Couple fosters community and fellowship in Waialua

Lincoln and Kuulei Barit have been raising kids in Waialua for more than 30 years, both their own five children and any others who come their way.

At one point, three of their sons played football at three different high schools. On weekends, the boys would invite their friends out to the North Shore. Sometimes, Lincoln would come home from his job at Hawaiian Electric or his other job as head football coach at Waialua High School, and find members of the Kamehameha football team, the Saint Louis football team and the ‘Iolani football team, all friends under his roof.

“I would tell them, ‘Stay over here and sleep. Don’t drive home. Too far. Auntie will make you breakfast in the morning.’”

The sleepovers would include at least 30 boys, take up every inch of their house and spill out into the yard. In the morning, Kuulei said she would “just make musubis like crazy.”

The man who has served as a father figure for generations of young boys in this old plantation town started off as a notorious problem child.

The wild ways of his youth were so memorable that even now, 36 years after high school, retired Waialua Principal Gordon Kuwada was moved to write Lincoln a letter commending him for turning his life around. “Imagine, you grew up from being a ‘kolohe’ boy in high school and emerged into an upstanding community and school leader, citizen and parent. You are a role model worthy of emulation,” Kuwada wrote.

The letter arrived this month. Kuulei keeps it in her purse like it’s an award. Mr. Kuwada was a tough man in high school. His letter means something. It means everything. It validates what she has witnessed over 29 years of marriage.

Football helped save him.

Born to a father who emigrated from the Philippines and a mother who emigrated from Samoa, Lincoln has fond stories of his Waialua childhood. Somehow, though, he could not keep himself out of trouble.

“He was rough,” Kuulei said. He was in the Waialua class of 1979 while she was in the class of 1982. They’ve known each other almost their whole lives. “He just looked like someone people wanted to fight.”

Principal Kuwada called Lincoln into the office for many heart-to-heart talks and finally steered him toward football. When Waialua coach Homer Keanu made him a linebacker, Lincoln found an outlet for his aggression.

“I started to play football. I started to love it. In football, I could hit somebody legally.”

In many ways, he never left the school. His first job after graduation was as a security guard on campus. When he became a welder at Waialua Sugar, he made weights for the school’s weight room. The house he inherited is two minutes away from the campus. He has coached football at Waialua for 30 years, the last 13 as head coach.

When his children were growing up, though, he missed many of their games. Only one played for Waialua, and though his wife asked if he wanted to live “every father’s dream” and have all his sons play on his team, he said he wanted them to have the experience of playing for other coaches and studying at college-prep schools.

He tried to drive around to catch the last few minutes of his sons’ games, but usually, he was coaching other people’s sons. He would ask Kuulei to video their boys’ games, but she didn’t like that assignment.

“If I’m holding the video, I can’t enjoy the game,” she said.

“I would come home at midnight to watch Kuulei’s video of my son’s game,” Barit said. “The camera would stay in the same place while her head moved to watch the play. I couldn’t see anything.”

The boys all played linebacker like their father. Their oldest son is 33 now. Their youngest is 26. Their four sons and one daughter all went to college and are on their own paths. Sometimes, the house seems too quiet. But during summer vacation and Christmas break, their eight grandchildren stay with them, and the house is noisy and crowded and wonderful.

“I take my grandsons down to the high school, teach them their football stances,” Lincoln said.

His sons help coach with him at Waialua. His family ended up on the same team.

But really, all the boys who suit up for Waialua and all the men who yell encouragement from the sidelines — they’re all his family. They’re Kuulei’s, too.

“All coaches will tell you, without your wife’s support, you’re nothing,” Lincoln said.

Kuulei does all the team paperwork, organizes postgame potlucks, orders T-shirts, plans trips and runs fundraisers. On the first home game of the season, she always makes dinner for both teams so the Waialua boys can get to know their opponents.

“To me, if there’s fellowship with the other team, when they see each other out in Pearlridge or wherever, it’s going to be, ‘Hey! I know that guy!’ not eyeing each other up for a fight,” Lincoln said. “No need enemies in the world. The outside world get enough enemies.”

