I’m approaching my 250th Rearview Mirror column (Jan. 15), and one of the things I love about this job is all the interesting discoveries I come across during my research.
Since this is the end of the year, I thought I’d review some of those discoveries this week and next. On Jan. 8, I plan to give “awards” to the best Rearview Mirror stories and people of 2015. I invite my readers to nominate their favorites.
My mission is to find interesting stories about Hawaii’s people, places and organizations, and present them to my readers.
Many of the stories I find surprise me too. For instance, I was amazed to discover that Hale Kipa, the nonprofit that helps troubled youth, got a call from Steve Jobs in the early 1980s. Jobs offered them five free Apple II computers, and flew five of the organization’s staffers to Cupertino, Calif., for all-expenses-paid training.
Hale Kipa CEO Sam Cox recalled Jobs wore sloppy jeans and a T-shirt, and he thought the Apple founder looked like one of Hale Kipa’s runaway kids.
Cox said, “One thing I remember him saying, is that some day, every village in the world will have a computer and when we do that, we will have information exchanges that no dictator will be able to censor, and we’ll have world peace.”
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Another thing I learned this year is that Hawaii played a pivotal role in Mark Twain’s career.
I knew Twain had come to the islands in 1866, but I had no idea that he was just 30 at the time. He was still years from publishing “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876) and “Huckleberry Finn” (1885).
Twain was just a promising young man when he began writing about Hawaii for the Sacramento Union newspaper.
When he returned to San Francisco, he decided to lecture about his time in Hawaii. For over 75 minutes, Twain brought the faraway islands to life. The audience listened, laughed and cheered.
He earned the equivalent of over $6,000 in today’s dollars for his first speech. In the next few months, Twain gave over 100 talks about Hawaii. It was great publicity for the kingdom, but more importantly for Twain, it got his career on track. He had found his voice.
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Another surprise for me this year was finding that a Confederate flag had been sewn for Curtis Perry Ward, a lonely southern gentleman from Kentucky.
The seamstress was none other than Princess Lydia Kamakaeha Paki, who would one day be Queen Liliuokalani.
Ward was so happy with it that he put the flag over his bed and slept under it. All his children, after he married Victoria Ward, were born under it as well.
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With President Obama and family visiting Hawaii this Christmas, I thought I’d mention my May 8 column on Lanikai and the Mid-Pacific Country Club. President Obama often plays golf there.
I was surprised to find out several things about the area. First, the two were built together by the same man, Charles Frazier.
Mid-Pacific Country Club was originally named the Kailua Country Club and was built to help sell homes in what Frazier called the “Lanikai Crescent.”
Furthermore, “Lanikai” is not how Hawaiians would name a place, former Honolulu Advertiser columnist Wade Shirkey told me.
“It’s backwards,” the former kumu hula at Kawaiahao Church says. “In Hawaiian, the modifier – lani – should follow the noun – kai. ‘Lanikai’ should more accurately be ‘Kailani.’
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Chris McKenzie told me about his father, Robert, who was a captain for Matson for many years. I knew that the Matson ships were taken over by the military during World War II, but I had no idea the SS Monterey rescued 1,675 Canadian medical personnel when Germans sunk their ship, the Santa Elena.
On the night of Nov. 6, 1943, the Monterey was carrying U.S. troops in a convoy of 23 ships and 14 escort vessels in the Mediterranean when they were attacked by German planes.
Several ships were struck and started to sink, including the Santa Elena. Robert McKenzie and the SS Monterey launched a rescue. They saved 1,675 Canadian doctors, dentists, nurses and other medical personnel. Only four lives were lost.
It is, to this day, the greatest sea rescue in history.
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So you see, I’m learning too. That’s part of the fun of writing this column. If you missed any of these stories, the full articles can be found in the paper’s online archives.
Next week, I’ll have more interesting stories from 2015. If you want to nominate your favorite Rearview Mirror story for my 2015 awards column please send me an email.
I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas.
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.
