Hawaii Golf Hall of Famer shared tales of rich past

The top female golfer of the 1930s, Codie Austin-Cooke, began playing golf at the age of 5 … barefooted. With the help of the Oahu Country Club pro, Alex Bell, she blossomed into the top female golfer in the islands by the age of 14.

She captured the first Territorial Women’s Tournament in 1934 by 12 strokes, even though she was just a freshman at Punahou School. The Hono­lulu Advertiser called it "the greatest exhibition of golf ever seen in Hawaii."

"The tournament consisted of a qualifying round and five days of golf," Cooke recalls. "There were only two of us in our teens. The others were adults. I couldn’t hit a bad shot through all six days.

"After I had won, my parents were thrilled. My dad asked me where I wanted to go out to dinner. ‘We’ll treat you.’ Wo Fat, I told him. Whenever I won, he took us to my favorite restaurant, Wo Fat in Chinatown. It was a very, very popular place back then."

She won the tournament the following year, as well as the two years after that — four years in a row.

Cooke was born in Nuu­anu in 1919 and named after "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Her father, David Lee Austin, was the proprietor of Hono­lulu Sporting Goods. She started playing golf barefooted at age 5.

When she was 16, Cooke heard that Amelia Earhart had flown to Hawaii. "She was my childhood hero. I begged my mother to take me to see her plane at Schofield Barracks," Cooke recounts.

"That was a long drive back in 1935." Her mother protested but finally relented. "When we got there, I saw her plane. Guarding it was someone I knew, the military golf champ. He waved to me."

"Would I like to sit in the cockpit?" he asked.

"Would I!" Cooke responded. "I climbed in. It was very exciting, to sit in her plane. A minute or two later, Earhart walked over. I was afraid she’d be mad, but she was quite pleasant. I was just a teenager and star-struck. I’m sure I babbled, but unfortunately I can’t remember what we may have said to each other."

Cooke was just 17 when Hawaii’s first traffic light was installed on the corner of Nuu­anu and Bere­ta­nia streets. "I remember being quite astonished. I had no idea what they were, at first."

Why was that intersection chosen? "It may have been because the trolley came up Nuu­anu Avenue," Cooke surmises. "The trolley made it a busy corner."

Nuuanu Avenue was also the main thoroughfare from the Windward side to downtown until Pali Highway was built.

Cooke met crooner Bing Crosby at golfer Francis I‘i Brown’s house in the late 1930s. "He loved to golf. As we were about to go golfing one day, his first wife, Dixie Lee, told him she had given $2 million to a Los Angeles hospital. He had just given her $5 million or $6 million to do as she pleased. He had a fit.

"‘Why did you do that?’ Crosby demanded to know. ‘Well, you said I could do anything I wanted with the money,’ was her reply. ‘So, I gave them $2 million.’"

Bing had adopted the local motto, "Cool head, main thing." "He had a good attitude," Cooke continues. "But $2 million given to a hospital sure tested it." When Crosby died of a heart attack at age 74 in 1977, while golfing in Madrid, he was worth $150 million.

Cooke also knew Duke Kaha­na­moku. "Duke ran a Union Oil gas station on the corner of Nuu­anu and Pauoa roads." (It’s now a Chevron station. He ran another in Wai­kiki.)

"One day my dad pulled our car into the station and Duke came to the window. ‘How’s your golf game, Codie?’ he asked me. I was thrilled to meet him and have this great Olympian recognize me.

"Dad said, ‘We’re going to give him all our business.’ But he was also upset. He said, ‘He shouldn’t be pumping gas. He should be the ambassador of our territory.’"

Duke had trouble finding a career after the 1934 Olympics. He once bemoaned that "out of the water, I am nothing." He acted in a few Hollywood movies, playing Indian chiefs, mostly.

The head of Union Oil in Hawaii asked Duke if he wanted a job. "I said, ‘Heck, yes.’ I’m not too proud to pump gas. I did it because it was something to do," Kaha­na­moku said in 1965.

But Duke found his calling and ran for sheriff of the City and County of Hono­lulu in 1935. He served 13 terms and then was appointed as the city’s Official Greeter and Ambassador of Goodwill after that.

Cooke attended USC, where she was a golf champ, but stopped competing after she married. She was a longtime member of the Oahu Country Club. She lived near ‘Iolani School and walked 5 miles to the club and 5 miles back nearly every day.

I helped her cross the street at Fort and Bere­ta­nia streets in January 2010. She was a bit shaky and I was concerned. She died a few months later at the age of 90.

I feel fortunate to have met Codie Austin-Cooke and sat with her a few times. She met some interesting people and had some great stories to tell.

Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com.