ones that Mike told me about the Henry Ayau special Saturday night disaster. Other than that, no. No.
MK: In 1968, you joined the Publicity Committee of the Club, and then the Public Relations Committee.
RH: I don’t think there was a Publicity Committee, Marilyn. Public relations, yes. In fact, it was chaired at that time by Bob Costa. It was a natural. I was probably asked to join because I was doing the PR for the Club by that time. It was a natural place for me to be. Yes.
MK: What was your job exactly?
RH: It didn’t have a job. It was only about five people on the committee, I think. That was when the Outrigger was called Forecast. It was run by the Public Relations Committee. Forecast was a Bob Costa endeavor, as I recall. I don’t think he was the editor of it, but didn’t have a specific job other than what I knew I was already doing.
MK: How did doing the publicity for the Club come about?
RH: Tommy Thomas was president. I joined in January of ’67. I would say maybe in September of that same year, somewhere around there, I was in the bar. Tommy came over to me, and he said, “Ron, I have a proposition for you.” I said, “Oh?” I said, “Yes.” He says, “Because of your relationship with the Honolulu Star Bulletin, I wondered if you would like to take on the public relations for this Club.”I said, “Why?” He says, “Honestly, we don’t have a good relationship in the community in some areas. They don’t hold us in the highest esteem. We’d like to get our accomplishments out there, so the public can be more aware of them.” I said, “Okay.” He offered me the terms. I said, “You bet. I’ll do it.” After getting the approval from Jim Hackleman, remember, and that’s how it happened.”
MK: What all did you … All the athletic events or did you cover social events too?
RH: Not social, no. One thing I did cover, which was accidental, I was down here at the Hau Terrace one day, and Julie and David Eisenhower came down with the Secret Service. They’ve been here for a week. They’d been in the paper all over the place. They wanted to go for a canoe ride. Fred Hemmings, and Aka (Hemmings), and Ron Sorrell, and one or two secret service people took them out to Tonggs, and I was here. I wrote that up. I took a picture of them on the wave. I took it down to the Star Bulletin, and they printed it, and they thanked me immensely because they said because were the afternoon paper, this is the only scoop we got on the Advertiser doing this whole visit. That’s where it paid off.
MK: You went to all of the canoe races and you sent in results?
RH: I didn’t. No, I didn’t. Because at that time, Rex, my son, who won the states when he was 12, and Tracy who won the states when she was 17 were paddling extensively. Dee and I would go out there. We’d spend the whole day there. We wouldn’t just see their race and leave because there weren’t that many races in those days, but we’d spend the whole day out there cheering these kids on. I didn’t actually turn in the results to the paper, but I would write up certain things. I’d send pictures in. I saw them practicing on the Ala Wai. They printed pictures like that, Of course, when they won the states, I managed to get that in to Surf Spray by hook or by crook. That’s how that went.
MK: What other types of things, as the PR person, did you submit?
RH: As I said, basically, that was it. I did a little volleyball. Like when Tommy Haine, and them went to the Olympics to represent the US in Olympics, and they beat the Russians in the first match, I wrote that up. I said something like, “From the sands of Outrigger to wherever they were playing, this is an Outrigger victory.” They didn’t do well after that. They beat the Russians and that was the end of it. I covered things like that.
MK: How long did you do PR?
RH: Five years.
MK: That’s interesting because when I first came to the Club in ’85, that’s what they asked me to do.
RH: Is that right?
MK: It was to be the community PR person. I did that before I became the editor of the magazine.
RH: I’ll tell you off camera how that was terminated but …
MK: Do you think that the effort helped the Outrigger in the community?
RH: Absolutely. One of the greatest, I think, to my own personal, as far as what I did for the Club, one Molokai race, I got into a Whaler, and I went out to Koko Head. I always took pictures with Nikonos. They’re not even made anymore. Black and white film in those days. I’d jump in the water with my fins. I’d take pictures from water level, which is a great way to take canoe pictures. I took these pictures of the Kakina. I took the roll down the Star Bulletin, and I gave it to them. To my shock, the next day, I’m walking out of the Club in the afternoon, and the paper had just come. This would be Monday now. The paper has just arrived. There’s my photo across the mast head, the entire width of the paper of Kakina off Koko Head. The thing about it was Surf Club won. We were only second. The letters I got in my box at the Star Bulletin because that … I didn’t put it there. I didn’t even know they’d even use it, but Surf Club was not at all happy.
