Archived from MauiNews.com
Hawaiian Canoe Club celebrates 50 years of growth, in and out of the water
By KEKOA ENOMOTO, Staff Writer |POSTED: July 25, 2010
KAHULUI – Fifty years ago, a Central Maui police officer and his wife spearheaded the start of Hawaiian Canoe Club at Kahului Harbor to get youngsters off the streets and into Hawaiian outrigger canoes.
“All these kids heard about it,” Joan Lake Farren, daughter of founders John and Kealoha Lake, said by phone last week from her home in Las Vegas. “It started out with 10 kids. Pretty soon it just kept growing.”
Charter ohana included the Alau, Anakalea, Kailihiwa, Kawaakoa and Lai families.
Farren said her dad, a police lieutenant, also collaborated with members of the Marciel, Uwekoolani, Wilmington and other families to kokua, or support, other canoe clubs on Maui.
“Four guys from Lahaina, Kahului and Kihei came to my father,” she recounted. “They all sat down and worked together to expand into different clubs. . . . We helped one another because we were close.”
The Maui island paddling community “grew into what it is today. I am so happy all the members are going with their canoe clubs,” she said.
Kealoha Lake helped with the younger children, logged Hawaiian Canoe Club members’ names and assiduously recorded the club’s history through 1980.
“She was given the title of First Lady of Canoe Clubs on Maui,” said Miriam Lake, also a daughter of the co-founders.
Veteran head coach Diane St. Sure Ho said the late 1970s saw the club “making a commitment to success in all aspects” and ascending “from last in the Maui County Hawaiian Canoe Association in 1979 to first in 1984.”
She indicated that the club has benefited from a tradition of great coaches, who “have been with us for long periods of time and/or come through the program; so they’re always on the same page.”
“They have bought into the big picture of the club, the needs of club. They come to weekly meetings and understand what we’re doing. They make decisions based on what the club needs and not necessarily on what a crew needs,” she said.
They are “open to criticism and growth, that’s important. . . . I think the strength of Hawaiian Canoe Club coaching is a lack of egos and a willingness to put our club first. That’s the biggest difference I see from other groups,” Ho said about the selflessness of the coaches. Their ranks include names like JB Guard, Guy Helm, Ka’uhane Lu’uwai, Johnny McCandless, Dane Ward and new-generation coaches Kekupa’a Nae’ole and Kaikaika Nance.
Lu’uwai added that the last-to-first arc was also a result of the continuity of club membership from the keiki to adult ranks.
“We were a really small, close-knit club. When the kids started becoming adults, that’s when our club really started getting stronger and better,” said Lu’uwai, who’s coached club youth to 15 keiki (youth) division state championships, including six straight, in 26 years as keiki coach.
“That was the big turnaround in winning the state championship, I believe, when most of our kids became adults. . . . I never thought we would ever win it. We were second, third, fourth for years and years. All of a sudden, it started with the men, then our women, and then here we go nine state championships later. I feel really good about that,” he said.
Nevertheless, Lu’uwai said one of his greatest coaching achievements was guiding club keiki as young as 10 years old in a ka’apuni, or circumnavigation, of Molokai last weekend to celebrate the club’s 50th anniversary as part of a summerlong project. They paddled 114 miles in 20 hours over three days, from D.T. Fleming Beach at Kapalua, around Halawa to Hale O Lono, and back to Hanakaoo Beach at Kaanapali, he said.
He recalled “paddling past Pelekunu with waterfalls and mountains. . . .The ocean was rough as a skunk out there. Eight kids were throwing up at one time. . . . They lost fluids, they lost food, but they were out there cranking. It was a long trip.”
The ka’apuni is a microcosm of the club’s legacy of youth development, water sports and cultural context.
“My focus has never changed. It’s always been about our kids, to make them good people; to teach good ethics, good morals, Hawaiian culture and, of course, to paddle good,” Lu’uwai said. “To make good people more than good paddlers, but they became good paddlers too.”
In the tradition of the club founders, a formerly single mother with six children helped start, and for many years ran, Hawaiian Canoe Club’s keiki programs to fill a community need. Mary Akiona – former longtime executive director at Hawaiian and a part-time auditor, who now serves as board treasurer – looks to the club Kamali’i, or youth, Program to foster the next generation in her own family.
“I want to bring my grandson from Oahu to Maui, to come next summer and paddle. It’s an awesome program.”
Three of her own children: “Kimo, Dorothy, Richard – they all went through the program, and all were junior leaders in the program. . . . They all had this opportunity.”
Hawaiian Canoe Club incorporated in 1992 as the nonprofit Kamali’i Inc., and five-year club President Dave Ward called the club’s Kamali’i Program “so exceptional. I don’t think there’s anything like it nationally that offers the opportunities with this leadership program.”
“They come through, and each kid has responsibility as they get older, and the older ones lead the younger kids down the line. So the older kids have a summer job, and there are classes to learn how to write a resume, to interview with a company – all are taught and performed.”
Farren, who arrives Friday from Vegas for the 50th-anniversary festivities, noted, “There’s so many kids. My father would be astounded at the interest of the kids, the discipline. There’s character in it as well as bodybuilding, working together and growing.
“Oh Dad, you started more than you thought.”
* Kekoa Enomoto can be reached at kekoa@mauinews.com. She is a member of Hawaiian Canoe Club.
The late Kealoha and John Matthew Lake are credited with having founded Hawaiian Canoe Club in 1960.
Fact Box
HAWAIIAN CANOE CLUB 50TH ANNIVERSARY EVENTS
* HALE BLESSING: of a 50-by-30-foot traditional Hawaiian hale, or structure, 5 p.m. Friday, Hoaloha Park, Kahului; free to the public. Hale to be used as a site for community and cultural events and activities, such as hula instruction.
* CULTURAL WORKSHOPS: Celebration of Canoe Culture from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Hawaiian Canoe Club hale, Hoaloha Park, Kahului; free to the public.Cultural practitioners Ray Bumatay and Kalei Tsuha Nu’uhiwa lead workshops and demonstrations in canoe building, cord-making, rigging techniques, and Polynesian seafaring and navigation.
* LUAU CELEBRATION: 50th Anniversary Luau 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Maui Tropical Plantation; tickets $40, children under 12 free. Open to “the whole community, not only Hawaiian Canoe Club paddlers (present and past), but all paddlers.” No-host bar 5 p.m., dinner 6 p.m., show 6:30 p.m. Entertainment by Halau Hula Ka Malama Mahilani, under the direction of kumu hula Pueo Pata; halau Na Hanona Kulike ‘O Pi’ilani, led by na kumu hula Sissy Lake-Farm and Kapono’ai Molitau; and Hawaiian Canoe Club keiki. Also, silent auction and club logo wear for sale. For tickets, call 893-2124.
