With the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation considering putting its train through Kakaako, Mother Waldron Park has been mentioned in the news several times recently. But who was the park’s namesake, Margaret Waldron? The answer to that lies in Kakaako.
Kakaako was once a booming residential neighborhood. It had three theaters — Kewalo’s facade still stands, along with the Aloha and Bell theaters — a poi factory, rice mill, laundries, bakeries, stores, a lumber yard, soda works and a soy brewer.
The centerpiece of the community was Pohukaina School, the oldest school on Oahu, on Pohukaina Street, between Keawe and Coral streets. Waldron was a teacher at the school.
Pohukaina School was founded as the Oahu Charity School 180 years ago, in 1833, on King Street where Aliiolani Hale is today. Only one other school — Lahainaluna on Maui, founded in 1831 — is older.
Hawaii residents might be surprised to know that Hawaii had five schools — the other three are Royal School, Punahou and Saint Louis — 15 years before California opened its first school.
Oahu Charity School educated several students from California and even some from Russia. It was the first institution to teach mixed-race children.
In 1874 the school moved to where the Hawaii State Library is today so Aliiolani Hale could be built. The area was then called Pohukaina, meaning "the land is calm, quiet or serene."
Pohukaina School resided there until 1911, when it was again evicted, this time by the new state library. It moved several blocks makai to the then-developing residential neighborhood of Kakaako.
Margaret Waldron was a fourth-grade teacher at Pohukaina School from 1913, when it opened, until she retired 21 years later.
After school, Waldron organized football games, sewing classes and cooking clubs. When she wanted to clear part of the playground of stones, she put a picture of the German Kaiser — our World War I enemy — in a vacant lot across the street and invited the children to throw rocks at it. Soon the park was cleared of stones.
In "Hawaii Chronicles," Bob Dye reports that when Matson, the shipping company, complained that many of the boys who dived for coins thrown by ship passengers at Aloha Tower were naked, Waldron obtained swim trunks and built a changing shack for the "wharf rats," most of whom were her students.
David Tai Loy Ho described her as a big, tough woman of maybe 300 pounds. Naughty kids were sent to the principal, recalled former resident Sam Kapu Sr. Those who were worse were sent to Waldron.
Waldron was an Irish-Hawaiian orphan. The Judd and Castle families raised her. She attended Kawaiahao Seminary (today Mid-Pacific Institute) as a young girl before becoming a teacher.
Waldron was an early proponent of what we today call "paying it forward." She would help anyone willing to help someone else. "When I help someone, I make him promise to pay for it. But they don’t pay me directly. They pay me by promising to do just as much or more for the next person in need."
The children of Pohukaina School gave her a pin that said "Mother" for her 50th birthday in 1923. She wore it every day for the rest of her life, Dye writes. As she was dying in the hospital in 1936, huge throngs of people of all races came to pay their respects to "Mama." Many now call her the "patron saint" of Kakaako.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the population of Kakaako declined, and small businesses moved in. Pohukaina School’s enrollment dropped. By 1966 the school was nearly empty, and the DOE moved it to the Kahala area where it educates special-needs children.
By the 1990s Kakaako had become an industrial area with more than 1,000 companies employing more than 20,000 people — 8 percent of Oahu’s workforce. If planners have their way, it may soon revert to being a residential community.
Mother Waldron Park occupies much of the area Diamond Head of where the school once was. It opened in 1937 at a cost of $50,000 and was considered to be the most modern in the state. You wouldn’t know that looking at it today.
Bob Sigall is the author of "The Companies We Keep" books. His third book is now available in the Amazon Kindle store. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
