The Surfers Journal
Light / Dark
Five years ago, while making our film A Deeper Shade of Blue, Derek Hynd and I secured the rights to Val Valentine’s four surfing films. This was going to be a passion project, stemming from our respect for what little is known of Val and his film efforts.
Val who, you might ask? You really needed to be a local living on the North Shore of Oahu 50 years ago to know that Val had come to Hawaii in the late 50s, was a wrestling commentator and photographer, moved to Sunset Beach after being introduced to the wave by his good wrestling friend Lord “Tally Ho” Blears, had the inside shore reef at Sunset named after him, and that he was always keeping his eye on the guys when the surf was up at Sunset. This was easy because his home was straight in front of Sunset Beach where, from his front porch, he had a commanding view. During the 1965 Duke Invitational, one of the earliest professional surfing contests held at Sunset, Val’s home and yard were used to host and judge the event.
Two years ago, I started putting in some more time doing a little Sherlock work on where Val was born and where he came from and what he did before turning up in Hawaii. One of the first people I spoke to was Peter Cole, who shared a couple of stories from the 60s. However he could not recall Val revealing much else about his past. Peter put me in touch with a local North Shore gentleman named Glen Powell, who was a close friend and fishing buddy of Val’s. Around the same time, I also got an email from Peter, with some notes that his brother, Lucky, had stashed in a drawer. Just a few words—which gave me hints of where to start looking.
I contacted Glen who was stoked to hear what we were doing. After a couple of email conversations, he shared with me that he’d been caretaking Val’s entire catalogue of black and white photo negatives. Six months later, I received a cigar box filled with between 4,000 and 5,000 individual images. Once I started reviewing them over a light box with a loop, I realized we were given a previously unseen trove. The first strip I pulled out was marked “Dora/Downing.” Here were two surf legends known for rarely posing for pictures and they obviously respected Val enough to oblige his request.
I emailed Steve Pezman and asked what he knew about Val. Like most, Pez could not remember much, except that Val was a quiet, unassuming gentleman. He suggested I contact Val’s old friend, Bob Beadle. I’d heard Bob’s name from some mutual friends we shared, from when we’d both lived in Western Australia in the late 80s. As I started the conversation with him on Skype, I saw we had so much in common that it seemed like I’d found a long lost brother. Bob’s North Shore exploits in the early days of surfing are that of a well-respected big wave surfer. Much like Val, Bob too flew under the radar.
And he not only knew Val, it seemed, but he had tales to tell. I asked him if he’d be willing to write them for me. I hope you enjoy these tales as much as Hynd and I did. It’s only a small taste of what we’re holding from Val—surfing gold that has not seen much of the light of day.
The south swells shut down at the end of September. It was the moment I had waited for since returning to Hawaii from the Mainland. I quit my job as night manager at a small Waikiki hotel chain and moved to the Country for my first full season on the North Shore.
The tiny pink cottage on the point at Waimea turned out to be a salacious tuning fork. Max Lim’s shack shamelessly vibrated to the waves. I’d ridden the Bay for the first time two years earlier. Max was a Korean guy from Town with whom I’d eventually share a few wipeouts in Makaha Point surf. Over peanut butter sandwiches and Kool-Aid, our shaky veranda became a viewing platform. Just “backdoor” of the drop, this was well beyond anything on the South Shore, even ‘pole set’ days at Ala Moana.
There are years when Waimea breaks little, sporadically at most. This season would be different. I’ve often wondered if the record series of swells we received October of 1962 will ever be repeated. During the first month of the season, Waimea broke 15 out of 30 days at 20 feet or more. I know. It’s hard to believe.
But I kept track like a jailbird doing time, checking off each Waimea day at size. Swell #1, #2, #3, #4…after a time it wasn’t Waimea that we had. It was clear Waimea had us. It began to be too much of a good thing.
Some nights you would hear flies buzzing on the windows. Why weren’t they sleeping, like they were supposed to be? In fact, it wasn’t the flies. The shack windows were buzzing in sympathetic vibration with the sucking and pounding of the ocean in the darkness outside. After the spray-gray dawn, the trade winds would rise, clearing the air to a sunlit, brilliant blue. Waimea would show near 20 feet.
Sometimes, there was more to it than buzzing, or even throbbing windows. Late at night, I might wake, my head next to the salaciously vibrating single wood wall. And in the morning it would be 25 plus. One-to-two day swells, even the rare three-day swell, seemed to go on forever. What, tomorrow? Again? Anxiety and ambivalence rose, swell after swell. Real Waimea continued, relentlessly pounding outside. It just kept coming.
Excess desire faded under Waimea’s steamroller, threatening emotional exhaustion. Like gluttons at an elaborate dessert marathon, night after night promised a dawn of more sweet, intimidating challenges. Never waste a hard-on they say, so what else could you do? O.C.D. and unwilling to miss out, we paddled out once more.