MK: I’ve seen that happen many times. When Outrigger has won, they’ve always used pictures of other clubs.
RH: That’s the way it goes, but anyway.
MK: You’ve been a body surfer for a long, long time.
RH: Right, was.
MK: How did you get started in body surfing?
RH: Let’s make that past tense. I was a board surfer, but sitting on a board, my left leg would cramp or something. I don’t know what it was. I said, “I’m done. I’d start body …” because I’d body surf in Southern California. I never rode a board in Southern California. I always body surfed. I didn’t ride a board until I was over here. I started body surfing again. In fact, when I bought my home in Hawaii Kai, I bought it in Hawaii Kai because it was close to Makapu’u because that’s where we raised our kids. If we weren’t down here, we’re at Makapu’u. I taught my kids to body surf out there. I just love body surfing. You’re really a part of the wave.
MK: Did you enter any competitions?
RH: I entered one. I won the senior men’s 1970 Makapu’u body … There’s a Hawaiian word for it, I can’t remember it. The senior men were from 35 years and up. I was about 37 at that time. I won that. It was six to eight feet. The following year, I was so busy with my new business that I didn’t even think about defending my title.
MK: Body surfing was a family thing for you? You have surfing buddies that you were with.
RH: Yes. Club members Jim Growney and Jaren Hancock, we’re always out at Makapu’u. We surfed with another guy called John Waidelich. You saw the same people out there all the time. We’d be out there all day. I, honestly, raised two of my children out there.
MK: What was it that you like about it?
RH: About body surfing? Just the freedom of it. I don’t know. It wasn’t as competitive as board surfing. It wasn’t as crowded. I just got in. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Just like on a board in between sets, you’re out there talking story, and things like that.
MK: You wore fins.
RH: I wore Churchill. A lot of them wore Duck Feet, which were quite a bit bigger, but I like the Churchills.
MK: You mentioned Jim Growney. Did you get into body boarding on a paipo?
RH: No. I tried it once. I didn’t like it as much. I just stayed with body surfing. He was always on a paipo, whereas, Jaren Hancock, he was body surfing. You had both. You had both of them out there.
MK: Jaren was one of our past presidents as well.
RH: He was one of our past presidents. He’s now living in Utah. A funny story though. I went out there once with John Waidelich. Excuse me, and Jim Growney. I’ve never seen Makapu’u bigger. It was huge. It wasn’t even surfable. It was so big. It was like breaking right across the cove. I went out and they didn’t. I’d get on top of the wave. I’d look over. It was like I was on the top of the Aloha Tower looking down at pier, and “Oh, what am I doing out here?” I finally got in. They never got wet. I’m with two of the best paipo surfers in Hawaii, but also two of the smartest. That’s the biggest surf I’d ever been in. It’s huge.
MK: You survived.
RH: I was the only one out there, all by myself. You feel very lonely. Yes, I did survive.
MK: Now, part of your job when you were working as the publicity person for the club, did you go on the Molokai races?
RH: I did. I never was on the escort boat. I would go over there, and come back on a sailboat, or what have you. I would write that up and I would get off at the Ala Wai, and go home, and then go right back down to the paper with my story. Even once, and I’ve forgotten this, but I found it in the Forecast, I was with two people from the National Geographic, two writers, that were covering the Molokai race. I was along as their writer to explain things to them. I’ve forgotten all about that. My goodness gracious. There, it was in the Forecast.
MK: Was that the year of the ’66, the year the-
RH: No. No, ’66, I wasn’t a member. In fact, I was thinking about joining Waikiki Surf Club in ’66 because I had been at their … They had a meeting. It was after that race. They had pictures of that. No, that wasn’t that.
MK: That was the year that it was so rough and everybody got sea sick.
RH: Luckily, nobody was killed really or really severely injured because Hawaiian Civic Club lost their Koa Canoe completely. Leilani would have been lost if they hadn’t had this large escort boat to finally get it up on to it because it was swamped three times. They tried to tie it and pull it. They couldn’t do that. They would have lost the Leilani totally if they hadn’t got it up on the escort boat.