Kuulei has two rice cookers in her kitchen that are so big, each can handle a 20-pound bag of rice. She stays up nights wrapping hundreds of laulaus or shredding pork butt into kalua pig. She likes to feed a crowd. One of her favorite stories is when six motorcycle cops showed up at a team fundraiser. “I thought, ‘Oh, no!’ and I went up to them to ask what was wrong. They said they heard we had the best pastele stew for sale, so they came all the way from town to buy.”

She works full time as a materials handler at the Marine Corps base in Kaneohe, which means, she explained, “I drive all day.” It’s pretty close to what she does at home to handle everyone’s schedule and feed anyone who stops by.

The Barits hold on to as much of the old-fashioned Waialua lifestyle as they can in a town struggling to find an identity after the death of the sugar plantation and the imposition of the tourism industry.

“Used to be, if you’re trying to hitchhike, one car would come by every 15 minutes. Now, it’s every 15 seconds, at least,” Lincoln said.

The bones of the sugar mill are still in the middle of town, and though the old buildings are home to a clutch of charming shops and businesses, there just aren’t as many jobs.

“When Mililani plays, I look at the roster and go, ‘Eh, that’s da kine’s son!’ I recognize a lot of the Waialua names. So many people moved closer to jobs. No more jobs here,” Lincoln said. So many things have changed since he was a child. “You don’t see kids playing in the yard anymore. They’re stuck inside on the iPad.”

But football, fellowship, family — those things are still important to the town.

We have been talking for a while and we’re starting to say our good nights when Lincoln says, “I have one more story.”

It’s about a boy who played for him who always seemed to be hanging around. At the end of one practice, the boy sat alone long after the rest of the players were gone. Lincoln offered to sit with him while he waited for his parents. It got later, and finally Lincoln told the kid just to come home with him, call his father, tell him to pick him up at the Barits’ house.

“Auntie Kuulei will feed you dinner,” Lincoln told him. The kid gladly accepted, and Kuulei, never caught off-guard by another mouth to feed, welcomed the boy to her table.

But no one came to pick him up. The kid finally made an excuse, saying someone was going to meet him down the road, and he ran off into the night. Lincoln started watching the boy more closely, and eventually called him in for a heart-to-heart talk, like Mr. Kuwada had done for him when he was in high school. The boy opened up, told him that his father was often drunk and always angry, and admitted that he didn’t want to go home.

Lincoln gave him some advice: “Next time your father gets like that, just grab him. Hug him. Hold him tight and don’t let go. And tell him, ‘Dad, I love you. I love you. I love you.’ Just try. Just give it a try.”

A few days passed, and the boy came back and told him what happened. “I did what you said,” he told Lincoln. “It worked.”

Lincoln beams as he tells this story, though it seems improbable at best and risky at worst. How could he have thought this would work?

“Because that’s what changed my life,” he said. “I used to drink, yell, get angry, and one day, my oldest son — he was in elementary school at the time — he held me like that and said to me, ‘Daddy, I love you. I love you.’ And I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ I was 26 years old and I stopped drinking right there.” He got counseling from his pastor to help his decision stick, but it was his son’s love that broke through the haze. “It’s been 26 years since that moment and I have never had a drink since.”

Kuulei nods in affirmation. She witnessed that, too.

When school starts back this month, Lincoln will call his returning players to the weight room to start training for the next year. This past season was a good one for the Waialua Bulldogs. “We made the playoffs,” Lincoln said. “We were on TV.”

Waialua is not known as a football powerhouse. Enrollment is small — around 700 students from grades seven to 12. There’s no recruiting and not much to choose from.

“What we get is what we gotta use,” Lincoln said.

The school now boasts one player who made it to the NFL — Micah Hatchie, who graduated in 2009, went to the University of Washington and is now with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He is a source of Waialua pride.

But the Barits’ main goal isn’t to create great football players. It’s to raise good kids.

“I tell my coaches, what we’re doing is like pottery,” Lincoln said. “You know, when you get the clay, put it on the wheel, work with it and shape it. If the thing cracks or collapses, we have to smash it down and build it up again. That’s how we work with the kids. Other schools, the kids they get are already glazed and ready for the shelf. We have to build ours up.”

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