Reformed (more or less) North Carolina moonshiner Junior Johnson is the perfect launching-pad figure for the thing he represents, which is stock-car racing. Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Clara Bow, Chuck Berry—all of them, same thing, very hand-in-glove to their respective fields. But no activity of any kind has an origin-story legend so immaculately tailored to its source as Duke Kahanamoku is to surfing. We could build a detailed flow-chart outlining why this is true, and to some degree I've tried to do just that over the years here on EOS—starting with Duke's surfing achievements, then veering to his looks, humor, and hard knocks. What I've so far overlooked, however, is that Duke was one of six surfing brothers, and that what he became in the sport was to some degree formed from the love, support and competition derived from his family. "They six Kahanamokus are all big men," a Honolulu Star-Bulletin feature noted in 1953, "throwbacks to the wonderfully-knit Hawaiians of old. They are the finest of a dwindling race of full-blooded natives."

Duke was firstborn (1880) and third to die (1967, age 77), and was orders of magnitude more famous than his brothers, Still, there is a wealth of accomplishment and experience with his five male siblings and, in birth order, here is a short and very incomplete take each of them.

 (1895 - 1967) wasn't the best wave-rider among the brothers (more on that in a moment; spoiler, it's not Duke), but he is neck-and-neck with Duke as the best-looking male Kahanamoku, and that smiling open-arms photo of him in a striped tank-top with Diamond Head in the background is surfing at its rakish Depression Age best. A few years earlier, David made headlines when he gave surf lessons to the future King Edward VIII. In 1924, he was a trainer for the 1924 US Olympic Swim Team, which included brothers Duke and Sam, and in the 1930s he was elected captain of Hui Nalu Club. "David Kahanamoku's Hawaiian Exchange," located across the street from the Royal Hawaiian, was among the most popular gift stores in Waikiki in the years just before World War II. Kahanamoku later received an officer's commission in the US Army and made headlines in 1961 when, at age 67, while visiting Jones Beach, New York, rescued nine swimmers who were caught in a riptide. David died in the summer of 1967, age 72, just six months before Duke. Of all the Kahanamoku brothers, his death was the most poetic, as he had a heart attack while paddling an outrigger canoe and was brought to shore on a surfboard.

 (1899 - 1986) was the longest-living of the six brothers, finishing up at age 87. He was also, by a good few inches, the smallest—5'6" is a good guess. Bill (or "Willie," as he was sometimes referred to in the local press) was an excellent sprint swimmer and paddler, played goalie for the Hui Nalu surfboard water polo team, and regularly placed at or near the top in local golf tournaments. The whole family was musical, but Bill headed up his own orchestra, which he hired out to play on Matson liners going to and from Honolulu. He was a also prime hoofer, winning Charleston dance competitions in the mid-1920s, and even inventing a variant called the "Hawaiian Charleston," which combined the original dance with hula moves. In an ad for Hawaii's biggest Charleston dance-off for 1926, Bill was the top-featured performer (other entrants included George Washington Eucalyptus Brown, Fen Chin Chong, John J Flannagan, Minerva Maluokalani—Honolulu was indeed the Crossroads of the Pacific), but placed runner-up to young Navy man named Jimmy Gullet. For all his rhythm, grace and light-footedness, however, Bill was never more than a step away from disaster. In 1917 he was hospitalized after losing consciousness while painting the inside of an iron tank. The following year he took a flying discus to the back of the head during track practice. He dislocated his shoulder, pulled a dead sailer out of the water in front of the Moana Hotel, and ended up in court after a scrap with a military policeman. Most famously, on a hot afternoon in 1929, Bill was in the backseat of a rented Packard when driver George "Tough Bill" Keaweamahi fell asleep at the wheel and drove through the interior of a Waikiki billiard parlor, out the other side, and into a pole, resulting in a badly broken leg for Kahanamoku. Like everybody else in the family, Bill was constantly spoken of in contest of his famous older brother. Maybe this bothered them, maybe not. A short 1922 

 article about Bill, at any rate, headlined "Kahanamoku's Brother Arrives," seemed to go out of its way to present him as little more than an extension of Duke. "William Kahanamoku, brother of Duke Kahanamoku, famous Hawaiian swimmer, is visiting Long Beach. Duke's brother . . . will remain in Southern California for several weeks." Bill's too-short 1986 

 obituary begins with a mention of his fraternal relationship to Duke at the beginning but says nothing about his dancing, his orchestra, or his swimming achievements.

