Buttons died today. It was not a death fitting for a man like Montgomery Kaluhiokalani–but then, no death would be. After so many resurrections, lung cancer was his eventual downfall.
Buttons was born in 1958 in Honolulu and raised on the North Shore. The son of an army service man and a Hawaiian mother, from a his early rise to one of surfing’s leaders in the ’70s, Buttons seemed to be on the road to fame until, in the mid-80s, he dropped from the scene due to drug use. In 2008, he emerged, clean and triumphant, as the fit, happy Buttons of old. Even through his disappearance from the scene, he was still present, like Andy, who shares his final date, as a constant presence in the back of surfing’s collective consciousness.
It can be said with the utmost certainty that surfing would not be what it is today without Buttons. And it will never be the same without him.
RIP Buttons.
