Louise Hawkins: A Centenarian and World Angler

By Paula Thomas

How many people do you know who are 100 years old and I.G.F.A. World Record holders? Hawai‘i Island resident Louise Hawkins is in both rarefied categories.

Louise’s past is rich with stories of exploits with all kinds of famous names, starting in high school in southern California, where she knew and had classes with Jackie Robinson.

Deep-sea fishing enabled her and her late husband Cliff to meet actors Richard Boone, Lee Marvin, Jonathan Winters, and Laugh-In’s Arte Johnson, who all spent time in Kona in the late 60s through the 70s competing in the Hawai‘i Billfish Tournament. She and Cliff competed in the 70s and 80s on their sea vessel, a 26’ Anacapri, Papa’s Keiki.

Louise celebrated her 100th birthday in glittery style with family and friends on January third of this year, with the able and ready assistance of her granddaughter, Jennifer, and son-in-law McGrew Rice, with whom she now lives. Louise has something to do every day—art class on Mondays, a wellness class on Tuesdays, card playing on Fridays (she’s competitive!), church on Sundays, plus three private yoga sessions a week. Having something to look forward to every day keeps her going. She’s not the type to cling to her past, as much as she has enjoyed her life. She is still very active and seems wholly oriented toward “what’s next?”

Growing up Louise

Louise remembers always being outside after school as a young girl. Growing up in southern California, she loved the ocean and the beach. She swam in high school and played volleyball. Her best friend, “Brownie” (Helen Brown), a swimmer and overall athlete, taught her how to sail in Mexico. They became lifelong friends.

Before she graduated from high school, she took a job with a guy name Cliff Hawkins who needed a small labor force to help cut boughs and make wreaths for the gift business he worked in. He hired her and some of her friends.

From that point on, she and Cliff dated, worked together, and played together, too. It was Cliff who taught her to fish. They married in 1941, when he told her they should get married because of the political conditions surrounding WWII.

Louise didn’t need a knee bend and a romantic setting; she went with what made sense to her in life, and marrying Cliff made sense. Plus, they were totally in love. Honeymooning was in Seal Beach, California, where Louise’s aunt had a home. On their first day, Cliff chartered a fishing boat and the captain, seeing a stray buoy, pulled it up to find a full lobster trap. He extracted two, and the newlyweds had a royal dinner that night.

Louise went along with whatever her creative and entrepreneurial husband wanted to do. He was an artist and they were a team. He had the ideas, and she figured out how to make their lives work. She never entertained the idea of failure because she is all about figuring out the angles to achieve a goal, and it’s clear from her stories and the way she talks that she’ll do whatever it takes to be successful.

In wartime in the 1940s, working in a shipyard could prevent a man from being called into active duty and that was a priority for Cliff, so they moved to Washington where Cliff worked in a shipyard, a temporary reprieve from being in the wholesale gift business. By then, they had two young children with “KK Grandma” (Cliff’s mother) around to help. From the shipyard earnings, they bought some land in Oregon. Cliff designed a house, bought the lumber he would need to build it, and had it shipped to the lot.

By then, Louise was really good at making wreaths, trimming Christmas trees, and helping her husband with the wholesale gift business. They did everything together. As granddaughter Jennifer described, “They were like peas in a pod and spent every waking hour of every day together.” Louise put it slightly differently: “Wherever he was, I was sure I went there for lunch.”

In 1958, they bought their own boat, a 29’ sloop, the Tukatu, kept it at Newport Beach and sailed to Catalina Island. Louise caught a marlin her second time out—Jennifer was aboard, it was her fifth birthday—and they celebrated with champagne. Cliff caught a marlin the next day—and they were both hooked.

They traveled a lot during the 50s, 60s, and 70s—to the wholesale gift shows in cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Chicago, and New York. They went abroad to Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, and Germany to develop their supply chain, and fished whenever time and proximity allowed—in New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, and along the West Coast.

It was in 1960 that the Hawkins landed in Honolulu en route to Japan for a business meeting. Cliff fortuitously read about Kona coast fishing and they decided to take a detour on the return trip. They fell in love with it. Cliff caught a 185-pound ahi (yellow-fin tuna) on a chartered boat, and they bought a condo at the Ilikai on that first trip. Ever the creator, Cliff designed a beach house that year and shipped lumber from Oregon to build a second house in South Konaʻs Papa Bay Estates, where Louise lived until 2004. “We camped in the jungle while he was building it,” Louise explained. “You stepped out and had to figure out how to live in nature. We learned a lot, even from the plumber.” For the rest of their lives together, they divided their time between Hawai‘i Island and Oregon.

Angling Is in Her DNA

Louise and Cliff fished. “I learned,” Louise stated matter-of-factly, “that if there was a big fish out there, I better be in the chair.” Deep-sea fishing charged her competitive spirit and her work ethic: Louise was used to thinking, working, and angling for what she received, and the sport of angling suited her perfectly. She caught her first marlin in Hawai‘i in 1964. After that, she didn’t just fish, she set world records and one still holds: her 1983 short nose spearfish catch.

The secret to her success? She shared it freely: “I listened,” she said. “The skipper is really in charge. What he told me to do, I did it.” Her son-in-law, McGrew, who runs Ihu Nui Sportfishing off the Kona Coast, piped in: “A lot of people think they know what to do, and they don’t listen to the skipper. But, when they don’t get the fish, they start to listen.” Louise just followed instructions to the T and found her grit. The real experts, in her mind, are the ones handling the boat.

These days, Louise is happy to be on terra firma. “I think I am better off being at home with a chocolate sundae to enjoy,” she said. Jennifer says her grandmother might just have that sundae for breakfast.

Reminders of her remarkable big fish catches sit on the counters and shelves. In one, her granddaughter is in one arm and the fishing line with her 450-pound catch in the other. “At the time,” she said wryly, “I didn’t know which one was more important to me.”

Billfish carvings on the lānai (balcony), more photos, and the family’s digital archive document her amazing exploits. ABC featured her in Pacific Blues, episode 205*.

Louise took up scuba diving and underwater photography, which became a real passion. At night, after Cliff went to bed, she would spend hours working on her photography.

Around age 85, when Louise couldn’t scuba dive and fish anymore, this ocean-lover took up golf. “I can do that,” she thought, as she watched people golf on Kona’s courses. So she traded tanks and fins for spiked shoes and a set of clubs. Ever the competitor, she made a name for herself in golf, too, by winning the Waikoloa Charity Tournament.

Putting is her favorite aspect of golf because it’s about gauging the grass, the distance, the wind—figuring all the angles. It’s what Louise is really good at, in sports and in life. She might not say it in so many words, but angling is in her DNA.

Perhaps that’s why Louise is still going strong at the age of 100: she stays active, determined, optimistic, strategic, and tactical. When she does play, she plays to win, especially when it comes to her Friday card games. ❖

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For more information: *vimeo.com/170658051

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Louise Hawkins IGFA World Records:

Short nose spearfish
16 pound test line • Weight: 26 pounds
May 10, 1982

Short nose spearfish
16 pound test line • Weight: 40 pounds
July 30, 1983
Louise still holds this world record

Kawakawa
16 pound test line • Weight: 17 pounds
September 24, 1983

Tuna, skipjack
8 pound test line • Weight: 25 pounds
June 7, 1991

Short nose spearfish
8 pound test line • Weight: 29 pounds
June 10, 1991