Fran Heath
was the oldest of the Hot Curl surfers, but only by a couple of years. His
family moved to O‘ahu when he was an infant. The Heaths lived in the Kahala
section, a coastal strip just on the other side of Diamond Head crater from Waikiki . He would have been native born except for the
fact that during a visit of his mother to relatives on the U.S. Mainland, the
Matson steamship company refused to take her back on board for the return trip.
Mrs. Heath was far along in her pregnancy and, in those days, the passenger
ships between Hawai’i
and the West Coast only averaged a speed of around 11 knots. The typical trip
between Honolulu and San Francisco could take between 14 and 16
days. Thus, Francis R. Heath III was born in Oakland , July 13, 1917.[1]
Fran
started surfing around the age of 12, at the very start of the 1930s. He was a
member of the Outrigger Canoe Club at an early age, beginning his surfing life
on an 8-foot redwood board. Favorite spots to surf when he was first underway
included the old pier in front of the Ala Moana Hotel, Sandy Beach and Black
Point.
“The
beach was there. The surf was there,” Fran said with a smile when I asked him
what had originally attracted him to surfing. And he was not alone. Doug
Forbes, Hershel “Herky” Best, Gene and Wally Froiseth, Frank Addison, Lex Brody
and John Kelly were all surfers Fran first rode with. When I asked him who out
of that group he surfed with the most, he answered:
“Probably
Kelly. We lived close to one another and each of us grew out of tide pools
right next to each other. His was at Black Point, on the Diamond
Head side and mine was more over toward Koko Head. When you’re a
kid, you get to checking out the neighborhood and you know where all the other
kids are near you. Kelly was not only near, but he surfed, too.”[2]
Out of
the half dozen or so guys he first started surfing with, all but Lex Brody
would go on to ride Hot Curls.
“The
average board was 8-to-10 feet long, before the Hot Curls,” Fran said. “Of
course, Tom Blake’s hollow boards were quite a bit longer and they were rising
in popularity at the time.”[3] But, Fran and his buddies “weren’t
hot on” Blake’s hollow boards Fran said, “because they were too bouyant and – they were great, but –
they had a habit of leaking.”
Although
Fran and friends were not attracted to Blake’s hollows, partially-hollow boards
were a different story. Fran was the first to have a semi-hollow, ordered from
Pacific Coast Redi-Cut Homes, back on the Mainland. This board would later
become the first Hot Curl surfboard.[4]
Speaking
of the surfers they hung with, Fran’s friend and fellow Wally Froiseth
recalled, “We were what was known as... the ‘Empty Lot Boys’... You know where
the big banyon tree is in Kuhio
Park ? Well, that used to
be a big empty lot. Prince Kuhio’s home was right next to it... That banyon
tree was all jungle. The banyon tree’s hollow, so, if we didn’t have time to
paddle the boards back, we’d just put our boards in there – put our boards in
the middle of that tree. Nobody’d take ‘em in those days, anyway, but, you
know, you can’t just leave ‘em on the beach. So, we’d get ‘em in there. No
problem.”[5]
“Leaving
the boards at the beach without fear of theft,” was just the way it was in
those days, agreed Fran, but, “We did
run into a little problem on heavy tourist days when the Beach Boys’ supply of
rental boards ran out. When we came for our boards we found they had been
rented to some unsuspecting tourist. We then had to swim out, find our board
and transport the tourist to the beach. There were some rather interesting
confrontations as a result of this activity.”[6]
“Dad Center ,”
was Fran’s immediate response when I asked who his early influences had been. “He
was interested in canoes a lot. We all were, but he actively promoted it.”[7]
“Duke
and I were very good friends,” Fran added, mentioning The Father of Modern Surfing
as another key influence on him at the beginning of his surfing days. “We were
both in the Outrigger together. Of course, he was very respected and I was just
a kid, but that didn’t get in our way.”
“When
we first began surfing in the early ‘30s,” Fran said of the Empty Lot Boys, “we
were led to believe Waikiki was the only place
waves could be surfed. When John Kelly, Herky Best and Dougie Forbes moved to
Kahala and Black Point, it became obvious to us when walking home on Diamond Head Road ,
that there were some fabulous surfs both off Black Point and Diamond
Head .
“Our
best access to these surfs was from Kelly’s house where we would carry these
boards – then weighing around eighty pounds – over our shoulders, down a steep
trail to a ledge where we would launch and return... We soon found out these
waves differed from Waikiki , especially Brown’s
surf, as they were harder and steeper.”[9]
“Great
surfer; great surfer,” friend Wally said of Fran. “I used to admire his style.
He had a neat way of – I don’t know, there was just something about him; the
way he surfed. He was one of those guys who wanted maximum speed across the
wave and – try and make it as far as you could... Most of the time, Fran and
all the rest of us – we wanted to get across...
