Ninety-year-old Joe Lukela III walked up to the sign bearing his grandfather’s name and it was like everyone gathered at the beach felt it at the same time. Some sighed, some wiped away tears. Something happened.

For seven years, descendants of Joe Lukela, along with the people of the Maunalua Fishpond Heritage Center and Maunalua.net, worked to get the small beach park next to the second bridge in Hawaii Kai named after the man who took care of the bay for more than 50 years.

Joe Lukela, born in 1879, was konohiki — holder of the fishing rights in the Hawaiian system of resource management — for Maunalua Bay. He had a small green fishing shack near the mouth of the inlet into Kuapa Pond. Lukela was highly skilled as a fisherman and a conservationist.

He made sure no poachers got into the bay. He could tell when schools of akule were running.

He opened the gates into what was then the fishpond so that the mullet, smelling the fresh water, would swarm in. There, the fish would rest and reproduce before going back out to sea.

Because he knew the area so well, when Lukela went out to fish, he would come home with a boat half-sunk with the weight of his catch. He would take his catch to sell in town, but on the way, would often give fish to families who lived in the area. Lukela died in 1966.

On Saturday, those who had spent years researching, gathering stories and tracking the resolution to rename the park through the city processes gathered to celebrate the victory and talk about its significance.

Sandra Park, great-granddaughter of Lukela, hosted the event. “In these uncertain times, it is fitting to look to our past to guide us and remind us what is truly important in life,” she said.

“There’s power when you say somebody’s name,” said AnnMarie Kirk, who worked with Park on the research of the area. “People didn’t say the name Lukela for a long time. But the more we learned about him, the more we said his name, the more mana and stories came out.”

Eighty-eight-year-old George Tsukazaki contacted Kirk because he had memories of Lukela from his childhood that he wanted to share. “We used to call him Joe Limu. He would come to the house and trade limu for rice,” Tsukazaki said. That was in the 1930s, and in those days, rice only came in 100-pound bags, he explained.

There were so many stories of Lukela, a solitary man, an unyielding protector, a true steward of a great resource.

In September 2015, the Honolulu City Council voted to put up a plaque for Joe Lukela near the site of his shack. This April, the Council voted to rename the park.

“The sign is small but the ideas are big, and ideas can change the world,” Kirk said.

Ian Kekaimalu Lee, great-great-grandson of Lukela, was navigator on the sailing canoe Hikianalia on the most recent trip from Tahiti to Hawaii. It was his first time as solo navigator. At the beach where his great-great-grandfather had so carefully managed the ocean resources and navigated the currents between man and nature, Lee gave a prayer blessing the celebration.

“I didn’t know all of this growing up, though I knew about Lukela’s pier and that those posts in the water were where his pier was,” Lee said. “Even though there’s been a break in the chain of his kind of knowledge, we’re the new link.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.