Wai‘aha

Na Kumu Keala Ching

Kū Wai‘aha uka o Honua‘ula Lālau ka ‘Ōpua, Poli Hualālai La‘i maila ka ua, Ua ola Kona ‘Ike malu Luawai, La‘a Kālua ua

Ala Pua‘a, Wai‘aha i Kahului I ka lae Pa‘akai, One o Wai‘aha A he laumakani ka ‘āina kamaha‘o Ha‘o ka pilina o nā lua laha ‘ole

Hanohano Wai‘aha i ke kula la Lu‘ulu‘u ka ua pulu i ka ‘āina Na kekele uka, Na kekele kai Kahi kama‘āina, ola kō ke kai ē

Eia Wai‘aha, Wai poli lua la Lālau ka ‘Ōpua, Poli Hualālai La‘i maila ka ua, Ua ola Kona ‘Ike malu Luawai, La‘a Kālua ua Majestic Wai‘aha upon Honua‘ula Surround ‘Ōpua of Hualālai Calm is the rain, Living rain of Kona Source of Luawai, sacred Kālua ua

Ahupua‘a o Pua‘a, Wai‘aha, Kahului At Pa‘akai point, Until Wai‘aha Honored wind of a wonderful land Surprised relationship of two sources

Famous Wai‘aha shoreline dwellers Drenched by the rain upon the land Foundational source of Wai‘aha Child of the land, life of the sea

Here Wai‘aha, two water source Surround ‘Ōpua of Hualālai Calm is the rain, Living rain of Kona Source of Luawai, sacred Kālua ua

Ma kahi ahupua‘a o Wai‘aha, ola mau nā ua o ka ‘āina ā ‘ike mau ka nele o ka ua ma ka ‘āina o Kona. ‘O Kālua Ua kahi hale Akua i ho‘omana nā kānaka i ka ua ma Kona ā aia kēia hale Akua ma Wai‘aha. ‘O Wai‘aha kahi hui ‘ia nā wai o ka ‘āina ‘o ia ho‘i nā ‘ike o ka wai ā nā ‘ike kai kekahi. He ola iā Wai‘aha!

At the land district of Wai‘aha, the rain nurtures the land and it is seen of the lost or lack of rain upon the land of Kona. Kālua Ua heiau is where prayers to the rain of Kona were conducted and Kālua Ua was located in Wai‘aha. Wai‘aha is the gathering place of the water, the knowledgeable source of the two water sources. Wai‘aha is alive!

Upon the beach of Wai‘aha, a relationship was (and still is) created between families, friends, and communities as noted within the second and third verses. Allow Wai‘aha to be this gathering place of waters (shared knowledge). Mahalo Tom Morey and Rex Honl!

By Fern Gavelek

small beach located just on the outskirts of Historic Kailua Village is officially the birthplace of the boogie board. Known by the local water sports community for decades, the designation was recently declared by state and county proclamation. Popularly called Honl’s, for the family that once lived there, its actual name is Wai‘aha Bay Beach Park. The unassuming spot is nestled just south of the Kona Reef condominiums on Ali‘i Drive, in Kailua Kona. A new, two-sided historic marker shares the story of how the boogie board came to be on this unassuming strip of white sand beach. The flip side details how ancient Hawaiians rode waves on their bellies using a wooden paipo board. The

marker was unveiled on November 6, 2021, also known as International Bodyboarding Day, during the 50th anniversary year of the invention of the boogie board. Sponsored by Hawai‘i County Councilwoman Rebecca Villegas, the event included a paddle-out in honor of boogie board/bodyboard inventor Tom Morey, who passed away three weeks prior, at age 86. Bodyboard champion Mike Stewart led the traditional waterman’s memorial ceremony at the county park. Kumu Keala Ching did a chant acknowledging the connection of Wai‘aha to the past, present, and future. “It was a gathering of about 150 bodyboarders extending through generations,” recalls Rep. Villegas, who grew up an KeOlaMagazine.com | May – June 2022

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In addition to a keiki waveriding competition, the Roots Bodyboarding Contest includes fun

photo courtesy of Ivory Ah Nee

avid bodyboarder. “Mike Stewart also organized simultaneous paddle-outs at different sites around the world.” One of the paddle-out participants was Kailua-Kona’s Rex Honl, along with his grandchildren. He was 11 years old the day Tom Morey invented the boogie board on the beach bearing his family’s name and remembers it well.

