COURTESY CARL HERRMAN
This composite image was used to create the final design of the Duke Kahanamoku stamp.
A long road What will soon be the world's most famous image of Duke Paoa Kahanamoku was taken in an unknown photo studio sometime around 1918.
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see a cultural
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The stamp is a testament to
Stamps featuring Hawaii
his universality in the waterBy Craig Gima
cgima@starbulletin.com
It shows a young Kahanamoku in a tank-top swimsuit with his arms crossed before a painted backdrop of a shoreline with waves.
COURTESY CARL HERRMAN
Carl Herrman, the stamp's art director, is an avid surfer. "Anything he did in the water, he was the best there was," he said of Kahanamoku.
It may have been taken as part of a 30-city swimming exhibition tour Kahanamoku went on in 1918 to help sell Liberty Bonds for the U.S. war effort. Kahanamoku was already famous after winning Olympic gold and silver medals in swimming in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. He had also traveled on other swimming exhibitions and had introduced surfing to Australia and both coasts of the U.S. mainland.
An illustration based on that photo will be on about 62 million U.S. postage stamps to be delivered to homes all over the globe beginning Saturday when the stamp will be issued for the first time in Waikiki.
The story of how the stamp came to be spans three decades and involves politics and art, luck and persistence, U.S. senators, surfers, a famous novelist and a Playboy playmate.
"There's a lot of divine order in the unfolding of the stamp," said Sandra Hall, who co-wrote a biography of Kahanamoku.
It was shortly after Kahanamoku's death in 1968 that the push for a stamp began.
It was the dream of his widow, Nadine, but she died in 1997 without seeing her dream realized. Among those involved in the early efforts were novelist James A. Michener and former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater.
In 1994, Ann Beazley of the International Surfing Museum in Huntington Beach, Calif., met with Nadine Kahanamoku and adopted the stamp as a cause. Surfing museums in California began collecting signatures. Beazley said when the Surfrider Foundation started a chapter in Washington, D.C., it also adopted the cause. A volunteer named Don Gallagher began a campaign to get people from all over the world to write to the Postal Service in support of the stamp.
The chapter's Web site urged people to write in and "Do it for Duke."
"We were trying to demonstrate that he was worthy of this honor and we knew of course that he was and we just had to convey that," Gallagher said.
Kona Carmack, a Playboy centerfold from Hawaii, adopted the effort as her playmate cause and helped collect signatures, said Hall.
U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who happened to be the senior member of the subcommittee in charge of the U.S. Postal Service and became chairman of that committee in July 2001, was also involved and pushed for the stamp at meetings with the postmaster general.
"He was the one in charge of appropriating money to the post office and that helped a lot," said Beazley.
In July 1999, approval was given to start the design of a Duke Kahanamoku stamp, an important step, but not the final decision to issue the stamp.
The task of designing the stamp was given to Carl Herrman, a veteran art director who happened to be a surfer.
When he got the assignment, Herrman said, "I was in heaven. This is better than Marilyn Monroe ... If I did one stamp, this is the one I would want to be doing. I would have hated for this to go into the hands of someone who didn't surf, who didn't know Duke.
"We had only one hero in surfing at that time (growing up on Long Island, N.Y., in the 1950s) and that was Duke Kahanamoku," he added.
At first, Herrman thought about a stamp showing Kahanamoku surfing and even designed a series of 20 stamps honoring Kahanamoku and surfing.
"It looked great, but they (the committee) didn't like it," Herrman said.
He also thought about having Kahanamoku standing up with a large surfboard used in those days.
"But the board was so big the way you had to crop it for a stamp, you wouldn't know what it was," Herrman said.
The other factor was that Kahanamoku was equally as famous as a swimmer and an Olympian and was also an icon to water polo players and paddlers. The stamp, Herrman felt, needed to represent the other facets of Kahanamoku besides surfing.
"Anything he did in the water, he was the best there was," he said.
A researcher found the photo of Duke in the Bishop Museum's archives and everything clicked for Herrman.
COURTESY CARL HERRMAN
This image of Duke Kahanamoku from the Bishop Museum was used as the model for the stamp. The photo is dated 1918.
The swimsuit represented his prowess in all watersports. Then he added the surfers in the background and Diamond Head.
"Honolulu was his home base," Herrman said. "It had to be Diamond Head. Diamond Head was the Rock of Gibraltar."
To put the final illustration together, Herrman contacted Michael Deas, "my favorite illustrator who is the unchallenged best realistic stamp artist that we have in this country." Deas worked with Herrman on the Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart Jr. and Cary Grant stamps.
"You could see his face. You could look into his eyes and that's what Michael does," Herrman said.
Deas said he was struck by Kahanamoku's charisma, poise and grace.
"I have younger brothers who are much more athletic. When I told them I was doing a portrait of the Duke, they were very excited and they were awed," Deas said.
"He was a exceptionally gracious man, very kind man who seems to be highly revered, not only highly regarded but revered, an almost saint-like status."
Over the next few months, Deas and Herrman worked on the final image of Kahanamoku, considered whether to have one or two surfers in the background, how they should stand, how big to make Diamond Head, until they came up with the final version of the stamp.
"There's a lot to be going on in a little over an inch square but I think it works without being too busy," Deas said.
The chairman of the design subcommittee is C. Douglas Lewis, a curator at the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., who has visited Hawaii numerous times and while not a surfer is a scuba diver and was a rower in college.
Herrman said the stamp resonated with Lewis.
"He saw this final image and said, 'what a magnificent, what a gorgeous piece of art.' " Lewis said the stamp committee tries to look for cultural and geographic diversity.
Kahanamoku is an ethnic hero, he said, "an icon, a role model," who had the "charisma and skill to suddenly bring it (surfing) to the attention of the whole nation, the whole world."
Lewis believes stamps expose people to American history and culture.
"We try to celebrate Americana in American stamps, and this is as Americana as you can get," Herrman said.
"To me surfing is an American cultural icon that has influence in song and music and lifestyle around the world. It's a cultural thing like cowboys and Indians in America ... He (Kahanamoku) is the Babe Ruth of surfing."
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U.S. stamps featuring Hawaii
1928: 150th anniversary of Capt. James Cook's discovery of the Hawaiian Islands 1937: King Kamehameha statue 1952: Diamond Head 1959: Honoring statehood 1960: The new 50-star U.S. flag 1972: A Hawaiian tiki god at the Big Island's City of Refuge 1976: The Hawaiian flag (as one of 50 states) 1978: Capt. James Cook's arrival in Hawaii 1979: A rare Mauna Loa plant and Iolani Palace 1981: Aerogramme with picture of Kaneohe Bay 1982: Nene and hibiscus 1983: The 25th anniversary of statehood 1983: Pearl Harbor Marine Sergeant Major Allan J. Kelly Jr. 1985: Hawaii statehood 1992: Ohia (lehua) 2000: Tropical flowers April 4, 2002: Greetings from America stamps featuring Diamond Head and Waikiki and the state flower, the yellow hibiscus. Aug. 24, 2002: Duke Kahanamoku Fall 2002: Hawaiian Missionaries stamp souvenir sheet
Sources: Surfrider Foundation, Star-Bulletin archives and Hawaiian Philatelic Society
