📍Honolulu, HI, USA
1959 – 1978“I was born Edward Ryan Makua Hanai Aikau on Maui in May 1946, the third of six children of Solomon and Henrietta Aikau, a proud Hawaiian family, and in 1959 we moved to Oahu, to Honolulu, where my father worked and we lived as a big, close family. I loved the ocean from the time I could walk, and I learned to surf at Waikiki, and my brothers and sisters and I were always in the water. I left high school to work at the Dole pineapple cannery in Honolulu, and I saved my money for surfboards. I was drawn to the big waves of the North Shore, and on 19 November 1967 I surfed one of the biggest days ever ridden at Waimea Bay. In 1968 I became the first lifeguard hired by the City and County of Honolulu to work on the North Shore, at Waimea Bay, where I watched over the water through the biggest winter swells. In all my years there, no one drowned on my watch, and I paddled out into waves no one else would to bring people back. In 1971 I was named Lifeguard of the Year, and in 1977 I won the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational. People started saying, Eddie would go. I was proud of my Hawaiian culture, and in 1978 I joined the crew of the Hōkūle'a, the voyaging canoe sailing to Tahiti in the footsteps of our ancestors. When the canoe capsized off Molokai, I paddled my board towards Lanai for help, and I never came back. But the big wave contest at Waimea Bay carries my name, and Eddie Would Go is still the spirit of every waterman and lifeguard in Hawaii.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today