The Invention of the Boogie Board

It was July 7, 1971 when Tom Morey, a surfer and engineer, fashioned the first-ever boogie board while living in a house that once stood on Honl’s Beach. In his garage, he took a nine-foot piece of polyethylene foam and cut it in half using his wife Marchia’s electric carving knife. The result was a torsosized plank. According to the historic marker, he then “outlined a short board with a square tail, no fins, and squared-off nose that could be gripped for easier control and handling while riding waves in the prone position. To finish shaping his prototype, Tom laid down a copy of The Honolulu Advertiser on the foam and applied a hot clothes iron to smooth it and make the board somewhat watertight.” Tom tried out his new board that day at Wai‘aha. He found he could feel the wave under his body, saying, “I thought this is nice, this is special—and maybe it could be something important.” The historic marker reads Tom “deliberately chose

In addition to a keiki waveriding competition, the Roots Bodyboarding Contest includes fun games and prizes awarded for correctly answering history and Hawaiian language questions.

the name ‘boogie’ to describe his board, based on his love of jazz music.” After Tom took out his invention, he invited Rex to give it a try. “I rode it right over the shallow areas,” Rex remembers. “It was lightweight, fun, and felt really good. Little did we know Tom’s invention would change the life of so many.” Rex adds, “you can be a little kid or a grandparent” and ride waves with a boogie board. “Tom built it for fun, so all could enjoy the waves, even the average, everyday person.”

Boogie Board Creates Sport for All Ages

After moving to Carlsbad, California, Tom developed howto kits so people could assemble their boogie board at home. According to the California Surf Museum website, the $25 kit included the handwritten and illustrated booklet “How to Skin Your Boogie” and two pieces of foam that had to be glued together to form the board’s “skins.” Tom persuaded Surfer magazine to place an ad on credit and the orders flooded in. “Tom thought people would enjoy assembling their own board—kind of like an organic experience,” explains surf museum docent and former Kona resident Tom Dahnke. “Little did he know people would start coming back and asking Tom to assemble their boards…there were many misshaped ones.”

Krista Donaldson and Mike Denney collaborated with Current Events to create a boogie board-shaped historical marker for Waiÿaha, also known as Honl’s. The Kailua Kona beach has been officially proclaimed as the birthplace of the boogie board and modern bodyboarding. photo by Fern Gavelek

In 1975, Tom started manufacturing completed boards and his first big production was the hand-shaped 132BE. Toy company Kransco purchased the Morey Boogie in 1979 and soon it was in stores nationwide. It was bought by Mattel and then Wham-O, and by the 1980s, bodyboarding was a worldwide sensation. Today, there are numerous manufacturers of bodyboards, but they are still commonly referred to by Tom’s moniker, “boogie boards,” a word Merriam Webster defines as “a poor man’s surfboard, used for body surfing.”

Finding a Way to Commemorate the Story

Before the birth of the boogie board, Washington, DC native Mike Denney grew up bodyboarding on inflatable canvas surf mats in Ocean City, Maryland. As an adult he continued his love of wave riding on boogies in Portland, Maine. It was during a 2019 Hawai‘i Island vacation that Mike learned the beach across from his condo was the birthplace of the boogie board—and he thought it odd there wasn’t signage saying so. “I think that fact is important to surf history and to Kona,” emphasizes Mike. “I felt the story needed to be told.” Mike reached out to Krista Donaldson, who in 2004 collaborated with a handful of Wai‘aha’s passionate, lifelong bodyboarders to create a contest to educate about Wai‘aha and perpetuate the sport of bodyboarding. Krista and Mike met in December 2020 and agreed on the need for a twosided marker—one side would share about the boogie board while the other covered the Hawaiian paipo board. Krista also pledged the help of Malama Wai‘aha volunteers to help install the sign once it was ready. Mike researched the history of the boogie board and was able to interview Tom Morey several times thanks to a contact at the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente, California. With Tom’s blessing and approval, Mike prepared the copy detailing the birth of the boogie board at Wai‘aha Beach and Tom’s wife furnished a photo of Tom with his first prototype board. To provide narrative on the ancient Hawaiian paipo board, Mike relied on information found in Krista’s book, Malama Wai‘aha. He also talked to John NK Clark, leading Hawai‘i surf historian, and Marques Marzan, cultural advisor at Bishop Museum, to get a photo of a paipo board, reportedly dating from the 1600s and discovered in 1905 in the Ho‘okena burial cave of High Chiefess Kaneamuna. Armed with the written and visual materials needed for the marker, Mike visited Ross Wilson at Current Events, a

