Raising A Soul Surfer by Rick Bundschuh, Cheri Hamilton Page A

pot by importing labor from Portugal, China, Korea, Japan and the Philippines was being superseded by a new boom to an old industry: tourism.
    Tourism not only brought visitors from the mainland, but also people who liked what they saw moved to the islands. For a while the outer islands were mostly immune, but during the time when Tom and I separately and unrelatedly moved to Kauai, there was a surge of mainland surfers coming to Hawaii.
    Maybe it had something to do with surfing going beyond a simple craze of the early sixties; maybe it had to do with the political and sociological turbulence of the times. Whatever it was, those who considered themselves “local” (even though the undiluted indigenous Hawaiian population had shrunk to a tiny percentile) found themselves swamped by young strangers from the mainland showing up at surf spots dominated for years by locals.
    Needless to say, sparks often flew.
    Since the time when Captain James Cook first made contact in the late 1700s, Hawaii had become a melting pot of cultures as successive waves of immigrants came in; but by the second or third generation, they had become firmly rooted in closely interconnected relationships—people who had known each other since birth, the famous family, or
ohana
—where everyone was somehow related to everyone else. They even spoke a unique dialect: Pidgin English.
    Throw a bunch of surfers and hippies into the mix, fresh from the craziest period of American cultural change, the sixties, and you had a recipe for conflict.
    Tom was remarkably good at avoiding trouble. He understood that there was a pecking order in the surfing lineup, and that he would need to spend considerable time developing relationships with the locals in order to gain some kind of hesitantacceptance. It didn’t matter how well he surfed, he had to make good with them on another level. Besides, Tom naturally has a laid-back, non-confrontational kind of personality.
    That didn’t always keep him out of trouble.
    As he had done in New Jersey, Tom would unleash the “Trickster” at a pool hall whenever he needed to scrape together some extra cash. He wasn’t a fool about it; he’d just win a couple of bucks here and there so no one would notice that the lucky young
haole
surfer was actually a pool hustler.
    But one night, in Hanalei’s infamous Tahiti Nui Bar, Tom was naively cleaning out some of the local heavyweights using his skills with the cue ball. As these guys simmered they got quieter, so Tom didn’t see their anger escalating as they continued drinking. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of them swung a cue stick at Tom’s head. His quick reflexes saved him as he brought up his own stick in the nick of time. It shattered from the blow, but better that than his skull. Tom wisely decided to give the “Trickster” a rest for a while and got a job harvesting taro.
    On occasion, Tom’s red Kharmin Ghia (another uncanny coincidence?) broke down when he commuted to and from Kauai Community College. There weren’t many people with cars heading north at that time of the night, and even fewer were willing to stop for a longhaired hippie. Sometimes Tom would get stranded part of the way back with no prospect of getting home, and then the rain would kick in. Kauai is the wettest spot on earth, after all.
    Resourceful, as well as gutsy, Tom figured out that many of the churches along the way were seldom locked. He spent a number of nights stretched out on a pew with the minister’s robe draped over him to stay warm. Of course, Tom was always gone before dawn, having carefully hung up his makeshift blanket where he had found it, all ready for the next Sunday morning.
    It was as close to a church service as Tom had been for years.
    After finishing junior college on the GI bill, Tom headed to Oahu in order to continue his education at the University of Hawaii. While living at Rocky Point on the North Shore, he became a polished surfer. With his genial ways, he became