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Betty Heldreich Windstedt

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Elizabeth “Betty” Pembroke Heldreich Windstedt (June 5, 1913 Salt Lake City, Utah - Sept. 7, 2011, Oahu, Hawaii) was a 1950s pioneer surfer at Makaha Beach, Hawaii, a dental hygienist, pilot, builder, artist, and haiku poet.

Called “Betty” by one and all, she was an adventurous combination of Amelia Earhart, Georgia O’Keefe, Esther Williams and poet Emily Dickinson. She was a 20th Century renaissance woman who lived well into the 21st and put her skilled hands to many things.

Betty was descended from Mormon families who came to America from England by ship in the mid-1800's, and then to Salt Lake City by wagon train. In the 1930s, Betty Pembroke went further west with her family to grow with the country, landing in southern California during the Depression - living in Santa Monica, Palos Verdes and later Chino.

In the early 1950s, Betty, her husband Ron Heldreich and their daughters Vicky and Gloria were introduced to the island lifestyle of Hawaii, and that put the hook in them. They learned to surf at Waikiki during the Golden Era of the 1950s, and took to it. Betty Heldreich became one of the first women to charge the big surf at Makaha - on the west coast of Oahu.

Betty finished second to Ethel Kukea at the third Makaha International Surfing Championships in 1956. That same year, Betty was on the first Hawaiian surf team invited to Lima Peru. The team included Rabbit Kekai, Ethel and Joe Kukea, Conrad Canha, and George and Anne Lamont. Betty won the women's championship in Peru, and in 1960 traveled to Peru with her daughter Vicky, who won the Makaha Championships in 1957.

The trophies were on display at the Lewers Street Malibu Shirts store in Waikiki where Betty and Vicky are store legends, along with Marge Calhoun, Peter Cole, Ricky Grigg, Rabbit Kekai and Clarence Maki.

Family background[edit]

Betty's grandparents the Pembrokes and Margetts both made their distinct marks on early Salt Lake and are written up in The History of Salt Lake and Its Founders.

A talented and determined swimmer, Betty trained at the Los Angeles Athletic Club with aspirations for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In 1935 her swimming career ended when she crashed one of Gus Brigleb's gliders.

Betty was in the second class to graduate in the new profession of Dental Hygiene at U.S.C. After working for several years as a dental hygienist she dreamed of becoming a dentist. While Betty attended night school at USC, a librarian friend introduced Betty to her brother - Ronald Heldreich - an abalone diver and manufacturing jeweler who, like Betty, liked to work with his hands. Betty and Ron married soon after, in May 1937. That marriage produced two daughters: “They married in May 1937 only knowing each other for a few weeks” said Betty's daughter Vicky. “a possible recipe for disaster.”

Victoria was born 1940 and Gloria was born 1944. The marriage lasted until January 1959 when Betty and Ron went their separate ways.

Betty moved to Makaha and stayed single until she met Charlie Winstedt - who ran a construction business and was building his own 65-foot fishing boat. Charlie and Betty were married in 1968 and stayed married until Charlie's death in 1989

Betty's daughter Vicky had two daughters Marcie (9-26-61) and Rennie (11-2-62).

The Golden Era of Hawaiian Surfing: The 1950s[edit]

In the crime/surf movie Point Break, a young surf shop employee lays some philosophy on undercover FBI agent Johnny Utah: “Surfing’s the source, man. It will change your life. Swear to God.”

That proved true for Betty Heldreich, who first visited Hawaii in 1954, and then found she couldn't possibly live anywhere else, and moved there permanently in the same year with her husband Ron and both daughters.

They rented a three-bedroom, two-story white house at 352 Royal Hawaiian Avenue, just a short walk to Waikiki Beach and the surf. Betty and Vicky became surf addicts after they learned from beach boy Charlie Amalu - during a time when the Hawaiian beach boys were some of the most famous, romantic characters on earth.

In 1955 the family joined the Waikiki Surf Club - founded in 1948 - which gave them access to boards, storage space, aloha and camaraderie on the beach at Waikiki. Writing in The Betty Book, Vicky Durand remembered: “Every morning at dawn before starting her workday Mother, wearing only her white Linns bathing suit and a shirt, rode her bike down to Waikiki Surf Club where she kept her surfboard in a locker. Mother thought it was a thrill to travel across a wall of breaking water standing up on a surfboard. She was “bitten” by what she called the “surf bug” and started to love surfing more and more.”

Betty and Vicky moved up to the bigger stuff at Makaha in 1957, learning to ride the wild surf alongside some of the pioneers of big-wave surfing: George Downing, Wally Froiseth, Fred VanDyke, Buzzy Trent and Peter Cole.

Hawaii Beach Cottage Makaha[edit]

In 1959, Betty bought a 13,000 square foot property on the beach at Makaha. With permitting help from Hawaiian photographer and building inspector Clarence Maki, Betty ordered a prefabricated Lindal home made of tongue and groove cedar siding. Working alongside subcontractors and carpenters, Betty oversaw the construction of the house and did all the finish work herself - which has served the family well, well into the 21st Century.

Haiku[edit]

Betty Heldreich wrote haiku during her last years, and many of them will be published in the Wave Woman. Here are a few about some of her favorite things:

Surfing is great fun

Riding speed of the water

Conquering one’s fear

Hidden energy

Surfing the big waves is like

Dancing with nature

Surfing is a sport

Riding big waves a challenge

Life and limb at risk

Stop, it is 5 o’clock

Time for drinks and silly talk

No arguing please

Wave Woman[edit]

During the winter of 2018, Vicky Durand began writing, editing and collecting photos for a book on her mother, Betty Heldreich Winstedt. Working with former Surfer Magazine editor Ben Marcus and Scribe Constance Hale, “Wave Woman - The life and Struggles of A Surfing Pioneer” was born. Vicky Durand organized her thoughts about her adventuress mother and will be publishing the book which will be available in 2020.

References[edit]

1.Betty Heldreich Windstedt on http://www.legendarysurfers.com/2005/05/betty-heldreich-winstedt.html

2.A Legend Young in Heart in the Honolulu Advertiser http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Apr/18/il/il01p.html

3.8th Annual Hawaii Women's Leadership Conference Essay Co-Winner

4.Blog: Inspired By Someone I Never Met, Anne Marie


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