Waiÿaha Beach Park, also known as Honl’s, is just south of Historic Kailua Village.

photo by Fern Gavelek KeOlaMagazine.com | May – June 2022

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Tom Morey, circa 1971, with his prototype boogie board. photo courtesy of Marchia Morey

Kona public relations firm that’s been involved with creating historical signage around the island, including those seen throughout Historic Kailua Village. “Mike came in with the idea and I said we could help because we need to tell the stories of the places here in our Kona District,” explains Ross. “Helping was the right thing to do and we’re thankful Mike Denney is around reminding us to do these things.” Current Events donated the services to design the sign and help Mike procure a manufacturer. Abel Aquino of Kona did the design work and came up with the idea for the marker to be shaped like a boogie board. Mike paid to have the sign manufactured. Malama Wai‘aha volunteers installed the marker on the northeast end of the beach; it’s simply circled by a row of rocks and small plants. To those approaching from the street, the sign reads, “The Boogie Board was Designed and Created by Tom Morey on This Site in 1971.”

Perpetuating Wai‘aha’s Boogie Board Legacy

Krista Donaldson—a Kona charter school garden teacher, surf enthusiast, author, and self-described history buff—helped create the keiki surf contest at Wai‘aha after getting to know some of the beach’s hardest charging bodyboarders. “Wai‘aha is the perfect place for bodyboarding and I thought

photo by Fern Gavelek

we could have a contest while getting kids engaged with the history and culture of the place,” she recalls. “Kids had to clean up the beach for their entry fee.” Billed as “Kona’s only and oldest bodyboarding contest at the birth beach of our sport—Wai‘aha,” the Roots Bodyboarding Contest is held annually in June. Besides competing on the waves, keiki (children) vie in fun games like the Bodyboard Limbo. They also win prizes for correctly answering questions like: What is an ahupua‘a? (land parcel from mountain to ocean). Or, what does Wai‘aha mean? (gathering water). Locally grown food is enjoyed by participants and the beach gets spruced up by the keiki. Overseeing the contest are Malama Wai‘aha volunteers, who pitch in for beach cleanups, usually the first Sunday of each month. Through a County Friends of the Park agreement and an approved native planting plan, Krista and volunteers have also re-introduced native shoreline plants and colorful, handpainted signs around the park. Plants are identified by their Hawaiian names as Krista “feels strongly we should reference people, things, and places by their Hawaiian names.” Plans are in the works for the 2022 Roots Bodyboarding Contest in early June. Details for the 18th annual contest are available at Miller’s Surf in Kona, and event posters will be up on the beach.  For more information: kristajoan@gmail.com

By Stefan Verbano

ve the sheep lived an action-packed life before coming to the sanctuary. She spent her early years frolicking through green pastures of her lower Puna homestead, until her peaceful existence was shattered in 2018 by the massive volcanic eruption. Suddenly, she found herself living on the run while the earth shook, lava bombs exploded, and half the sky glowed red at night. Then there was the fateful moment when a helicopter appeared from over the smoky horizon, loaded her into its dangling harness, and flew her—flailing, terrified, and exhausted—out of the lava zone and into the caring hands of the Hawai‘i Lava Flow Animal Rescue Network. Without a

doubt they saved her life. Then came the livestock trailer, the veterinarian, and the staging area full of other farm animals saved during the same mission. Eve made friends with three other helicopterrescued sheep, two of which were so badly burned on their backs from the eruption’s falling hot ash that, sadly, they didn’t survive. All four were brought, with little advance notice, to the Fellowship for Perpetual Growth (FPG)—a 20-acre teaching farm and animal sanctuary built on old sugarcane land in the rolling hills above Mountain

