This is my 200th column for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, so this week I thought I’d share some of the stories readers have told me or answer some of their recent questions.
Pamela DeBoard wrote to me regarding my column last week about KPOI, Tom Rounds and the Wake-a-Thon in the Wigwam department store window.
"My father, Harold Litsey, was the vice president of Wigwam from 1958, when the store opened, until 1967," she said. "He passed away in 2013 at the age of 91.
"In his last days he often referred to Wigwam and Tom Rounds’ Wake-a-Thon. Dad was looking for a gimmick to put Wigwam on the map, and talked like those few days of the Wake-a-Thon were among his most memorable times with Wigwam. Thank you for writing about it and bringing back memories."
She said she would always be grateful to Wigwam because it moved her family from Seattle to Honolulu. "I was 9 years old. What a wonderful life I have had!"
Do any of my readers have Wigwam stories?
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Gary Watanabe emailed recently and inquired about Hilo Airport. Why was it named General Lyman Field? he wanted to know.
Hilo’s airport began as a landing strip that was cleared by prison camp inmates in 1928. In 1943 it was named for Gen. Albert Kuali‘i Brickwood Lyman, the first U.S. general of Hawaiian ancestry.
Lyman and his 15 siblings were born on the Hamakua coast of Hawaii island. They could trace their ancestry to high chief Kuali‘i of Oahu and to New England Protestant missionaries David and Sarah Lyman.
As a colonel at Schofield Barracks, Albert Lyman was promoted to brigadier general on Aug. 11, 1942, but died two days later. The main passenger terminal at Hilo Airport was named in his honor in 1943.
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Mark Maddox asked me how College Walk got its name. "I know it’s now a pedestrian walk and the old Toyo Theatre used to be located on it, but is there more history to its name and location?"
There is. College Walk was named for Saint Louis College, which was on the Ewa bank of Nuuanu Stream from 1883 until the 1920s.
Now called Saint Louis School, it began in 1846 in the Temple Valley part of Windward Oahu as Ahuimanu College.
In 1881 it moved to downtown Honolulu, on Beretania Street next to Washington Place. It moved again two years later to the banks of Nuuanu Stream. Its last move was in the 1920s to its current location in Kaimuki.
Father Damien de Veuster, now Saint Damien, studied to become a priest when the school still was Ahuimanu College. Gov. John Burns and Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota also are Saint Louis graduates.
Saint Louis was named for King Louis IX of France, who was the patron saint of Honolulu Bishop Louis Maigret.
Toyo Theatre was open from 1938 to 1988. It was designed by famed architect Charles W. Dickey and could seat 1,000. He was inspired by the Ieyasu Shrine in Nikko, Japan. I recall it having an arched bridge over a koi pond. Inside were paintings of samurai in battle.
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I talked to Charlie Ross about Elvis Presley and the Arizona Memorial last week. She had something eye-opening to tell me.
I knew that Elvis played a key role in raising the money to build the Arizona Memorial. For 10 years a commission struggled to raise enough money to build the memorial.
"It was only when Elvis and Col. (Tom) Parker agreed to come to Hawaii to do a benefit concert that enough money was raised," Ross said.
The concert was Elvis’ first after leaving the Army and was held at Bloch Arena at Pearl Harbor. Elvis and Parker paid all the expenses out of their own pockets. The event raised more than $64,000 and increased publicity and involvement in the project.
What I didn’t know was that the Navy erected a proclamation thanking Elvis and the others who had raised the money to build the memorial in 1962. But when the Park Service took over administration of the memorial in 1980, the proclamation was removed.
Ross urged the Park Service to restore the proclamation or something similar to a place of visibility at the shoreline Visitor Center.
I checked with Michael Lilly, who helped bring the USS Missouri to Hawaii. He told me the Missouri does have such a plaque in the ship’s wardroom, and another one is also planned as well. I wonder why the Arizona Memorial doesn’t do the same. Calls to the Park Service were not returned.
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Codie Lee Fung thanked me for writing about golfer Codie Austin-Cooke, her namesake. Fung was born the same year — 1934 — that Austin-Cooke won her first Territorial Women’s Championship. She told me she didn’t know the name was inspired by Buffalo Bill Cody until my article earlier this month.
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. His fourth book came out in November. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
