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The Honolulu Shriners Hospital for Children is celebrating its 90th anniversary this month. You’ve driven past it a thousand times on Punahou Street if you live on Oahu, but you might not know its interesting history.
"We work miracles here," says Bruce Holmberg of the Honolulu Shriners. Holmberg showed me, as an example, a young girl whose right leg curved six inches inward. At Shriners the doctors broke the bad leg, moved a bone from her good leg and grafted it to her right leg. After a while both legs became strong and straight.
"We’ve helped over 30,000 similar children in our 90 years," Holmberg says, from all over the state and the Pacific. At no charge to the family, Shriners flies the families in and houses them on their campus.
Shriners Hospital performs roughly 600 surgeries a year and sees 8,000 outpatients.
Kelly Yang of Guam says that without Shriners Hospital she would not be the young woman she is today. Growing up with cerebral palsy and spastic diplegia made walking difficult.
"I could never walk with my feet flat on the ground, so I resorted to crawling instead. I had to rely on my parents for everything." Surgery at Shriners Hospital set her free, she says.
Jordan Yarka came to Shriners in 2010 from American Samoa. A soccer injury had led to a bone infection. His leg bowed, making it shorter than the other. Two surgeries and seven months later, Jordan has a straight leg and no longer limps.
The Shriners are a subgroup of Freemasons — a fraternal order that wanted to be of service to the community. The group dates to 1870 and today numbers more than 300,000.
One of its founders attended a musical comedy about the Arab world and was inspired to suggest the group adopt a Middle Eastern theme. Its members agreed. Since then they have worn red fezzes — Moroccan hats — and have titles like imperial potentate, but there is no connection to Islam. King Kalakaua and Duke Kahanamoku were both Shriners.
In 1922 they opened the first Shriners Hospital for Children in Shreveport, La. They offered free medical care to children under 18 with orthopedic injuries, diseases, burns, spinal cord issues, cleft lips and palates. There are now 22 Shriners Hospitals in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Interestingly, their second hospital was in the Territory of Hawaii. James McCandless, who made his fortune drilling artesian wells in Hawaii, became head of the Shriners, and when they decided to open more hospitals, he made sure the next one was in Honolulu.
It opened in 1923, 90 years ago, originally as a ward of Kauikeolani Children’s Hospital on Kuakini Street in Liliha.
Kauikeolani Children’s Hospital, to digress for a moment, had been founded in 1909 by Dr. James Robert Judd, Sanford Dole and others who found out Hawaii’s infant mortality rate was nearly 20 percent. Another 20 percent died by age 5.
The group was appalled and set out to create the first hospital in Hawaii — and one of the first in the world — to focus on children.
It was named for Emma Kauikeolani, the wife of Albert Spencer Wilcox of Kauai, who donated $50,000 to the cause. Albert’s younger brother, George, and his wife, Dora Isenberg, would found Wilcox Hospital in 1938.
Shriners Hospital was outgrowing its space in Children’s Hospital and needed larger quarters. John and Wilhelmine Dowsett, who had been in the sugar business, both died in 1929. Their family donated their mansion on Punahou Street to the Shriners in 1930.
Shriners Hospital has expanded the site several times, culminating in 2010 with the unveiling of a state-of-the-art facility that cost $73 million and measures 138,000 square feet.
In 1976 Kauikeolani Children’s Hospital and Kapiolani Maternity Home merged and moved to their current Punahou Street location, across the street from Shriners.
John Keene, vice president for development at Shriners, says that they are having a 90th-birthday party Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the hospital.
There will be educational games, free food, face painting, demonstrations and entertainment. The public is invited to attend.
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Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
CORRECTION: Dr. James Robert Judd and others founded the Kauikeolani Children’s Hospital. An earlier version of this story and the story in the print edition reported that the hospital was co-founded by Judd’s grandfather, Dr. Gerrit Judd.
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COURTESY SHRINERS HOSPITAL / 1923