“I don’t
know, but unconsciously I probably tried to emulate him. You know, when you admire
someone doing something – you want to improve however you can – so, you know, I’m
not afraid to learn from somebody else.
“Fran –
it was like he was part of the board. I always admired that. When you saw him
on a wave or were with him on a wave... he just seemed to be part of that
board; so much a part of it, it was just like one thing.
“He was
just – smooth. You know, like the way
you catch the wave and stand up... It
was just like fluid motion. Beautiful.
“I
remember one time, Kelly, my brother, Fran and I went out to Mo-kapu. Big surf.
At first, we threw our boards off the cliff, paddled out on the left side, and surfed
over there all morning. Then we came in for lunch. About 1 O’clock, when we’re
going back out on the right side, Fran went out first. So, John said, ‘Ah, let’s
wait and see...’ Cuz, then we were gonna
surf what they call Pyramid Rock. So, we wanted to surf on the right of Pyramid Rock, rather than the
left side. ‘Let’s wait to see how Fran does.’
“So, we
waited and Fran started catching waves – just so beautiful, you know.
“You
see,” Wally emphasized, “in the old days, part of the enjoyment with us was watching other people surf. It
was part of what we called the ‘Island Style.’”[10]
“In the
early part of World War II,” Fran recalled, “John Kelly and I served aboard the
U.S.S. Calcedony, a converted yacht. We
were assigned to escort and patrol duty. The Island-born Captain permitted us
to bring our boards along. We were then able to try out such virgin surfs as
Midway, Palmyra , Christmas and Canton Islands .
Midway was by far the best, with a long right slide on the eastern side of the
island.”[11]
Toward
the later part of the war, both Kelly and Fran were assigned to UDT duty. The
Underwater Demolition Team was the predecessor of today’s Navy SEALS. Fran
admitted that the swimming and diving was not a problem; it was the demolitions.
“We had to learn all about explosives. I mean, we were handling explosives
strong enough to blow up an entire building – in our case, powerful enough to
sink a metal-hulled ship.
“We
considered using surfboards for reconnaissance missions,” recalled Fran. “That
was Kelly’s idea. But, boards are too easily spotted from low-flying aircraft
and there’s no protection if you’re spotted, so that idea was scrapped.” They
were some of the first to use the Lambertson Lung in underwater demolition. This
“most primitive self-contained rig,” as Fran put it, “enabled you to swim
underwater without leaving the telltale string of bubbles typical to the scuba.”
“After
the war,” recalled Fran, “Gene – Wally’s brother – got a job working on a radio
construction site there, at Makaha. He’d give us a call when it got big.”[12]
By this
time, both Woody Brown and George Downing had joined the Hot Curler guys as
full-fledged members. Woody had come over at the start of the war. “George
started after the war,” recalled Fran. “He wanted to take some pictures of me
at Koko Head... We got to be friends and he said... ‘What about Waimea?’
“We
also were probably the first ones to consider surfing Kaena Point by tow-in
with a motorized boat,” remembers Fran. “No one was willing to risk their boat
for that and none of us was willing
to sacrifice our boards... We did do
tow-in’s at Shark
Bay .”[13]
In
1953, Honolulu
photographer Skip Tsuzuki took the famous Associated Press photo of Buzzy
Trent, Woody and George Downing riding a 15-foot wave at Makaha that went world
wide. “That’s the first big wave that was ever photographed that had world wide
distribution,” Woody told me. “After that, of course, people started getting
gung ho over big waves... California
surfers started coming over, after that picture... that drove everybody
crazy... So, they all wanted to come out here and see for themselves.”[14]
“Our
first experience with California
surfers,” recalled Fran, “was that they then were used to the softer, gentler
Southern Californian beach breaks. Their initial experience with North Shore
waves rapidly rising and closing out on them came as a very obvious shock. We
had to talk quite a number of them back thru the white water to shore.”
As the
Hot Curl guys grew older and were super ceded by younger surfers from both
Hawai‘i and the U.S. Mainland, most all of them still continued to surf, stay
close to the ocean, and carry on as tribal leaders in surfing’s development.
The
exception was Fran Heath.
“What
happened with him is, he surfed in the ‘30s and then about the time of the war,
he started to shy away from it,” Wally recalled. “I don’t know exactly why. Maybe
he was busy with his father’s insurance business... At one point, he told John
Kelly and I that he got kind of bored
with surfing. Then, after the war, we tried to get him interested again, you
know. But, he was sort of a loner, in a way. So, he did a lot of bodysurfing
and, you know, an individual thing rather than a group thing. Through the
years, he kind of moved away from Kelly and our group to some extent. He was there, but not as much as the rest of
us.”[15]
“Well,
I became interested in other things,” Fran explained. “I found my work took me
away from the beach and my son was growing up, then. He didn’t take to the
ocean like I had. I found myself wanting to do the things he wanted to do and
these took me further away from riding the waves like I used to do.”
