Joey Rohrer Adric
Joey Rohrer Adric was born in New Jersey and spent summers in Ocean City. She rode waves back as far as she can remember. In the 1940 s and 1950s she body surfed and rode waves on canvas mats and whatever she could find that floated. Rohrer always felt the ocean was her heaven.
It wasn’t until the early 60s that she rode my first real surfboard. Rohrer attended the University of Miami in Florida and surfed 1st Street, 21st St., Miami Beach and Cocoa Beach. The people that she looked up to were Billy Feinberg, Mike Mann, Wayne Williams and Don Eakes. It was Mike and Bill who took Rohrer around surfing and encouraged her to compete. Rohrer did most of her competitions in New Jersey, winning events in Belmar, Seaside Heights, Long Beach Island and Atlantic City. In 1965 she won the North Atlantic States Championship in Seaside Heights and the New Jersey State Championship. Soon after that she took off for the Islands, landing on Maui.
Rohrer surfed uncrowded Lahaina and magical Honolua Bay. In those days you had to go through the sugarcane fields to get to the bay. She recalls every time she drove around the curve, she had to hang out the window, yelling and honking the horn so the sugarcane trucks that go barreling down the dirt roads would know a car was coming. It was there Rohrer learned what soul surfing was – not to make a name for yourself but to enjoy the sun and the surf, and realize it was a part of your soul.
Rohrer was never so happy as when surfing. She settled on Oahu and lived at Waimea Point for a while before moving to Mokuleia at the west end of the North Shore in the late 60s. She lived in an old plantation house right on the beach that leaked when it rained, where she paid $120 a month rent. No one but the throw net fisherman would come out there in those days. It was just a big empty baron beach. Jerry Aikau, Eddie’s brother, lived next-door. Rohrer married into a great Hawaiian family and adopted their simple carefree lifestyle. In the early 80s she traveled to Costa Rica and opened a surf shop with an old friend from Hawaii, spending summers in Costa Rica and the rest of the year in the Islands.
Rohrer-Adric continues to surf to this day – mostly at Aliis in Haleiwa. She has passed on the love in the ocean to her children and grandchildren as her parents did to her where they all enjoy surfing, free diving and throwing net Hawaiian-style fishing.