 (1902 - 1966) was arguably the greatest all-around talent of all the brothers, Duke included. He was the consensus 

—meaning best in the world—during the 1920s. Like Duke, he was an Olympic swimmer (bronze medal winner in the 100-meter freestyle; Paris, 1924). And while brother Bill had his own orchestra, Sam apparently had something close to an otherworldly gift for music. "Give him an instrument he's never seen before," brother Louis recalled, years later, "and he take it, sit over there until he can play that damn thing. Might take half an hour, maybe two hours. Any kind of instrument. Horn, saxophone, anything. He was so good." For all his accomplishments, Sam is perhaps best remembered for 

 the beguiling 6' 1" "richest girl in the world" tobacco heiress and jazz-loving divorcee adventuress who relocated to Hawaii where, among other things, she befriended the Kahanamoku brothers and learned to surf. When Duke went looking for beachfront land upon which she could build what later became known as Shangri-La, Sam found the property, received a tidy commission, and later became the estate's caretaker. In 1939, Duke and Sam won a tandem paddling event in Waikiki, and Duke later gave Sam a house near Diamond Head. (In 1940, Duke gave birth to a daughter who died after just a few hours; Duke Kahanamoku was long believed to be the father, but Duke's own biographer allegedly claimed that the father was in fact Sam. The two brothers were involved in second paternal mix-up, although it didn't come to light until 2015—read 

) After attending Honolulu Military Academy, Sam went to the University of Hawaii. He was the first of the six brothers to die (heart disease, 1966), and had the shortest life (63). His 

 obituary notes that Sam had been "a real estate salesman since 1950. Prior to that, he was variously a professional beachboy and an investigator for the US Provost Marshall's office."

 (1908 - 1994) was the last Kahanamoku brother to die, at age 86, just a year after Sarge. That may explain why the Star-Bulletin saw fit to run an obituary headline reading "Last Kahanamoku Brother was Duke's Favorite." The article noted that Louis had been married for 46 years, was family-oriented, and, according to Duke's former manager Kimo McVay, he "never took advantage of [Duke], and never traded on his good name." This is a loaded quote—as is the fact that, as reported in 1953, the six brothers never all gathered together between 1939 and 1952—but any friction between the siblings was never made public. Louis was the only Kahanamoku brother to attend Punahou School, although he dropped out before finishing in order to work as a musician, along with his brother Sam, on a Matson cruise ship. At age 29, Louis made front-page headlines when he and his soon-to-be-wife were badly injured after Louis fell asleep at the wheel and drove into a parked car on Ala Wai Boulevard; he was hospitalized for over three weeks. Louis' work-life was varied, as he went from semi-pro football player and beachboy, to prison guard, Prohibition Age court bailiff, deputy sheriff (at Duke's request), and realtor. For 25 years he owned a real estate company in Kona. Louis also served six years as president of the Hawaii Canoe Racing Association, during the 1950s and '60s. Louis was the only Kahanamoku brother to not die in Hawaii; he and his wife moved to California five years before he passed.

 (1910-1993), the youngest and tallest brother at 6' 2", had a lopsided smile and a sociable, outgoing manner. Sarge made local headlines when, as a 7th grader, he helped his class beat the 8th graders by winning both the backstroke and breaststroke races. In 1929, the 

 reported that Sarge was leaving Hawaii to attend Phillips Acadamy Andover, the famous prep school in Massachusetts. "The popular swimmer, while in California this summer, met a number of coaches who were anxious to have him matriculate in their respective towns. Sargent is a big boy [and] has already shown his all-around athletic adaptability. [He] can swim, play soccer, football, and basketball." One year later, it was reported that Sarge helped Andover beat the Yale freshman squad in a swim meet by winning the 50-yard freestyle, and that "he was one of the most popular boys on campus." Returning to Hawaii, Sarge continued to perform well in local races, but never made a move as an international swimmer, the way older brothers Duke and Sam did. Because of their amazing physiques, Sarge and brother Louis were picked to stand bare-chested in feathered capes and the traditional red 

, or loincloth, to greet President Franklin Roosevelt upon his arrival at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in 1934; the year prior, Sarge was the model for a full-size bronze statue of a surfer, called "Hawaiian Man," which was shown in a Chicago museum exhibit titled "Races of Mankind." Later, he became a PR representative for Standard Oil, a post he held for nearly four decades, while his wife won election first to the Territorial House of Representaties and then the Hawaiian State Senate. "Women politicians are more honest than men," Sarge told a reporter in 1966, during one of his wife's campaigns. "They'll work directly on an issue where men tend to 'ice-box' a problem so it never gets solved." Sarge himself ran unsuccessfully for State Senate in 1970.

BEAUCOUP KAHANAMOKU: STEP ASIDE DUKE, AND LET'S MEET BROTHERS DAVID, BILL, SAM, LOUIS, AND SARGE

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