UH Alumni Profiles
Windsurfing enthusiast share sport with others
Jace Panebianco
AA ’04
Maui Community College
Home: North Shore, Maui (of course)
First anniversary: Jan. 15, 2008 with wife Amber
Career: Professional windsurfer, filmmaker, photographer, writer
Interesting fact: He’s a fraternal twin
Website: The Windsurfing Movie
Growing up windsurfing around New York’s South Hampton Bay, Jace Panebianco harnessed balance and wind power, got his first taste of speed and was quickly addicted to the adventure, excitement and freedom the sport provides. He’s been strapped-in ever since.
Moving to Maui at 19, he landed a windsurfer’s dream job—riding state-of-the-art windsurfers on the island’s North Shore as an equipment tester for Windsurfer magazine. He turned pro and traveled the globe, earning an international top-30 free-style windsurfer ranking.
Passionate about pushing the limits and seeing what’s possible, Panebianco is known as an inventor of three radical windsurfing jumps (Crazy Pete, Bootleg and the Gutterflip) and for his creative eye in capturing windsurfers on video and film. He teamed up with filmmaker Johnny DeCesare to produce a defining windsurfing film that would attract and excite a new audience. Since The Windsurfing Movie premiered before 3,000 moviegoers at the Maui Film Festival in May 2007, Panebianco has been riding a fast-moving wave of promotion. With a new film in the pike, he’s powered-up and ready to blast down the face of his next adventure. "Whatever it is, I’ll make it a graceful transition," he promises.
Writing the book on beaches
John R. K. Clark
AS ’75 Honolulu Community College
BA ’76, MPA ’94 University of Hawaiʻ at Mānoa
Hobbies: Surfing on surf and paipo boards
Family: Wife Julie Ushio, children Jason, Koji and Sachi
Genealogy: Fifth-generation descendent of Hawaiian chieftess Mary Kahooilimoku and Irish sea captain William Carey Lane
Memorable rescue: Hawaiian Historical Society president, Department of Education surf coach certification instructor, Kalāheo Sports Production Owner, Dragon Boat Race organizer, shoreline project planning consultant
Top beach safety tip: Talk to lifeguards and other beach goers. "With variables from box jellyfish to seasonal high surf, it’s essential to find out what’s happening generally and on the actual day you’re going."
Writing has always been part of John Clark’s busy life. After leaving the Army, he spent two years as a lifeguard, then joined the Honolulu Fire Department, retiring as deputy chief in 2005. During that time, he earned three degrees and published the Beaches of Hawaiʻi series with University of Hawaiʻi Press.
"My writing has taken me to all eight Hawaiian islands and given me the opportunity to interview hundreds of our kūpuna," he says. "This has been a wonderful experience for me."
Clark’s most recent book, Guardian of the Sea: Jizo in Hawaiʻi, explores statues of the Buddhist deity erected by Japanese fishermen on Hawaiʻi sea cliffs. His interest was piqued in 1972 when he found the Umi Mamori Jizo at Bamboo Ridge. He later found similar statues on Oʻahu’s North Shore and uncovered a Hawaiian fishing god on the grounds of a Buddhist temple in Kona.
Current projects include revising the Maui beaches book and compiling coastal field trip sites for teachers. He’s also researching the history of Waikīkī and surfing. "People always laugh because there are so many books on both subjects," says Clark, "but I believe I’ll add some new information."World puppetry expert
Kathy Foley
PhD ’79
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Career: Professor of theatre arts
Birthplace: Waukegan, Ill.
Family: Husband, daughter and son
Hobbies: Work
Favorite puppet: The clown Dawala
UH theatrical highlight: Taking publicity photos in the Honolulu Zoo tortoise enclosure for the production of Jeremy Jack. "They were very accepting of the new turtle on the block."
Hitchhiking from England to India and then traveling around Asia, Kathy Foley found theatre blended with music, dance, festival and life in a way she’d never experienced. She wanted to learn more, and The University of Hawaiʻi’s Asian theatre program let her further explore the cultures and ideas she had encountered.
At the University of California, Santa Cruz, Foley studies and performs wayang golek purwa, the rod theatre of West Java involving a solo narrator-puppeteer and gamelan orchestra. "You get to play everyone: Rama and Sita and Hanuman and Ravana—the good the bad and the funny," says Foley. "It is an enormous stretch, great philosophy and fun for a performer."
In January 2008, Foley returns to UH Mānoa to give public lectures in conjunction with Kennedy Theatre’s production of A (Balinese) Tempest, which blends Shakespeare’s play with Balinese shadow puppets. At 7 p.m. before the Feb. 2 performance, she will speak on masks and puppets, the connection of the storyteller with the universe and Asian techniques in interpreting Shakespeare. "The English dramatic tradition is more text based and Shakespeare is an icon everybody knows," she says. "Effectively mixing the known and unknown and figuring out the amounts of musical and visual storytelling is challenging but exciting."
Iron Chef contestant
Tony Liu
’92–’94
Kapiʻolani Community College
Career: Executive chef, August Restaurant, New York City
High school: Kaiser in Honolulu
Favorite foods: Peaches, goat roti, oxtails
Desert island food pick: "Fish, salt… you’re set, actually."
Morning shift: Dad on duty with year-old son
Pastimes: Fishing, snowboarding, travel
Current surf spot: New Jersey
Website: August
Sixty-hour weeks in his West Village restaurant earned Tony Liu rave reviews and a chance to compete against his former foreman Mario Batali in the Iron Chef opah battle. He lost, but demonstrated his creative range on the hour-long TV show, producing poke, Tahitian-style poisson cru, bruschetta with preserved opah, souvlaki using the fish spines as skewers, silky Spanish pil-pil sauce and opah chowder.
It’s a stretch from Liu’s first restaurant job, in the kitchen at Korean plate lunch joint Doraji Restaurant and Fast Food. But he also worked at Roy’s, the Lodge at Kōʻele and 3660 On the Rise before graduating from the Culinary Institute of America and training at restaurants in New York and Spain.
When he needs his local fix, he heads to one of New York’s two L&L Hawaiian BBQs. He serves pan-European in his restaurant, but sometimes he’s sly. "We’ll make poke," he confides. "We’ll change the name, call it something Italian.’