Eddie Would Go by Stuart Holmes Coleman

Author:Stuart Holmes Coleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2011-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Almost a year after Gerry’s death, Eddie and Clyde found themselves pitted against each other in a near replay of the ‘73 Duke. Once again, the contest was to be held at Waimea Bay with the same top contenders, including Reno Abellira, Jeff Hakman and James Jones. This time it was the ’74 Smirnoff Pro-Am Surfing Classic, the richest contest on the circuit. But on the morning of the contest, the waves were too big, some reaching 50-60 feet high. It was Thanksgiving Day, and thousands of people planned to come watch the epic rides and potentially deadly wipeouts. Rather than sitting at home and watching the football games on TV, the fans began lining up along the cliffs of Waimea’s natural arena to witness surfing’s greatest matadors challenge the giant waves charging across the Bay.

The entire North Shore lay buried in a shroud of mist from the giant surf. Sounding like a huge offshore power plant, the megaton waves made a thundering crash as they closed out the Bay, creating a wall of whitewater two stories high. Fred Hemmings and the other contest officials wondered whether they could even put on the event because the road by Laniakea was washed out, creating a mile-long traffic jam. They also had to wrestle with the issue of safety. Struggling with the real possibility of being seriously injured or even killed, many of the surfers refused to go out in such deadly conditions. But Fred knew the contest would be a blockbuster event, the biggest ever, and the camera crews and sponsors were eager to televise what would be the most extreme surfing footage ever shown on TV. Peter Cole tried to warn him, saying, “Fred, don’t send them out in those waves—they’re going to die!”

Despite the warnings, “Dead Ahead Fred” wanted to go ahead with event. His dogged determination and media savvy had made him the biggest contest promoter of the time. (These same skills would later lead him into politics and seats in the Hawai‘i State House and Senate.) Capitalizing on surfing’s growing popularity in the media, Fred brought together vagabond surfers, conservative corporate sponsors and sophisticated TV producers to televise the sport. But surfers like Eddie resented the growing commercialism of the sport. Over the years he had witnessed Fred’s transformation from a fellow surfer and competitor into a contest organizer, from ‘one of us’ to ‘one of them.’ During the first Smirnoff Contest years before, Gerry Lopez remembers how Fred and Eddie had come into conflict over the issue of contest entry fees. “Fred wanted everyone to pay a $75 entry fee, which was pretty big money in those days. We were shocked and decided to have a big meeting down at the Outrigger Canoe Club. Fred’s quite a statesman, and he got up and gave his side of the story. He talked for about twenty minutes about why we needed to pay to be in the contest. And he sat down and said, ‘What do you guys

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