Fun and Games at Coconut Isle Wind Up Governors Conference

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.

Coconut Island in Kaneohe was a spectacular setting yesterday for a gay picnic for the Nation’s governors, their wives, children, and staff aides.

In all there were more than 500 picnickers.

With business sessions over, the chief executives were to be free today for 18 holes of golf.

The children of the governors could not have had any more fun than the governors themselves, although the state heads did not arrive at the "millionaire’s retreat" until almost three hours after everyone else.

The governors were scheduled to leave the Royal Hawaiian Hotel for the sun fun shortly after noon but an unexpected prolonged discussion during their morning business session delayed their departure.

Nearly every governor and official members of his party went to the plush resort.

Navy crash boats shuttled the visitors to and from the island beginning at the Kaneohe Marine Corp Air Station. Water skiers welcomed the guests with aquatic stunts at both the Kaneohe and Coconut Island landing points.

Vice-President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson were the last to arrive. They came by a special "admiral’s barge."

… Greeting the Vice-President, governors and other guests were two of Coconut Island’s owners, Edwin Pauley, California oil man, and Troy V. Post, a financier of Dallas, Texas.

Other owners of the swank resort, though not present, are Allen Chase, Samuel Moser, and Poncet Davis.

Gayest among the governor arrivals was California’s Edmund (Pat) Brown. Mrs. Brown, demure and quiet, had arrived two hours before her husband.

The guests, including the wives of many of the governors, enjoyed swimming, boating and sunbathing in an oceanside, salt-water pool.

While they frolicked 25 caterers served them amid the music of 15 singers.

Scattered in the crowd were more than a dozen Honolulu detectives and policemen clad in aloha shirts.

Sharing lunch at one table were the Vice-President and Mrs. Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Brown, Governor and Mrs. Wesley Powell of New Hampshire, Mr. and Mrs. Pauley, and Governor and Mrs. William F. Quinn.