View on Kīlauea Volcano’s eastern flank. Here, in grassy fields dotted by stands of strawberry guava and bordered by young forests of ‘ōhi‘a trees, Eve and the other survivor, Caleb, a ram, lazily graze away their days, nap in the cool shade of the fenced pasture’s solitary coconut palm, and socialize with the throngs of other rehabilitated farm animals wandering the property—from pigs and chickens to donkeys, turkeys, ducks, and goats. “Eve and Caleb didn’t have any burns on them,” sanctuary co-founder Rob Cole says about their arrival.

“They were the healthier two sheep out of the four. Eve was really skittish at first, and Caleb was too, to a lesser extent. They were both very scared, untrusting. They wouldn’t even come near you.” Although Eve and Caleb seemed to have fared well physically, they were clearly emotionally traumatized from the whole ordeal, and Rob had to start from square one in helping them feel safe around humans again. “The first couple of weeks I’d just lay food down in their trough and walk away,” Rob recalls. “They’d come over to investigate—always Caleb first, and then if he was alright, the other sheep would follow him and stick together. Just by giving them food regularly, that won their trust.” Now, nearly four years later, both sheep have made

tremendous progress toward getting back to their happy, carefree selves. “Now I’m able to get close enough to Eve to put a leash on her,” Rob says. “Once I’m in her presence, I’m able to rub her nose and ears. She loves the face rubs.” Eve can still get nervous around strangers, though, while Caleb has recovered to the point that he’s friendly and inquisitive, even nosy.

The Rest of the ‘Ohana

The majority of the sanctuary’s livestock residents, numbering between 50 and 60, not including the birds, are lava flow evacuees like Eve and Caleb. Others were rescued from defunct commercial farms, such as the retired milk cows Maria and Olena. They are beautiful Holsteins, patterned with the iconic black-spots-on-white, and arrived at the sanctuary in 2019 when Big Island Dairy, Hawai‘i’s last commercial dairy operation, was forced to shut down due to improper waste management. Most of its herd of more than 2,800 milk cows were set to be slaughtered, and that’s when the Animal Rescue Network—a volunteer organization of Hawai‘i Island animal lovers that began as a humble Facebook group—ramped up once again and came to their rescue. Other animals came from abusive farms, like two of the sanctuary’s donkeys: Eddie and Flo. They were originally from a hobby ranch along the Hāmākua Coast, and their former owners put them up for adoption in order to concentrate on their horses. Flo and Eddie’s previous “farrier,” a type of livestock craftsperson specializing in trimming hoofs, had physically abused them with his tools, and so were implacable when the sanctuary’s newfound farrier came to care for them.

James Myers, the sanctuary’s primary animal caretaker, breaks up clumps of hay into the feed trough of the retired milk cows Maria and Olena, while Olena’s baby Kaukani comes over and shyly sneaks bites. The two were rescued from a massive herd at the now-defunct Big Island Dairy, Hawaiÿi’s last commercial dairy operation, when it shut down in 2019.

photo by Stefan Verbano

Hokulani was born on the evening before the full moon in May 2019. Her mother had developed mastitis and a blocked udder. As a result, FPG caregivers nursed her every hour for the first day with goat colostrum. The next day and for the next several months, they purchased goat milk from a local farmer to nurse her until she was weaned.

photo courtesy of FPG Sanctuary

“Our guy came down, and the first time meeting the donkeys they shook,” Rob says. “They trembled when he touched his tools. The donkeys told us they had been abused by the other farrier, there’s no question, no doubt in my mind based on the way they reacted.” Progress was slow. The new farrier worked very gently and mindfully, and earned their faith with handfuls of alfalfa cubes. He’d come every six weeks, and during the first session the

James Myers lays down buckets of table scraps for free-roaming pigs in a grassy field separating the paddocks. photo by Stefan Verbano

donkeys would only give up one or two hoofs to be trimmed. “He’d win their trust more and more, and within four sessions he was able to trim every hoof,” Rob remembers. “It was just amazing to see how these animals can learn to trust us again after people have shown them that there are some of us who can’t be trusted. They’re still willing to have hope for us that there are good people out there willing to take care of them.”