MK: It wasn’t the year that the National Geographic people went, a very rough year too. As I remember they were sea sick, and never came up on deck.
RH: No, I’ll tell you, that was ’66. There was a photographer from … It might have been National Geographic because Mike Holmes told me the story. Mike told me that when they left Hale O Lono that they gunned the escort boat through an eight-foot wave. This guy, that’s the last they saw of him. He went down to his bunk, and he never took a single frame of that race. He was too sick. In those days, when we set the record, we set the record at one time. It was 1970, I believe, or ’69 maybe. Mike Holmes was steering. We set the record. You know how many canoes were in the race? Thirteen. Today there’s over a hundred.
MK: It certainly become a very popular sport.
RH: It’s unbelievable.
MK: Now, you competed on and off in the Castle Swim over the years-
RH: Yes, I did.
MK: … for more than 40 years. You’ve won your age group many, many times. How did you get involved in ocean swimming?
RH: Oh, God. I couldn’t tell you, Marilyn. I just-
MK: Not from watching Harry?
RH: The one I won my age group that I remember very well is that my birthday is November 20th, and the Castle is the first Sunday after Thanksgiving. I’ve always just turned the calendar page another year when I swim. I was swimming. Of course, there we go, I’m swimming. I passed Cline outside the windsock. There was white water in the channel that year. It was rough. I passed Cline. I came in, and I won my age division. Cline didn’t know that I had just graduated into his age division, and he never let me forget that, “You didn’t tell me you were in my age division.”
MK: He was taking his time.
RH: He wasn’t concerned about me.
MK: Last year at the Castle Swim, you had just turned 85, and you said after you finished that it was going to be your very last one.
RH: I did.
MK: Now, I see you out there swimming every day.
RH: I love to swim. I love to swim. At my age, it’s just wonderful to be able to do it let alone. My granddaughter is getting married that Saturday before the Castle. I don’t think I’ll be swimming in this year’s Castle. I think I probably would have except for that. We’ll see about 90. Every fifth year, I’d swim the Castle because I was always ahead of everybody in age, see. I had-
MK: That’s how you won your division every year.
RH: I did go back, and did a lot of research when I finished last year. Yes, I was the oldest one to ever swim the Castle. It was one of the rare times in my life, and I don’t mind admitting this, I was glad to get out of the ocean at the end. We had small craft warnings. It was rough. The tides were running. It took me an hour and 59 minutes or something to finish that mile-and-half race. I was darn glad to get out of the water.
MK: Some years, you can never tell what it’s going to be like.
RH: No, you never do know.
MK: Ron, you brought a couple of memorabilia with you that I’d like to talk about. Let’s start with the photo that you have.
RH: All right. This photo right here. It’s one of my, I won’t say prized possessions, but I’m certainly glad I’ve kept it all these years because when I was ten, I was surfing the Waikiki Tavern. That was my hangout. There’s a fellow called Toby. He was Chinese. He was a big guy. He had a terrier that surfed with him on his hollow board. He would yap that dog. He would yap it all the way on the waves. In April of ’42, April the 7th, four months to the day after Pearl Harbor, he asked me to go out and surf, and he wanted to take a picture of me. Now, I certainly didn’t arrange this at the age of ten. He took this picture of me. I was just standing up. He took it a few seconds too soon actually that I was just standing up. He signed it. As it says, “Surfing at Waikiki, July 7th, 1942.” I have never seen a picture, a surfing picture at Waikiki inscribed on the front of the photo as this one is. There is no doubt.
MK: You have the wave all to yourself.
RH: I did. I wondered if he was an Outrigger member. I actually went back when I was working last year, the year before with John Lacy on the historical thing. We went back because Forecast used to acknowledge all birthdays by the Club members, and all I knew was Toby, but we couldn’t even find a Toby. I figured he was never a member of the Outrigger Canoe Club. He was just a nice guy that just did this for me. I never was able to really say aloha the way I like to.
MK: That’s really cool because not often, even in those days, that you get a wave all to yourself.
RH: Yeah. Actually, if you look carefully, there is a surfboard, a surfer on the other end of the wave. He’s going right, I think. I just vaguely make some, but no. Most waves are by yourself. There could be six people at Queen’s. It was not like it is today.
