But the incredible people in our tight-knit community began doing amazing things to bless us. Amazing things. Within two weeks, a group of friends, spearheaded by Jill Smith and Amy Marvin, had managed to organize a grassroots nonprofit organization—the Friends of Bethany Hamilton—that exists to this day. Its primary focus is to support shark attack survivors and amputees worldwide and present inspiring life stories through movies, projects and activities.
A massive fund-raiser was held at the Marriot Hotel. Friends donated surfboards, artwork, crafts and more for a silent auction to help Bethany. Tom and the boys attended, but Bethany was not ready for the exposure, so I stayed home with her.
We didn’t quite expect the overflowing generosity, love and support from everyone all over the island. As the second week drew to a close, we realized that awareness of our story had grown much larger than just our island, or even our state.
Suddenly, we were dealing with stacks of mail and gifts that arrived for Bethany. In 24 hours, before the advent of Twitter and Facebook, she got 7,000 emails wishing her a speedy recovery and cheering her on. The kindness and comfort of total strangers was overwhelming to us. But in a way, they weren’t strangers; something in Bethany’s experience had resonated with them and had connected them to her. Something that really touched us was that many of the cards and letters were from kids.
There was no humanly possible way to respond to each and every one of the cards, letters and emails, but Bethany, Alana, Sarah and I would try to read each one, setting aside any that we felt needed an answer.
Eventually, our time at the beach house drew to a close. We were ready to go home after all the dramatic events of the previous two weeks. Once we settled back into the familiar, Bethany was anxious to get back in the water; but because she still had stitches, it was against doctor’s orders.
The movie portrayed me as going with Bethany to the hospital, but it was actually Tom. On the day she was scheduled to have her stitches out, Tom, who had finally had his knee surgery, was also to have his stitches removed. The two of them returned to Dr. Rovinsky together. Tom’s few stitches were quick and painless to remove. Bethany’s were a different matter. Her sutures were deep, and there were lots of them.
As the doctor began removing each stitch, Tom noticed that Bethany’s face was pale. But by the time they were ready to leave the doctor’s office, Bethany had composed herself and even got a little of her buoyant nature back. She turned to Dr. Rovinsky and said, “So, can I go in the ocean now?”
Rovinsky waved a warning finger. “No, no!” he replied, and then, pointing to the little holes left by the stitches, said, “You see these little pukas? They have to be closed or bacteria from the ocean or streams could get in there, and then you would really have trouble.”
It seemed at this moment that the actuality of what had happened to her and what it would mean finally struck her. She began to cry deep, sobbing tears, and Tom wept with her.
As the tears subsided, Dr. Rovinsky, himself a surfer, said with a wink, “It should be healed enough by Thanksgiving Day.”
Bethany looked up at him and smiled, “Thanksgiving Day?”
She had been given a target date for normal life to begin again.
Life in the Hamilton household was anything but back to normal. Or, I should say, we were forced to make some adjustments around the “new” normal.
We soon encountered unforeseen things that were challenging for someone with one arm, but Bethany was already showing that remarkable ability to adapt that has amazed so many people. I replaced her closet coat hangers with hooks—lots and lots of hooks—to hang her clothes on. At the hospital, a therapist taught Bethany to tie her shoes with one hand, but we found it easier to just tie them loosely enough for her to slip on. Bethany seldom wore anything but sandals or the typical “rubba slippahs” popular across Hawaii.
I tried to do things to make it easier for her to navigate around the house. I bought chairs for our dining room table that were lightweight and easy to move, and I bought funnels to help her pour water or her almond milk. There were so many things you take for granted, so many tasks you do without thinking about. Just pouring liquid becomes a trial when you can’t steady the cup with the other hand. Sometimes it was hard for me to watch, but I focused on the question, “What can I do to help her?”
Trial and error was our new way of life. Things that had taken mere seconds to accomplish now took minutes. And how do you gracefully put toothpaste on the brush with one hand?
Then there were the things that Bethany would no longer get to use or enjoy. She had been learning to play worship songs on the guitar. I took the guitar out of her room with a strange feeling in my heart. I set it next to my keyboard and wondered if she might like piano lessons instead.
As Thanksgiving Day drew nearer, the question of Bethany surfing again cropped up. And Bethany’s youth group started showing up again. The day before Thanksgiving, the trade winds switched. A westerly wind combined with a rising swell that set off a few lesser-known surf spots.
The phone rang. It was for Bethany. The beach break called Rock Quarry was as good as it gets, did she want to come?
You should have seen the way her eyes glowed at the news.
Noah in particular knew what it meant. The lure of great waves was working on his sister. He knew how badly she wanted to try surfing again. Noah had worked hard on an agreement with the television show Inside Edition that if Bethany ever tried to go out and surf again, he’d get them an interview and exclusive video in exchange for a prosthetic arm for her.
Noah was adamant. If Bethany went to the beach with her friends, she was NOT to surf.
