Rabbit Kekai Is Dead!

Rabbit Kekai was surfing's last link to the Duke. Royalty? Yeah, he was.

Hawaii News Now is reporting that Rabbit Kekai passed away this morning at the age of 95.

I met Rabbit once, briefly. San Diego tradeshow, he was very friendly. Posed for a picture with me. Exchanged some small talk.

But I didn’t know the guy.

So I’m not gonna bother writing some half-assed summary of his long life. Pretend that it doesn’t even a poor job of representing who he was, what he did. Plenty of other people will have more worthwhile things to say in the coming days.

Check out the chat Warshaw and Derek had recently if you’d like some information about the man that isn’t the result of a fifteen minute internet search.

From Matt Warshaw, “These were guys who made a decision to surf when surfing wasn’t a career, or anything close to respectable—that’s a big deal. That’s a hard decision. Surfing is so easy when your parents and teachers do it, and it’s all over People magazine, and John John’s making 3 mil a year or whatever. I love guys like Rabbit who had to do it by hook or crook, when nobody gave a shit, and nobody was watching, or if they were watching, they were thinking, Get a job, you bum. We were only ever interesting, surfers that is, when this was hard. Rabbit lived a great life, a spectacular life, rode a million waves, loved a thousand women.”