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academia and surfing

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Bermuda

Bertlemann, Larry

Quiet Hawaiian big-wave surfer rider from Laie, Oahu; third-place finisher in the 1963 Makaha International contest. Kaio (born: 1935) didn't begin surfing until 1956 at age 21, on an old discarded redwood plank. "I was just out of the military," Kaio later told surf writer Nick Carroll, "diving, fishing, drinking, and smoking. Surfing cleaned me up."

Just two years later, Kaio was riding Sunset Beach, the big-wave capital of Oahu's North Shore, and by 1963, with just five years of experience in the water, he'd almost magically become a refined and elegant presence in the lineup. "Ricky Grigg was the best surfer," Kaio said. "I saw how he would throw his hands up on the takeoff, and still have them up during bottom turns. But I decided, instead, to work on keeping my hands and arms low down." 

 magazine pointed out that this stylistic trait was passed to Hawaiian surfers like Eddie Aikau and Jeff Hakman, who in turn influenced virtually every big-wave rider that followed.

In 1963, the same year he made the Makaha International finals, Kaio helped train Fabian, Tab Hunter, and the rest of the stars of Columbia Pictures' 

. Kaio competed in the inaugural Duke Kahanamoku contest in 1965,

In years to come, with 11 children to support (Kaio himself was one of 11 children), he worked as a garbage truck driver and commercial fisherman. He continued to surf and compete. In 1970 he beat George Downing to win the 35-and-over division of the Haleiwa Sea Spree, and was runner-up in the amateur division of the Smirnoff Pro-Am; in 1994, he was runner-up in the Makaha Longboard Pro-Am.

When Kaio died in 2005, at age 70, he had 38 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. One of his sons, Kealoha Kaio Jr, had been top-ranked surfer in Hawaii during the early- and mid-1970s, holding his own against pros like Larry Bertlemann and Michael Ho. Both of the Kaios, Sr and Jr, won their respective divisions in the 1974 Latter Day Saints Hawaii State Surfing Championships.

Just a few months before he died, while attending the opening ceremony for the 2004 Quiksilver Eddie Aikau big-wave contest on the North, Kaio was asked why there were so few photographs of him surfing in his prime. "None of my friends could afford a camera," he replied. "So we Hawaiians just surfed."

Kaio, Kealoha

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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