James Myers brushes the female donkeys—known as “jennies”—in their paddock after laying out their morning meal. Feeding them, he says, is his favorite part of the sanctuary’s twice-daily chores. photo by Stefan Verbano

FPG’s Start

The Fellowship for Perpetual Growth was founded as a community-focused nonprofit in 2016 by Rob and two friends: Sonja, an animal lover, and Ken, a permaculturist. Rob rounded out the group with his past experience as an IT specialist and computer program manager, transferring his organizational skills and eye for efficiency from technological systems to agricultural systems. Tragically, Sonja passed away in 2016 after the land was purchased but before boots were on the ground. The next year was spent surveying and gathering data about rain and wind patterns, as well as sun exposure and soil drainage. They started earth-moving in the beginning of 2018, and just a few months later volcanic fissures began to explode in Leilani Estates. In that moment, besides its two large yurts and shipping container barn, the sanctuary had little infrastructure set up for animals. “Since we’re a nonprofit, our duty is to the community, and what the community needed in that moment was to rescue

Left to Right: Sanctuary co-founder Rob Cole, volunteer Nikki Stephens, and primary animal caretaker James Myers clear ground to make space for vegetable gardens at the organization’s 20-acre property in Mountain View during one of its monthly volunteer days. photo by Stefan Verbano these animals,” Rob says. “A lot of people could rescue, you know, foster dogs and cats in their home, that’s not a problem. But there were a lot of farm animals that needed help, too, so we cobbled together some fencing and makeshift shelters and we took in as many animals as we could house as quickly as we could.” The scene was hectic. Sanctuary staff and community volunteers worked long days with few resources, slapping together old shipping pallets and lengths of cast-off corrugated metal roofing. Even today the haphazard nature of the original livestock structures can still be seen in their sagging roofs and walls that are clearly not square, although the animals don’t seem to mind.

Enter James

It’s 9am and James Myers pulls the breakfast wagon down the bumpy gravel driveway. The animals, most of them grouped into their respective paddocks, see him coming and start their excited chatter. In the wagon there’s hay for the cows, grain for the donkeys, table scraps for the pigs, and feed for the birds, all in plastic bins and old metal stock pots stacked up to a precarious height. James has been the primary animal caretaker at the sanctuary since October 2021, and before that he was one of its many volunteers. Tragedy had struck again when another founding member, Ken, passed away, leaving Rob to continue the vision alone. After applying for and landing the job, James moved into Ken’s vacant yurt, graduating from casual volunteer to land-partner. “I think animals are naturally attracted to me,” James says. “They always want to be around me. Living here feels very resonant with who I am—this place is so wide and spread out, the sky is open and the land is beautiful.” Feeding the donkeys is James’ favorite part of the twice-daily chores. “They make it so easy to love them,” he says. “They just have so much personality, it makes it really enjoyable to be around them.” James finishes his rounds and gets ready for the volunteers to arrive. The sanctuary hosts work days once a month when community members can come and contribute. The influx of new faces makes Eve more skittish than normal, and she shies away from the food trough as Caleb happily chomps away. Rob comes into the pasture and squats down with a handful of feed in his outstretched arm. Her eyes light up, and she nervously takes two steps forward and one step back. Slowly she inches closer as Rob gently calls her name. Next her muzzle is buried in his palm, her anxiety is quelled, and his other hand sneaks up to rub her head. This is a snapshot of the sanctuary’s greatest aspiration: to take in a farm animal like Eve, who’s been battered by life, made to live in fear and traumatized by a harrowing ordeal, and over the months and years help her heal and muster the courage to eat out of a cupped hand. The work is hard and their progress is sometimes slow, but to see her in moments like this makes it all worth it.  For more information: fpgsanctuary.org