The beach was packed with North Shore surfers, the Irons brothers, Holt, Alana, Sarah and all the rest of the Hanalei surf team. Sitting on the beach, just watching the perfect surf peel across the sand, was too much for Bethany. Excitement burned in her heart. Sarah saw it, and so did Holt.
“You can use one of my boards,” he said.
Bethany turned to Sarah. “I’m going to pretend that you tried to stop me.”
“Wait, I’m going with you!” said Sarah.
Officially, “nothing” happened. But I can tell you that Bethany went up and down the beach, begging everyone not to take a picture of her; otherwise, she might not get her prosthetic arm. Not one person lifted a camera, but people on the beach were crying. Tim and Noah got there just in time to film her first ride.
The next day, Thanksgiving, with intense anticipation, I watched as Bethany went out surfing for the first time. Tom brought her my long board to use, which was heavier and more stable than a regular short board. As she waxed up her board and wrestled with the leash, Tom offered to push her into the waves like he had when she was little, but Bethany rebuffed him.
“No, Dad, I have to do it myself.”
Her initial attempts at catching a wave were painful to watch. Our hearts felt heavy as lead. Catching waves with one arm is difficult; but pushing off a board that’s sliding down a wave as you try to stand up is much more so. The few times Bethany was able to get to her feet showed how much she’d have to relearn about balance with one arm missing. Bethany, who had been such a strong surfer just a few weeks before, struggled and flailed like a beginner.
“Put your hand in the center of the board,” Tom shouted over the noise of the surf. “You won’t dig the rail into the water that way.”
Bethany paddled back out, tenaciously trying again and again. All of a sudden, something seemed to click. She got up and found the balance point. Her naturally fluid style came back, and she surfed the wave all the way to the beach.
The beach erupted with cheers, and every surfer in the lineup started hooting and calling out with excitement. Pros and tourists alike were caught up in the moment. Tom went wild, barely able to contain the joy that coursed through him. Noah and Timmy were whooping and screaming. And, of course, the cameras clicked and the video cameras rolled.
I joined in
the elation. I was thrilled at what my daughter had accomplished, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she would be back out having fun with her friends. But I couldn’t see competition in her future.
Tom made it his mission to help Bethany progress back to where she had been before the attack. Every morning, he and Bethany would get up and go to Pine Trees or Waikokos so that she could relearn the cadence of paddling, catching a wave, getting to her feet and balancing with one arm.
She advanced, but the slow progress was discouraging for Tom. One day, as Tom retells it, he was sitting under the palms at Pine Trees, having his own little pity party and grumbling at God because He’d allowed this to happen to Bethany. He was tired of watching her struggle to push through the surf while holding onto the board with one hand.
On that particular day, there was a riptide running hard, and one of the many tourists had accidentally gotten herself stuck in it. The lifeguards had already spotted her, and Tom watched as they quickly paddled out to the woman on a huge yellow rescue board with handles built onto it. The woman grabbed hold of a handle as the lifeguards effortlessly pulled her back to the beach.
Tom says it was almost like a cartoon when the light bulb appears over the character’s head.
“A handle! A handle in the middle of the board!”
Tom fished from his pocket a small black notebook he always carried with him and sketched the outline of a surfboard. Dead center, under the nose, he drew a handle. It was as if God had stripped away Tom’s gloominess just to show him how trivial such problems are.
A custom board was made for Bethany. It had a handle exactly where Tom had sketched it.
And it worked.
Now Bethany could use one hand to dive deep under oncoming waves and get quickly out into the lineup.
As her performance and confidence increased, Tom kept patiently encouraging her. He knew that Bethany was determined to compete. I, on the other hand, while overjoyed at her progress, couldn’t envision that possibility in her future. But maybe, said a secret part of my heart, just maybe . . .
Another change was taking place in the weeks after the shark attack. It was a change within Tom. Only he can tell you the exact time and place it happened, but what I do know was that Tom had been a spiritual bump on a log. He was defeated, immersed in self-pity, just going through the motions.
The breakthrough happened while at church. We had not stopped going, but one day, as we were singing a worship song, Tom realized that he was not singing, nor had he been singing at all since the attack.
Tom loves to sing. He has a great voice, and worshiping God with music is one of the key ways the Lord touches him, but he couldn’t find his voice. It had been stilled amid all the dark-winged confusion, hurt, anger and pain. Every single time that he’d asked, “Why her, God?” insurmountable pain assailed him. He was standing in an attitude of worship, but he was not worshiping.
Then God impressed upon his heart, “You’re going to worship Me in heaven some day so you need to worship Me on earth.”
At that moment, Tom realized that every second he’d been busy blaming God was a second he’d not been able to be truly thankful that we still had Bethany with us. He thanked God then, praised Him for the gift of Bethany’s life—and more than that, God impressed on his heart that He had greater things in store for our family, and for Bethany, than we could ever realize.
And then he sang.
When Tom had his big breakthrough, I was still struggling with my own. You see, while I believed in Bethany, I also was afraid that I’d see her fail. I wanted her to reach for all of her dreams, but I thought Tom was pushing her too hard and too fast. She’d been at the top, but that was then. I feared she’d be devastated by her disappointment. I feared her failure.