Finally, swell frequency and size dropped off. For the first time, Sunset was fun—a reprieve from Waimea. The volume of water driven by invisible Aleutian storms, thousands of miles north, sluiced over the reef and reaching the shallows, then turned and flowed up the beach. In front of the scrubby dirt turnout on Kam Highway, the hidden river turned outward, forming wavelets like whitewater rapids bumping against each other above the invisible rocks below. Where there were no rocks, an efficient but chaotic conveyor belt formed, carrying you easily out to the break, hundreds of yards across the channel. From the tops, Sunset was side-on and from the beach looked even more impressive than Waimea. Relentless, impossibly thick, and at this distance, majestically slow, Sunset A-frames would pour over, hit the flats, and rebound. From the top, the snow-like blizzard of spray streamed out to sea in the trades.
Tour buses laden with blue-haired old ladies and a few token gents, loopy tourists in rental cars, white-walled soldiers from Schofield Barracks—everyone stopped to gawk, hypnotized. A peak five times as thick as it was high stood to throw far out as an ant-black figure dropped down the face, down the endless slope, down onto the flats. As though aiming directly at the lookout, he laid it on a rail and projected into the inside wall as it jacked.
Kealoha Kaio watched from the turnout. You need to know who Kealoha was. An imposing Hawaiian from Kahuku, Kealoha was a Mormon elder and father of 11 pure Hawaiian children. His was the classic Hawaiian style that reflected his personality ashore. Understated, pure.
As a tour bus pulled in, the driver’s microphone sounded. “Ladies and gentlemen, here we are at Sunset Beach, where the surfers ride the giant combers!” In the distance, another stick figure dropped in. Plunging down the face he caught a rail and crashed. Unless you knew what to look for from this distance, you’d fail to see him resurface. One of the blue-haired ladies slid open her window, calling out…
“Young man! Young man! What happened to the boy?”
Kealoha looked up and, after a considered pause, replied solemnly. “He died.
In shock, and in a cloud of smoke and a roar, the bus pulled out, down the highway to the next trophy attraction on the list. “Mabel, wait ’til Henry back at the hotel hears about this.”
Before we knew it Sports Illustrated published an article on big wave riding. Fred Van Dyke made the observation that big wave riders were “latent homosexuals.” To great glee, Fred’s Freudian analysis made the rounds, and lives on still. Not long after, temptation appeared in the form of another packed tour bus: “Ladies and gentlemen, here we are, at…etcetera, etcetera.” Instead of the usual stiff canvas trunks by M. Nii at Makaha, or by Mrs. Reed in Newport, bodysurfer Larry Lumbeck—an occasional Aussie pilgrim to Mecca—and I preferred nylon Speedos, lightweight and fast-drying underwear that you could simply strip at the beach and paddle out. With a wink, we linked hands to Nancy about the bus. Behind tinted windows eyebrows rose, knowing looks. “Just you wait, they’ll hear about this back in Des Moines.”
Fun is fun. But we preferred to park out near the break, out toward the point. Around the vacant lot off Kam Highway, small houses were scattered about—no fences or driveways, a few junkers here and there on the grass. On the beach behind a tall hedgerow lived shaper/big wave rider Bob Shepherd. To the left crouched a small bungalow beneath the coconuts and ironwoods. Someone said a wrestler by the name of Val Valentine and his lady Madelaine had moved out from Town a year or so ago.
From Kam Highway the waves looked like peaks but here, directly in front of the break, they looked like walls. Up to 8 feet—a bit bigger if you were lucky—it was a faster paddle out from Val’s than from the lookout. Slipping out in the calm water inside, we circled a little fun-ride reef. Young Brian Suratt would often be on it, and on the way out we’d wave, give a whoop.
The moment to pause. Time the sets. With the lull, you’d sprint across the inside reef and to the channel beyond the big, shifty peaks. The little break in front of his bungalow soon became known as “Val’s Reef.”
It was one of the first times I’d come by in my black ’57 De Soto limo junker, without a rear window, for the boards. Val stood outside, white bearded and a comfortable paunch. He gave me a bright white smile that was highlighted by a deep tan. We exchanged greetings and talked about the waves. Whenever I checked Sunset, we’d stop for a few minutes to catch up.
In 1965 I moved back to Hawaii after school on the Mainland. I rented a termite-ravaged three bedroom called the “Grey House,” which was slumping gracefully on the corner of Hoalua just inland from Val’s. I worked nights for Pan Am at Honolulu International Airport and my days were free to surf. Between go-outs and over the long, flat summers, we would talk. I had no phone so Val would let me use his to call my parents on the Mainland.
One day I walked up to his place to check the waves. Val was glassing the Hawaiian-print paipo he had just built, boards for which he had become well known.
“How’s it going, Val?” I asked.
“Keeping the wolf from the door, Bob. Just keeping the wolf from the door.”
It would be years before I understood what he meant.
Val’s warmth was a constant. He loved to make gentle jokes, never bothering with idle compliments or criticism. There was an exception that proved the rule: From the first Duke Contest in 1965, Val’s became the place to be. After a few Primos, the bushes near his house were also convenient. With the next rain aromas more pungent than, say, the Hawaiian ginger outside filtered through the screen into his living room. I think it was the only time I saw Val irate.
