Trent remembers pulling up to Makaha Point with his dad during the winter of 1969. He and his sister Anna would play army on the beach in front of Val Valentine’s house, but if their father’s board washed in, they dropped everything to drag it up to the dry sand. Some of Trent’s earliest memories are of driving to the North Shore in his father’s VW bug with a Dick Brewer gun strapped to the roof. Ivan Trent was born to the manor of big-wave surfing and counts many of the sport’s true pioneers-Buffalo Keaulana, George Downing, Greg Noll, and Peter Cole-as his hanai uncles. “He was a caveman, just dusted himself off and went surfing.” “He came home and talked about it real casual,” recalled his son. Although Trent worked as a fireman, it was as a construction worker that he established his reputation as a modern day John Henry.Īfter a coworker at the Hawaiian Dredging Company accidentally knocked him off a 14th-floor concrete slab, Trent fell two stories (approximately 50 feet), grabbed a 12th-floor girder, and swung himself back into the building. No job was beneath the Californian as long as it allowed him the freedom to surf big waves. “A million bucks won’t buy you an ounce of either,” he said. But after a knee injury during preseason training of his freshman year, Trent moved to Hawaii and never looked back.īuzzy Trent believed that big-wave surfing developed the two most important qualities a man could have: dignity and courage. The all-CIF halfback ran a sub-10 second 100, and was recruited by USC. He was also a Golden Gloves boxer and one of the most promising football players to ever graduate from Santa Monica High School. While he learned to surf in Santa Monica Bay, Trent was soon riding his bike all the way to Malibu to surf the point with Matt Kivlin and Bob Simmons. His life changed forever when his parents moved from their Pasadena ranch to a house on San Vicente Boulevard in Santa Monica. Goodwin Murray “Buzzy” Trent was born in 1929 into an upper-class California family. Material objects were just that to him, objects with little importance.” “He was a true minimalist,” said his son. The son of legendary big-wave surfer Buzzy Trent and local Westside beauty Violet Rodillas was born in a Quonset hut on Makaha Point.Ī stoic who walked his talk, the elder Trent lived for the challenge of giant surf. “As far as life, there is no unfairness,” he said, “just circumstances one simply has to deal with.”Īlthough Ivan Trent’s story culminates in the Afpak frontier, it begins more than five decades ago on the Westside of Oahu. Trent’s values are closer to those of a Spartan syssitia or the Roman Legion than modern day America. Nonetheless, the Navy SEAL chief’s most remarkable feats in the water will never appear on YouTube and will probably remain classified state secrets long after his death. The quiet, coiled 54-year-old has the face of a Hawaiian Kahuna, the beard of a Pashtu tribal elder, and a body so youthful that it is still capable of running four miles in 28 minutes flat.īorn and bred at Makaha Point, not only was Ivan Trent inducted into the break’s most elite club (“The Makaha Screamers”), when deployments allowed, he was a regular at Waimea Bay and among the first to paddle out to outside Log Cabins. He does not drive an oversized pickup truck, has no visible tattoos, and prefers Chihuahuas to pit bulls. The most dangerous man in surfing does not live on the North Shore. The following story was first published in The Surfer’s Journal as Redacted, and you’ll find it, the unabridged version, ie longer, on Pete’s substack Sour Milk as Strength and Honour, Ivan Trent’s Odyssey. (Editor’s note: Peter Maguire is a surfer, war crimes investigator and author of Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers, the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trad e, Law and War, Facing Death in Cambodiaand Breathe, the new bio on jiujitsu icon Rickson Gracie.
Son of a big-wave legend, Navy SEAL, shredder in thirty-foot surf…
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