Saturday, May 12, 1934
Duke Kahanamoku with the Roosevelt boys, July 1934,
grateful he'd had young Harold to practice on
We went swimming at Waikiki and the breakers were very large and we could body surf in on them. . . I was playing with a bunch of other boys and there were several outrigger canoes paddling around and riding in on the surf. Duke Kahanamoku, the one time world champion Hawaiian swimmer and the most popular ex-champion, who has an outrigger canoe of his own, paddled over to us and took a bunch of us out for a ride. We paddled out to the reef and a big breaker came up behind us and we paddled as fast as we could so we could catch the big breaker and ride in on it. But it crashed over us and filled our canoe with water. I guess we were overloaded. We had to get out and get the paddles which were floating away. I got a lot. The canoe was all wood and would not sink even if it was full of water. We bailed it out and came in. That was a very exciting afternoon.