Untrue, actually. Val had some sort of grudge with Frank Sinatra. I never learned what, but it was something from back in Hollywood. Knowing Val, it must have been serious.
Their island vacation was about to end, and all too soon. In a day they would return to the Mainland. It already felt anticlimatic. Sometimes they’d try to assuage the nostalgia they already had begun feeling by reminding themselves—and the locals too—about their indigenous weather. “You know, back home we have real ‘seasons.’ Real Christmases.”
In an ode to snowfalls and woolen mufflers, icy windshields and antifreeze, snowmen and the warmth by the fireplace, they sang the tune that became America’s favorite ode to its number one holiday. “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” Residents of Hawaii felt when Christmas was coming, while to visitors the change in seasons went unnoticed. Blood red poinsettias, that iconic Christmas flower, began to bloom on the North Shore. The air turned crisper. And cleaner. Winter swells began to arrive with consistency from the Aleutians. Surface and wind conditions were ideal and would usually remain so until the unruly storms of midwinter began to have their way. Cotton clouds in a painfully blue sky, dark green headlands, and the prototypic Christmas tree, the Norfolk Pine, framed an ocean that had become bluer than blue. At the end of a winter’s day, a broad, glittering train trailed the Sun King to his coronation off Kaena Point.
Children don’t miss a thing. It’s their time of year and they know it. Christmas is almost here. Santa’s coming!
Val was good sized without being imposing. In his 60s he had a full white beard and mane that contrasted with a tan as deep as any haole’s gets. Impossibly blue eyes. Flashing white teeth on the smile-creased face. Val, you couldn’t miss him.
Nor his car. It was one of the 1954 run built by Kaiser Motors in an attempt to produce a “European sports car” in America. The Chevrolet Corvette, also fiberglass, was released the same year and, a few months later, Ford’s Thunderbird. Henry J. Kaiser is closely identified with Hawaii and things Hawaiian. Besides a string of huge construction projects, dams, ships, and others endeavors, he completed building the largest hotel resort in the world around this time. The Hawaiian Village Beach Resort and Spa in Waikiki later become a Hilton Hotels centerpiece.
Pioneer big wave riders owed a debt to more than Henry J’s vehicles and industrial projects. The new hotel lacked a decent beach. One summer in the mid 50s, Henry J. had 30,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from the middle of Waimea Bay and barged to Waikiki. When October arrived, Waimea had a deep channel and possibly for the first time, good shape. The waves were now an open door, a truncated wall to about 30 feet when the Bay would finally close out. Over the decades, currents eventually filled in Henry J’s underwater excavation.
Val’s ride was a flashy, 10-year-old, baby blue Kaiser Darrin. In 1954, the year they were all built, they cost as much as some Cadillacs and Lincolns. Val’s was one of a total of 441 cars sold, including five prototypes. It was a remarkable achievement for an upstart-independent competing with Detroit financial and marketing muscle, and extensive dealer networks. And it was good run, although production was stopped the very next year. The remaining 50 were sold from a storefront in Hollywood.
Val’s convertible had an island touch—a white Hawaiian paisley pattern on the dark blue hood and deck. In a way, it seemed appropriate for a retired Hawaiian pro wrestler and commentator. And maybe even for the Christmas season’s most anticipated visitor…
To enter the car, you slid the doors forward along tracks into the front wheel wells. There were no windows. I recall Val driving around the North Shore with the doors retracted, wide open. I don’t see how he was able to steer like that, but that’s what I recall.
One morning in late December, I walked over to his house to check the surf. Val’s little bungalow was 50 feet from where I lived, directly in front of Sunset’s gorgeous A-frames. I could see he was in a good mood today, even for Val. Returning from a morning milk run in his blue paisley sled, he told how he had come up on the bright yellow school bus. It had stopped to pick up the keikis to go to school in Haleiwa and Wailua. As he drove slowly by, Val glanced up at the bus, where a row of berry brown noses were pressed against the glass. The children were pointing, wide eyed.
“Is heem!” they screamed.
Val looked up with that smile that shines like a sun at the center of your universe. He threw the kids a big wave. The school bus rocked with joy.
“Santa!” they cried.
It made his day. His joy for life was contagious. Val made everyone’s day.
Mainland Christmas had its supermarket Santas in rented suits, fake cotton beards, padded bellies, Salvation Army bells. The North Shore had Val. His warmth, good humor, and authentic friendship made him our year round Santa—a real Santa Claus for a real Christmas.
Hey, mainland snowmen, Christmas-climate ayatollahs: eat your hearts out.
[Feature image: Going through the cigar box full of Val’s negatives, I was blown away at his variety of subjects. We came across several files marked Para, filled with images of skydivers at the end of Mokuleia/Kaena Point. This is a rare look at the character in his face before a neatly-trimmed, snow white beard took over his clean cut look. Circa early 1960s.]
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