Tale from the past haunts Fawcett on cemetery tour

By Ben Wood

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Nov 09, 2012

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IT WAS a dark and spooky night when Catherine Cruz took some 40 friends, including Denby Fawcett and her husband, Bob Jones, on a pre-Halloween tour of Oahu Cemetery Oct. 27, led by cemetery historian Nanette Napoleon. At some graves, actors played the parts of the dead or their killers. Denby said that when she was growing up, one of her best friends lived near the cemetery. When they were about 12, they used to hang out there, checking out graves and pondering about the dead people, especially young ones their age. "Our other cherished cemetery activity was stealing red carnation leis off the graves," she said. "In the 1950s, there was no better lei than a double red carnation. We would wear the leis to school, enjoying the jealousy and admiration of our friends who assumed the leis were given to us by our boyfriends, of which at the time, we had none." Fast-forward: "Anyway, on the tour, we walked through the graves with our flashlights. Our third stop was the grave of James McKee, an early sea captain. On McKee's large black gravestone was a red carnation lei. Then Nanette said, ‘Long ago, some Punahou students used to swipe leis off graves here to wear to school. One such Punahou thief is on our cemetery tour. Does she dare announce herself?'" Nanette revealed Denby's name, picked the lei off McKee's grave and gave it to her with a hug and a kiss. "Turns out, Catherine had bought the lei in Chinatown to play the joke on me," Denby said. …
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