Summer Courtship : Richmond Goes ‘Home’ to Tahiti, Receives Proposals and a Spot on Volleyball Team

Dear Bro:

Hi! How was your summer? Mine was pretty good. I spent a lot of time at the beach and fell in love with a lifeguard. I almost pretended to drown so that he would rescue me. It never happened. Forgot to put on sunblock a couple days ago and it hurts.

Anyway, didn’t do much except hang out at that new club in Hollywood. Even saw Brian Austin Green. I thought about approaching him. It never happened.

All right, I’m off to peel some skin. Miss you, see you soon.

Love, Cindi.

Dear Cindi:

Great to hear from you! My summer was pretty interesting. Worked out with a Tahitian all-star volleyball team. Got up close to six-foot sharks. Swam on a beach that had the blackest sand and clearest water imaginable. Had an encounter with a manta ray that will be with me forever. Even met a few women who asked for my hand in marriage.

The best part was when a band of kids swarmed me for an autograph. I signed everything from shirts to socks. Got my picture in the paper and I’m not even famous. Crazy, but it happened.

OK, gotta go. I’ll give you details later.

Love, Bro.

Bro Richmond can relax. Summer vacation has ended.

The whirlwind tour that was the Summer of 1996 probably made Richmond feel like a rock star. Or a member of the Dream Team.

The journey began shortly after his graduation from Notre Dame High, where he was an All-Mission League outside hitter. When it ended, he was closer to his next athletic stop, the Cal State Northridge men’s volleyball team, and wiser.

The destination was Tahiti, where he spent quality time with a celebrity . . . his father.

Branscombe Richmond is a regular on the TV show “Renegade,” or as it’s known in French-speaking Tahiti, “Le Rebelle.” When the Richmond family touched down at the airport, the autograph seekers were there, tipped off by seemingly innocent interviews Branscombe did for a Tahitian TV station and a magazine.

The natives came en masse to see Branscombe, one of the few Tahitians who have scored in America.

Put it this way, says Bro, who is part Tahitian, part Aleut Indian and part Hawaiian: “You never hear of any Tahitians who have come to the mainland and survived, let alone become an actor and speak perfect English. My dad’s respected for taking a chance. And they really liked that he was bringing his kids back to the islands.”

The kids included Bro, two brothers and sister. They were treated like adults. Royal adults.

After the initial shock of the airport audience--”They just wanted to shake my hand, and I’m nobody,” Bro said--and a group photo that made the front page of La Depeche de Tahiti, Bro had a pretty good idea of what was in store.

His meals were amazing, as was their preparation. At one luau, family members respectfully bathed the carcass of a freshly-killed calf in the ocean before serving it. Within an hour, sharks closed in on the scent of blood at the pier. One of the family members daringly kept the sharks at bay by diving into the water and thrashing about. The predators weren’t happy. No free meal that night.

Any fish Bro ate were relative newcomers to dry land. They were always caught only a few hours earlier. “[Our hosts] wanted us to have a presentable meal,” he said. “They wanted us to enjoy. A way of love is to feed people.”

Consider the Richmonds well-loved and well-connected. Even in Tahiti, who you know is sometimes more important than what you know.

Father introduced son to Alex Drollet, coach of a Tahitian all-star volleyball team. Most of Drollet’s players will represent Tahiti in the 1998 South Pacific Games.

Through an interpreter--Bro doesn’t speak French, Drollet doesn’t speak English--an invitation was extended to practice with the team. Bro accepted and soon found himself scrimmaging in a gymnasium without a roof, common in tropical climates but a novel concept to Bro.

“The ball had a different lift to it,” Bro said. “It would catch air and just drop or rise.”

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The level of play wasn’t much of a barrier. The language was.

Said Bro: “Drollet would run plays and I’d have no idea what was going on. It was so hard to translate because I’d do something and I’d use my hands to try to talk to them.”

The Tahitians’ jumping ability was uncanny, strengthened by years of playing in the sand. Their on-court strategy was a little unorthodox. They didn’t take a three-step approach for their attack, which stole from their explosiveness.

After the first practice, Bro gave a few off-the-cuff suggestions to Drollet. Bro’s cousin, fluent in French and somewhat capable in English, helped with the translation. Only a little pantomiming was necessary.

“You kind of know what you’re talking about,” said Drollet, who put Richmond’s words into action at the next practice. He asked Bro to give the team’s setter a tip or two.

Whether Richmond plays for Tahiti in 1998 is undecided. It would make sense if he did. One of his goals is to begin a Tahitian business with his father.

“If I go there and I play for their team--let alone that I’m Branscombe Richmond’s son--it would give me an opportunity to do something in Tahiti,” he said. “It would open up a lot of doors.”

And increase his burgeoning popularity. Several Tahitian women have already discovered Bro and, in a few nightclubs, he was asked to get married.

“In Tahiti, you have kids when you’re young and your family helps take care of them,” he said. That’s just the way it is.”

Bro politely declined all matrimonial requests, but was more receptive to another mode of Tahitian life.

He got a tattoo.

In a ring around his right biceps are a manta ray, a turtle, a fisherman and the currents of the ocean.

“It means a lot to the Tahitians,” he said. “It’s a sign of manhood, a picture of who you are and who you want to be. It’s a tradition with a lot of meaning, a lot of power.”

The ray represents his brother, Fairai, whose name means “manta ray of the heavens.” The turtle represents strength and is the Tahitian equivalent of the eagle.

The fisherman, who represents wisdom and patience in Tahiti, is also an important inscription.

“A fisherman has all the answers because he’s out on the water and has a lot of time to think,” Bro said.

“You must have wisdom to know where all the fish are and to know the tides. You have to read the birds, the sun, the currents, the reefs, the stars.”

The summer heat soon will weaken, but Bro Richmond feels stronger.

“You couldn’t ask for more than what I did this summer,” Bro said. “It’s one thing to hear about it, it’s another thing when you experience it. I’ll keep it with me forever.

“It’s a big reason why I got the tattoo. It will always remind me of the summer of ’96.”