The National Scholastic Surfing Association (NSSA) regional surfing event was scheduled to take place in January 2004, on the Big Island of Hawaii. Bethany had been back in the water since Thanksgiving. It was barely three months since she had lost her arm in the shark attack; but she decided to enter the contest.
She told her dad before she told me. I would have told her it was too soon to compete. Tom, well, he apparently saw the fire in her eyes and thought she had a shot at it. Or more accurately, he thought she deserved a shot at it.
Everyone went to the Big Island but me. I couldn’t watch her fail; it would be more than I could take. Even staying home, I was very nervous for her. Surf contests are highly competitive events. The best surfers in the world are trying to outmaneuver and outsurf every other contestant. Boys’ or girls’ division, it didn’t matter, surf contests were seriously tough.
Tom and I had talked about the risks. If she totally failed, she would be demoralized or crushed. We talked about everything that might go wrong, but if you know Bethany, you know that she won’t quit, and she won’t deliver less than 100 percent.
Tom had to tell me how it went when they got back. No one but the director of the contest had known that she had entered, so when Bethany showed up on the sand in her contest jersey, everyone’s jaws dropped.
She didn’t catch as many waves as the other competitors in her heat, but the ones she did catch she tore up. She placed fifth in her entire age division, a big deal for any female surfer—but a massive achievement for a young woman who had just lost her arm.
The families who had brought their kids out to surf in the competition all clustered around Bethany when she came out of the water, their faces reflecting the radiant triumph on her face. Tom stood on the beach off to one side, joy and pride in his daughter filling him with an even deeper satisfaction now that he’d made peace with God.
That was when the legendary wave rider and professional surfing coach Ben Aipa walked up to him and said softly, “I tried to video Bethany’s first wave, but I was so overcome with emotion that I had to put the camera down. She’s got the will and the heart and desire to take this as far as she wants to go. I would consider it an honor if I could be her coach.”
Bethany was back.
The following year, she would not just place in the NSSA National Contest, she would win the Explorer Women’s Division!
CHAPTER
12
A Surfer Girl Who Loves God
You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand,
a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
ISAIAH 62:3
It soon became clear that we had been in the calm center of a different sort of hurricane. When Bethany paddled out into that NSSA competition, charging hard just a few weeks after the attack, the calm eye of the storm was moving, and we were now at an epicenter, sensing something way bigger than us. We were at the point where we could just open up the floodgates without holding back and try to ride the media tidal wave. But you don’t ride tidal waves; they swamp you.
When we sat down with Sarah Hill, it took our family only a few minutes to define our central criterion for granting interview requests: Our family’s purpose was to lift up the name of Christ. We needed someone who could help us take advantage of all the interest while being committed to our boundaries and beliefs—someone who would help manage Bethany while never, ever compromising our explicit purpose and mission.
Before the attack, Tom had been in contact with an entrepreneur named Roy Hofstetter about possibly promoting Bethany’s surfing career. Roy’s daughter Chantilly was a classmate of Bethany’s, and so Roy was already familiar with her very real surfing talent. Roy’s unique experience might help to net a sponsorship deal beyond just the realm of surf culture.
Like almost any other sport, sponsorship is how the athlete really earns his living. Sponsors help defray or fully cover the cost of travel, surfboards and hotel rooms. Our own evaporating money supply would limit how far Bethany could go. Simply put, a good sponsorship deal would enable Bethany to become a serious competitor. We were on the cusp of signing a deal with Roy Hofstetter when Bethany was attacked.
After we saw with our own eyes Bethany�
�s remarkable rebound from calamity and how her story seemed to resonate so powerfully with people across the board, we contacted Roy to see if he would still be willing to help. But now the need was to manage the surge of interest coming our way.
Roy agreed. He would field the requests for interviews, TV and radio appearances and all the other myriad offers we couldn’t possibly manage.
This was a tricky decision. We spent a lot of time praying for God’s leading and wisdom. We knew that by doing this we might overexpose our daughter. It might be too much, too quick, too soon. So we decided that she had to be 100 percent in agreement with anything we considered. We could always walk away.
I think what kept everything in perspective for us was that we all were committed to using the media attention solely to honor God. Bethany’s Christian faith was, and is, central to her character and was what gave her the power to spring back.
Tom and I knew it was just Bethany being herself.
We were able to tell Bethany’s story in book form, designed for 14-year-olds and titled Soul Surfer, which to our delight found its way into the hands of many young people. We also sought with much more deliberation for the right pace and rhythm that Bethany would be able to handle, and that the rest of us would be able to handle too.
At one point, I was in an SUV rental, crammed tight with surfboards and luggage. Tom, Bethany, Noah and I were going to visit her surfboard shaper in Ventura, California, to pick up a new surfboard he had just finished making. I was feeling lost as we drove through two hours of heavy traffic, wondering what we were doing with our lives. Is this where we wanted to be? Tim was smart to bale on this expedition!
Raising A Soul Surfer Page 14