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Just Add Water: Jack Viorel Brings Aloha Spirit to the Surfing Biz
By Kate Sweeney
Published Summer 2008
“Well, this is south wind.” He gestures with his arm as he talks. “I know right now that the waves are building. They’re building up, building up, but they’re junky. No good yet. And as soon as this storm that’s coming now gets in the right location, they’ll be perfect. And it’s probably going to happen this evening, or in the middle of the night, or early morning tomorrow.”
So, what’s he going to do?
“Well, my stuff’s already in the car. When we’re done, here, I’m gonna go.” Jack would really like to go tomorrow morning, but he can’t since he’ll be at the head of a classroom full of first graders at Saint Mary’s Elementary in Wilmington. That’s fine, though. He’ll probably hop in his car after school and head straight to Carolina Beach.
Jack’s built his life around surfing. He teaches, in part so that he’ll have summers and weekends free. And no matter what, he says, he’ll always live near a beach.
“I’ve pretty much chosen every single thing around the sport,” Jack says.
To someone who isn’t completely and totally obsessed with catching waves on a board, this might sound, well, a little selfish in its pleasure-seeking extreme. But if anything, it’s the complete opposite. Jack’s surf school, Indo Jax, which opens this spring, is about as far from self-serving as you can get. In order to truly understand, though, there’s a concept you have to understand first.
It’s called Aloha Spirit, and it means an attitude of friendly acceptance. It hails from Hawaii, where surfing began, and, interestingly enough, is even written into statues of that state. Many surfers, including Jack, have taken to heart its principles of kindness and perseverance.
“Basically,” explains Jack, “it’s about being humble, giving and enjoying someone else catching a wave as much as catching it yourself. Lots and lots of patience.”
All good qualities for an elementary school teacher. Jack was just out of college when he discovered how much he liked teaching young kids. The surfing bug had caught him only recently, and he was working part-time at a California winery and resorts in Tahoe, catching every opportunity he could to head out to San Francisco’s Half Moon Bay to surf and take trips to catch the legendary waves around the world. But something was missing. So he went to talk with a trusted friend, a priest from his Catholic high school, who suggested Jack try teaching. He’s never looked back.
“I remember the first day it just really clicked,” says Jack. “It was a second-grade class, and I was subbing. I mean, I remember the wooden chair that I sat in, that sort of creaked, and not really knowing, you know, what I was supposed to do, but I started reading this story and playing this game with them. And all the kids were paying attention! And I remember thinking for the first time ‘This is where I want to be.’”
Not every single classroom day since then has been perfect, he says, but then again, those that are perfect make it all worthwhile.
“It’s like surfing, when the waves are coming to you instead of away from you,” he says. “Everything is just lined up and you really surf well that day. It’s worth all the days in between of waiting
and struggling or whatever, when those days come.”
Some of the struggle for Jack and his wife came in Half Moon Bay, California. A couple of years ago, he was teaching second grade there, and she was working at a law firm. Their first daughter, Gabriella, was almost three and they wanted to have another child but couldn’t afford it.
“We were tired of struggling,” says Jack. “In California, you either struggled financially, or you do what we did: We made enough so that I could stay home, but we were barely making it. Or you both work and someone else raises your kids.”
They needed to move somewhere quieter. Somewhere less expensive, and slower-paced. Somewhere on the ocean.
Enter Leland, North Carolina. Aileen found a job at a law firm here, and Jack found his job teaching first grade. He says that he never imagined living anywhere outside California. But by giving up that rigidity in thinking, his family has found happiness.
“Here, it’s been just, you know, another perfect piece of the puzzle and we have a lot more family time and we’re not as stressed about making the bottom line every month,” he says.
The surf culture here in the Wrightsville/Carolina Beach area also really impressed Jack.
“In the water, in California, that Aloha Spirit, a lot of times, is gone,” he says. “Too many people, a lot of the time, competing for waves. In California, there can be a lot of bad attitude in the surf. Here, I’ve noticed that the Southern hospitality is alive and well in the water.”
The waves are smaller here but just as fun. People share waves here more than in California, and the water itself is more hospitable, too. In northern California, it’s too cold to swim and surf without a wetsuit, but the six months of warm water here makes the sea a welcoming enough place for young and old. Like his five-year-old daughter, Gabby, who loves to swim. Or Jack’s 64-year-old mother, whom he invited up last summer and taught to surf.
In his excitement about the surf possibilities here, Jack wanted to teach more people to do it, children and adults alike. He decided to start teaching small groups, “five or six people, maybe.”
Since it was the love of surfing and teaching that motivated Jack more than anything else, he immediately began looking for ways to teach people who’d rarely have the opportunity to get in the water. Some colleagues at St. Mary’s put him in contact with CARE Outreach, an organization dedicated to serving medically fragile kids and teenagers. He says he walked into their office figuring he had three or four surfboards and would do one or two free lessons with a small group. However, the organization’s enthusiasm about his offer bubbled over—and infected him, too.
“Before I even knew it, I had three weeks scheduled with these kids,” he says. “A week of six to twelve year olds, and two weeks with the teens.”
Now he’d need some help. He recruited a colleague and surfing friend from Saint Mary’s, Kevin Murphy. The two of them realized they’d also need more equipment: rash guards and boards and leashes for at least ten people—and insurance. Jack’s small idea was developing into a big business. He had a credit card made with the new business’s name: Indo Jax. And while he was at it, he thought, why not expand their outreach programs? Indo Jax quickly established five weeks of classes for the local chapter of Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, or CHADD.
“We’ve always talked about kids with ADD and ADHD, how surfing could really help them out, give them focus,” Jack says.
Everything was clicking, like his first moments in the second-grade classroom. Carolina Beach was setting up a Welcome Center and Indo Jax offered free lessons to Carolina Beach Parks and Rec. Now, in exchange for operating out of the center, Indo Jax has donated a number of free lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Jack says all the charity work is a way to kick off business for the company. They’ll also be offering weeklong sets of surfing classes to individuals and groups every morning and evening, starting in May.
But it’s also about more than that. The service component will remain a central component in what Indo Jax is all about. Currently Indo Jax is planning a day-long surf-class marathon, with the proceeds benefiting the fight against breast cancer. His financial goals, this summer? To recoup the costs of the equipment he’s bought so far.
“From there, we’ll see,” Jack says. “The money-thing was never a powerful motivator for me.”
This philosophy he credits to Aloha Spirit, and to his Catholic upbringing, which taught him to “give till it hurts.”
But the thing is that surfing never hurts.
“And I’ll be honest. I could not do a free week of, say, hiking,” says Jack. “I simply love being in the water and I simply love teaching people to surf.”
Of course he wants a viable business. “But our main thing is to get people in the water. The thing about surfing,” he says, trailing off, again turning towards the window, “I just wouldn’t equate it with any amount of money. I just love to be there.”
We wrap up our conversation and I let Jack go: to his car, and back to the ocean again.
Learn more about Jack Viorel and his surfing school, Indo Jax, at www.Indojax.com.
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