MK: There was no problem surfing after December 7th.
RH: That’s a question that I was … I’ve read people say that you couldn’t go out for the longest time. This picture proves that for me, but I remember after December 7th, as we lived across the street, where I said the Pacific Beach Hotel is today, the sandbags went up, machine guns, barbwire, blackouts, gas masks were issued. I took one to school, a gas mask. All these things, but I don’t remember anytime you couldn’t surf. Now, granted I was ten and I could have forgotten, but I think I would have remembered if I was denied going surfing because that would have been one of life’s setbacks in those days. I can’t say for sure. There were gates and a barbwire. You just open the gate, and you’d go on to swim, and go on, and close the gate behind you.
MK: Then, you had to be out before sunset.
RH: I didn’t know that at that time. I have since read, yes, that you had that last wave in as the sun was setting.
MK: And if not, nobody wanted to find out. . .
RH: Some said that some of the soldiers even sent some rounds over their heads.
MK: Wow. That’s a cool picture.
RH: Yeah, it is a great picture.
MK: Now, the other item.
RH: Yup. This one.
MK: Tell me about the trophy?
RH: I got this completely out of the dark. I was staying at the Royal Hawaiian. It was 1967. It was the third Duke Kahanamoku contest that was been run by Kimo McVay and Fred Hemmings, at that time, was doing a lot of the selections on who was going to compete. Kimo McVay, who had befriended me because I did a lot for his image and for getting his contest in the paper, gave me a room at the Royal Hawaiian for the night. It was nice. The next morning, he says, “Ron, come over here. I wanted to talk to you.” He took me out to the back where the Monarch Room is, and stood me against the window, Duke comes along, a photographer from Surfside Camera, and Duke gives me this trophy that says, “For Outstanding Contribution to Surfing.” I was just speechless. Then, Duke, and Kimo, and Dr. David Eith, who was the official doctor for the surfing contest, and myself get into Duke’s … and a chauffeur, I guess. I don’t remember that, but there must have been one. Got into Duke’s Silver Cloud, and drove out to Sunset Beach for the contest. In fact, the chauffeur might have been Pokie. He was-
MK: Poki`i Vaughan.
RH: He might have been the chauffeur. Anyway, all the way out because Don Ho was appearing at Duke’s night club at that time. The tape run, Suck Em Up from Honolulu out to Wahiawa to Sunset, it was suck them up. That’s a day I’ll never forget.
MK: Had you met Duke before that?
RH: Yes. I had met him briefly. I really didn’t know him. I’ve been to his birthday party, his 77th birthday party. Other than that, no.
MK: The trophy was awarded in December of?
RH: 1967, December the 15th.
MK: Then, Duke passed away.
RH: Five weeks later, something like January 25th of ’68, something like that.
MK: What a wonderful surprise.
RH: I have a picture. I also have a picture of Duke presenting me this trophy. I am shaking his hand. I got the trophy in my left hand, and I’m shaking his right hand. In fact, it was in the interview that I had about the Paipo, but anyway. It might have been one of his last photos ever taken as far as being with someone.
MK: Actually, I think we have the last photo of him. It was the night they launched the Winged “O” awards, which was like a week before he passed away.
RH: Was it really that soon?
MK: Yes.
RH: I didn’t know that.
MK: It was January 15th. Then, he passed away right after that. We just found those pictures in the archives. That looks more like an Oscar than a surfer.
RH: This is pure Kimo. Now, Kimo McVay was a master promoter. I don’t kid you. He’s the most generous person I’ve ever met. Kimo was a lovely guy. This was stolen from the Oscar, that figure. You know there’s a famous photo of Duke standing in front of a big hollow board, I think it was hollow, somewhere around the Halekulani wall, I think it was taken at that time. This is where the idea came from that Kimo got. Now, this trophy was given to the first-place finisher of the Duke Kahanamoku Surfing Classic. Then, it began to appear like the one I’m holding. Honestly, I wasn’t in the surfing contest, but it began to appear in some other places because I know Brant Ackerman told me he has two of them. I don’t know what for. (According to Brant, all contestants got one).