Fran
continued bodysurfing, fishing and boating – both power and sail. His wife
Juliette had praises for her husband’s ability to surf waves even with a Boston
Whaler. From the glow in her eyes, telling of one particular instance, I got
the impression Fran did this on big days as well as small.
Another
Hot Curl surfer to get into boating was Woody Brown. He had brought the
Polynesian double-hulled canoe design into the modern era by developing the
catamaran in the 1940s. One catamaran he built was bought by Duke Kahanamoku. “In
the latter years [of Duke’s life],” Fran said, “I crewed for him on his Woody
Brown cat Nadu.” In speaking about
his long friendship with Duke, Fran added that when Duke “became too ill to
sail, I followed his wishes and continued to race the boat.”[16]
Continuing
to bodysurf, Fran was one of the first to do so at Pipeline and Waimea.
“Buddy
Adolphsen surfed with us when I was young. Later, after World War II, he became
a sergeant in the police force. When he was stationed on the North Shore ,
he devoted himself to lifesaving. A lot of people don’t know, but Buddy was
responsible for many a save on the North
Shore before they had
lifeguards there.
“Anyway,
this one time I was bodysurfing Waimea when it was pretty big; no one else
out... After a while, I noticed fire engines on shore and a lot of people
congregated. I wondered what had happened, cuz I hadn’t seen anybody else out
riding those waves that day.
“When I
came in, swim fins in hand, Buddy met me on the sand, shaking his head; a
little agitated, I’d say. ‘Goddammit, Fran, I should have known it was you!’ he
said to me. ‘Please, in the future, before you go out alone like that, stop by
the fire station and let us know.’ They’d all gotten worried about this lone
body out in the big surf that day...”[17]
At the
end the day I spent with Fran, interviewing him, I went with Fran and his wife
Juliette, over to Wally’s place to show me his Pacific Systems semi-hollow Hot
Curl which Wally had recently refurbished. It’s a beautiful board; beautiful in
materials and beautiful in shape. I was also struck with the heavy weight – at
least by today’s standards. At one point, I was concerned about Fran. I mean, the guy was an octogenarian by that
point and walking around with a cane. How could he lift even half the weight? Well,
that day he hefted his end of the board; no problem. Outside, under the Honolulu sun, he gave me
directions on slinging it over my shoulder so we could take a picture of it.
At a
certain point, Fran clearly got frustrated with my lack of expertise handling
his board. “You don’t know how to carry a surfboard,” he said, almost scolding
me while cradling the semi-hollow in his arms. Fran showed me how to sling it
over my shoulder with one hand in a perpendicular fulcrum. It was then that I
fully realized what it was like back in the days of the Hot Curls, when Fran,
Wally, Kelly and them slung their boards on their shoulders on a daily basis. It
was the only way you could carry a heavy
redwood board.
Lost in
time is not only this practice, but also the Hot Curl surfboard’s place in the
rack as the grandfather of today’s big wave guns. Contemporary board design for
what Buzzy Trent originally labeled the “Elephant Gun” still reflects many Hot
Curl principles, including forward V, tail V and pulled-in gun plan shapes.
So it
goes for the Hot Curl guys, themselves. Nearly forgotten or overlooked, it’s
The Empty Lot Boys who were the first surfers in modern times to regularly ride
the biggest waves the island of O‘ahu has to serve up. They rode all the island’s shores – including the North Shore
– at least a decade before the arrival of those who would later get the kudos for it.
[Note: this is a slightly updated chapter on Fran; more easily read on a mobile device. The original chapter, based on an article I wrote for LONGBOARD magazine in 1997 -- including some images from the Heath collection -- remains on-line at: http://files.legendarysurfers.com/surf/legends/fran.shtml]
[1] Gault-Williams,
Malcolm. Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also
Gault-Williams, “Fran Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard,
Volume 5, Number 1, March/April 1997.
[2] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[3] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[4] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. According to Fran’s recollection, he
ordered the board in 1935 and it arrived in 1936. This is consistent with Wally’s
recollection as this board being the first Hot Curl, which was cutdown around
1936-37.
[5]Gault-Williams. Interview
with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[6] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[7] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[8] Blake, Thomas E. Hawaiian
Surfriders 1935, published by Mountain and Sea, Redondo Beach, ©1983.
Originally titled Hawaiian Surfboard, published in 1935, by Paradise of
the Pacific Press, Honolulu, Hawai’i, p. 55. See also Kahanamoku with
Joe Brennan, World of Surfing, ©1968, Grosset & Dunlap, New York,
pp. 73-80.
[9] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[10]Gault-Williams. Interview
with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[11] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[12] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[13] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[14] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Woody Brown, Pa’ia, Maui, November 22, 1994.
[15]Gault-Williams. Interview
with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[16] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
[17] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996. See also Gault-Williams, “Fran
Heath: The Forgotten Hot Curler,” Longboard, Volume 5, Number 1,
March/April 1997.
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