HOT SEAT: Rabbit Kekai Takes On the Sizzling Stratolounger

Hawaii’s Rabbit Kekai, 83, is proof positive that surfers are staying on it longer than ever. Today, when he’s not surfing his beloved Queens, this veteran Waikiki beach boy spends much of his time with his charitable Rabbit Kekai Foundation which promotes kids surfing and education through a series of contest, but he also still makes his living off riding the waves, so in that sense, he’s the oldest pro surfer around. We decided to throw him on the grill to talk about his early days with Duke, pro surfers today, and his chances for a world title. –Chris Mauro

SURFERmag: So did Duke subscribe to the grommet abuse theory?
Rabbit Kekai: He didn’t tie us to palm trees or anything, but he told me to scram all the time. Little guys weren’t allowed out with the big boys.

SURFERmag: Did this have anything to do with the fact that you and your little friends were a bunch of hoodlums?
Rabbit Kekai: It may have. Y’know, we had interesting ways of obtaining our boards then. Those guys were riding these big long logs, about 16 or 17 feet long, and when the board comes inside shore, we-ah on it, and we’d paddle away and take off down the beach. From that one big board we’d cut ‘em down and make two small boards (laughs). We shaped them ourselves and put da varnish on and everything.

SURFERmag: Were they ever suspicious?
Rabbit Kekai: They wouldn’t know who it is, because we’d get da boards and hide ‘em in the sand, bury them. Then every time we paddle out we-ah riding a new board, but they know it’s not their’s because they were so small. But we didn’t do it with Duke’s board, you didn’t dare mess around with the old man.

SURFERmag: When did Duke take you under his wing?
Rabbit Kekai: Well, when I was about eight-years-old, that’s when Duke started to take me under his wing. I had my own two-man canoe, and he liked the way I surfed it, and how I stayed away from the big boys. He taught me about steering, and how to compete.

SURFERmag: Were you a ladies man back in those days?
Rabbit Kekai: So-so (laughs).

SURFERmag: So it’s safe to say you milked the Beach Boy lifestyle?
Rabbit Kekai: Oh yeah. We had a tandem paddle race one time, and Duke’s brother Sam had been training with Doris Duke [heiress to Duke Energy fortune] but at the last moment he dumped her for Barbara Hutton [heiress to 50-million dollar Woolworth fortune]. Doris was real pissed, because she’d been training really hard. So Duke asked me to race with her, and man, we kicked everyone’s butt. So next thing you know, I had the run of her place in Diamond Head, and I got to drive around in her speedboat. Me and the fellahs would go fishin’ all the time. Living large. She gave me two boards too. That was a good time.

SURFERmag: Who else have you taught how to surf?
Rabbit Kekai: Ah, jeez, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas and his kid too, David Nevin, Peter Jennings…I can’t even name them all.

SURFERmag: Were you in the water when Pearl Harbor was bombed?
Rabbit Kekai: Yeah, we were surfing. We could see the smoke and this guy paddled out and told us about the attack. Then one of those Japanese bombers got lost, and he dropped a bomb on everyone’s favorite liquor store in Waikiki. Lucky it was a Sunday and it was closed.

SURFERmag: You served in the war too?
Rabbit Kekai: Yeah, I did UDT, or underwater demolition. They give you a mask, some fins and stick a propeller up your ass and say go. We had some good guys in my group, but only four of us came back out of 12.

SURFERmag: Surfers today must seem like a bunch lightweight pansies from where you’re sitting.
Rabbit Kekai: You better believe it. It’s funny, when Andy [Irons] and Bruce were little kids their dad asked me to coach them. I asked him, “Do I have permission to kick their ass?” and he told me yeah. So I said to them kids, “Hey, you heard him.”

SURFERmag: You think you got it in you to make a late run for the title?
Rabbit Kekai: Nah, maybe not anymore, I might be getting a little too old now.