MK: Now, Ron, in 2014, you joined the Historical Committee. You got put to work right away with John Lacy starting to digitize some of the records that we had. How did that come about?
RH: I was talking to John on the Hau Terrace one morning about something. Somehow, it came up that I had written for surfing magazines. I’m not sure. Anyway, John says, “Let me have some of your stuff because I’m digitizing this stuff.” I said, “Oh.” I brought a bunch down. It was all about me to begin with. He had so much of my stuff in there. Finally, he said, “Would you like to be on the Historical Committee?” I said, “I never even gave it a thought.” He said, “I’m going to put your name forward at the next meeting,” or something like that, which he did. I was brought in as a guest member. Just as a guest for that meeting. I said, “Yeah, John.” I said, “Oh, that’s fine.” That’s how I became on the Historical Committee. Then, I was helping John. Then, of course, that led to the Koa Log. How many of the Koa Logs appeared? Ten or twelve, or something like that? I don’t know. That was an idea that I wanted to do at one time for Midweek about the canoe season. It wasn’t worth my time. That’s where the name came from because I was going to call it Koa Log.
MK: You helped John with the digitizing?
RH: Yes. He did that work. He’s a computer man. You get me near a computer and smoke comes out of it. I was supplying him with all my stuff. Then, we collaborated on an article that appeared in Outrigger about what was being done, and please give us your pictures, and all the stuff. That’s where that came from. Then, we collaborated very closely on the inside the Club logo story that you did a wonderful job on, where you have the fold-out front cover with all the old logos that we’ve found. John did all that work, of course. I wrote the text, but John did all the artwork, which was …
MK: Those were great columns. They’re up on the OCC Sports website so people can go back and review them.
RH: They certainly are, yes.
MK: People can go back and review them. One of the topics you wrote about was the clock, the famous beach clock. I want to have you to tell me about it. Before you do, I want to tell you something I found yesterday. I’m looking through old newspapers, and I found an article from 1920 that we almost lost our beach clock in a tidal wave.
RH: Really?
MK: The wave came in, and it knocked the clock, off of its base.
RH: I’ll be darned.
MK: It was on its side afterward. They had to bring it up and fix it, but we almost lost it in a tsunami in 1920. I hadn’t heard that story before.
RH: You should go put a little addendum on that Koa Log about that because I didn’t know that. That’s great.
MK: Tell us about the beach clock because how we got it and-
RH: Again, I was working with John. In fact, I said to John on the first Koa Log, I said, “John, I don’t want to write them all. I want members to write these things with their own memories, and things, and their ideas.” John says, “Okay.” He said, “I’ll do this clock story,” I said, “Fine, you do the clock story.” Finally, he said, “I don’t want to do it.” He said, “You do it.” He found a newspaper clipping when he was going through all the stuff from the Advertiser that this clock had been donated to the Outrigger Canoe Club. I think it was 1918, something like that. It was attached to Wichman Jewelry on the wall, and it hanged over the sidewalk on Fort Street, which today is, of course, the Fort Street Mall, but it was Fort Street. There was a picture of it with this policeman in the center of the road with the white pith helmet, and the royal top, and the white shorts, and the white gloves, directing Henry Ford’s traffic because all along the curve were nothing but Model Ts, not Model As but Model Ts, and they’re all black. We got the idea to write the story because it’s the same clock. In those days, the clock was adorned with it had … It looked like a dog on the top with wings and all. It was really had all kinds of ornamentation… Over the years, they vanished. Until today, there’s nothing but the clock ring left. Even the face may not be original. I don’t know. It’s the same hands, the same numbers. Anyway, there was a guy. His name was Johnson, I believe. He was a member. He got Wichman to donate the clock to Outrigger because they wanted to get rid of it for some reason. They even went as far as to installing it for us. We poured a concrete base at our expense. Wichman Jewelers came down, and installed it, and hooked it up, and all that stuff. The story doesn’t end there because the company that built this clock in Boston also built the clocks on the Aloha Tower. They built those about ten years after this clock. Then, also, in those days, a four-faced clock, because this one was only two-face, but in those days, there were four-faced clock all over the world. Of course, the most famous one would be the Big Ben in London. That’s the story. That’s how we got the clock. We’ve had it ever since. It’s down to nothing now. In fact, Kawika Grant and I had talked when I was still on the Historical Committee about getting another two-face clock, buying it, having the Club buy it, and put it out there on the beach some place because the Outrigger has always had a clock on the beach. Even before the old, old Club, when I went back to one of the earlier pavilion, that’s when the clock was given to us. There is a picture of Dad Center in a canoe when it was a pavilion where people would be up on the second story, and underneath was storage for canoes, the clock was on the beach then.
