Episode 0

Tarzan Redux: Chapter Fill-ins from the Life of Gene Smith

This continued documentary of “Tarzan”, Gene Smith, pioneer waterman and unsurpassed paddle-boarder, closes the chapter on a fighting man’s slow descent and return to a sanctuary in the California desert.  From the tragic death of his mother at age 7, fighting and defending himself and his younger sister from the ravages of angry guardians and local street gangs to his self-imposed exile from society in the lumber camps of Oregon, he blazed a trail, ‘cruising for a bruising’ in the ‘30s that earned him the nickname “Tarzan”.  Migrating to Hawaii from Southern California, he established himself as a pioneer waterman and a record holding marathon inter-island paddler, often unheralded and largely unsung, a loner on ocean and land.