Duke was most at home in Hawaii, among his family and friends and close to the ocean he loved. He spoke Hawaiian, he loved hula and he embodied Hawaii's spirit of aloha.

“He was concerned about everybody, especially the guys who were working the beach. He knew it wasn't easy, that you had to have a special type of talent," said former Waikiki beachboy George Downing.

"Mahope a’ole wala’ua," Duke would say. "After, Don’t talk keep it in your heart."

"Out of the water I am nothing"
— Duke

Waterman with enormous charm, good humor and musical genius

"The ocean was such a familiar, friendly environment for him. He was no more afraid of what might happen to him at sea than you or I would be of getting hit by a car crossing the street. The ocean was his home." Recalled Kenneth Brown, a prominent part-Hawaiian who sailed the turbulent inter-island channels with Duke

"His values came from the sea. He walked through a Western world, but he was always essentially Hawaiian. And because of the simplicity and purity of that value system, money was never that important to him."
— Kenneth Brown

"He had an inner tranquillity. It was as if he knew something we didn’t know. He had a tremendous amount of simple integrity. Unassailable integrity. You rarely meet people who don’t have some persona they assume, to cope with things. But Duke was completely transparent. No phoniness. People could say to you that Duke was simple, the bugga must be dumb! No way. That’s an easy way of explaining that. Duke was totally without guile. He knew a lot of things. He just knew ‘em."
— Kenneth Brown

He set a good example. He didn’t drink or smoke and if he did get into a fight, it was after being hassled, and even then he would not punch, preferring to slap, instead. He seldom raised his voice. He used his eyes to communicate what he didn’t vocalize.

For decades he served as a Honolulu city greeter and escort. Babe Ruth, Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Groucho Marx, Prince Edward, Arthur Godfrey, and President Kennedy all were met and squired by Kahanamoku when visiting Hawaii, and all were touched by his gracious, playful, definitive aloha style. When the British Queen Mother arrived in Honolulu in 1966, she accepted a flower lei from the white-haired surfer as Hawaiian music played in the background, and moments later the two began an impromptu hula."

"Long before his days as a competitive athlete were over," Timmons wrote, "Duke stepped gratefully into the role of being Hawaii’s unofficial ambassador. Whenever there was a famous person in town a movie star, a king, or the President, Duke would always take him for an outrigger canoe ride."

Rabbit Kekai talking about learning the finer points of paddling from Duke: "He taught me how to get the inside lane when we paddle. He’s smart and he taught me a lot of different moves so when you turn, the inside guy don’t get by, like the racetrack. The outside guy gotta swing wide, by the time you swing wide, you are left behind. That old man was smart. He knew all the angles and everything. From outside you get a shorter distance to cut in. So I did that on him, I pulled his own trick! I turned inside and I had the run going inside. When he came out wide. I beat him by half a boat." "Well, that day when I went up and got the trophy and brought my crew up," Rabbit answered, "all six Kahanamoku brothers lined up and shook my hand

Up until 1950, when he turned sixty, he was Waikiki’s best canoe steersman.

Kahanamoku exemplified sportsmanship and kindness, to the point of even encouraging those competing against him. “This bloke, this old guy, he taught me how to beat him,” said Johnny Weissmuller in 1951. He competed against Kahanamoku, then 34, at the 1924 Olympics and went on to fame as the best-known movie Tarzan. He later recounted Kahanmoku’s words on the Olympic starting block: ”The most important thing in this race is to get the American flag up there three times.” That year, Weissmuller took the gold, Kahanamoku the silver, and Duke’s bother, Sam, the bronze.

"He represented the image of 'aloha,' " says Steve Pezman, publisher of Surfer's Journal magazine, explaining that "aloha" stands for the spirit of kindness and sharing for which Hawaiians are known. "He traveled the world and introduced that concept to other cultures. He was in many ways pure of heart a very simple, loving person who had this huge bunch of charisma that became commodified by everyone around him."

Tom Blake and Duke