MK: I remember going surfing and everybody checking the clock.
RH: Exactly.
MK: You could see the clock and know what time it was.
RH: Exactly.
MK: If it was time for you to come in yet or not.
RH: Exactly, exactly. People coming in on steamers with binoculars from boat decks, for instance, could zero in on that clock and see the time of day.
MK: It just got another overhaul. It’s back up again.
RH: Yes, it did.
MK: You have been married twice.
RH: Yes.
MK: Your first wife was Dee.
RH: No, that’s my second wife.
MK: Your second wife. Who is your first wife?
RH: Her name was Susan. That’s Tracy’s mother.
MK: Tracy’s mom. Then, your second wife was Dee.
RH: Yes. That was short for Doreen but I call her Dee.
MK: Did you meet her in Hawaii?
RH: No. I met her in Santa Monica on New Year’s Eve of 1960.
MK: You have two children with her?
RH: By Dee, I had Rex and Maile, yes. They were both born here.
MK: Are your children members of the Club?
RH: Maile is still a member. She lives in Phoenix. Rex decided five or six years ago that he was a member of the Hawaii Yacht Club. He just couldn’t afford both, so he got out.
MK: They grew up here?
RH: Yes, definitely.
MK: They paddled.
RH: No. Maile only paddled one year for 18’s. Rex paddled from 12’s up to freshmen men.
MK: One of your daughters did distance, did the first Dad Center race.
RH: Tracy did the first two. Tom Conner was the coach. She didn’t make the third crew. One, that was when it was in Hawaii Kai. That was about ten miles in those days. The first six races were ten miles before they moved it to Kailua. Tracy was taught to steer by Fred Hemmings when she was very young. Tracy was not the strongest paddler in the world. Today, when you see the girls, they’ve got shoulders like this. It’s amazing how they, but anyway. She could steer. I always thought that Tom wanted her in the canoe in case anything happened to Heidi (Hemmings), if she got a cramp or something.
MK: You have another steersman.
RH: Heidi told me when I was interviewing them for that Koa Log about Dad Center that she was very confident having Tracy in the canoe because she knew that she’s a good steerer.
MK: Wow. We covered a lot of ground today. Do you have any other memories of the Club that you’d like to share?
RH: I can say that I’m very fortunate. I turned my life around when I moved to Hawaii. Joining the Club in ’67 was one of the best things I ever did. We’ve raised our kids here. It’s been home. I will say that for maybe 15 years I dropped out of Club life, in the ’80s and ’90s, sometime around there. I didn’t come down much. In fact, I almost quit several times. I thought about it. Then, I got back into it, but it’s a wonderful thing to be able to say that your children grew up here, grew up on the sand here, learned to paddle here. Yeah, I’m glad I joined. It’s an experience that I won’t soon forget.
MK: I am going to wrap it up by asking one last question. What has being an Outrigger member for 50 years meant to you?
RH: It has meant a lot. It really has. You can’t really put it all into words. I think it helped my children. I think they grew up to be better people. I think paddling was great. Paddling season was wonderful. I used to play volleyball. You may not remember this, but Bill Capp, back in the late ’60s, I think, we used to play Wednesday night volleyball. It was called squeeze, pitch, and throw, or something like that. Afterwards, we’d have stew and rice and beer. Those are the things that I remember a lot. There was so much, because I could never play volleyball. I was the worst volleyball player in the world, but that was fun. Just having the kids grow up here was great.
MK: It was the family.
RH: It was a family thing. It certainly was. It wouldn’t have happened on the mainland, I’ll tell you that. I don’t think they have anything like this yet on the mainland.
MK: Thank you very much, Ron.
RH: You’re welcome. Thank you for taking the time, and for thinking of me, and aloha.
MK: Aloha.