It began innocently enough. In a column a few months ago about remnants, I mentioned that if I gave out historical preservation awards, I’d surely give one to the people who kept the McCully Chop Sui sign and the Club Hubba Hubba sign up and lit.
My editor, David Butts, suggested I really should give out annual awards for the best stories and people in my column. I gave it some thought and came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea.
Why not give a victory lap to some of the people who did great things? So here then are my Rearview Mirror 2015 Awards.
The Rearview Mirror 2015 Humanitarian Award goes to Earl M. Finch, whom I wrote about three times this past year.
Finch is the man who befriended thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry in 1943 Mississippi. While townspeople shunned or insulted them, Finch waved his hat and shouted “welcome.”
When he found that they weren’t allowed in the USO, he created one just for them. He threw parties and took them on trips to New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
He organized a baseball team (it won the championship) and a swimming team (it won four Southern Amateur Athletic Championship races), and a hula troupe that traveled 35,000 miles and performed for 25,000 wounded GIs.
More than 1,500 of them asked him to be the executor of their estates should they die, and in 1944 he traveled over 75,000 miles visiting wounded soldiers or their families, if they had been killed.
All of this was on his own dime.
After the war, soldiers from the 100th, 442nd and MIS teams brought him to Hawaii where he was given a hero’s welcome. He traveled to five islands and had luau and parties with more than 25,000 people.
Finch moved to Hawaii and went into business with Tom Moffatt and Ralph Yempuku, putting on 34 “Your Show of Stars,” the first series of rock ’n’ roll concerts in Hawaii.
Finch died Aug. 25, 1965, at the age of 49, a shock to all. But he sure packed a lot into those years, and for that I give him the Rearview Mirror 2015 Humanitarian Award.
My Rearview Mirror 2015 Community Leader Award goes to Sam Cooke, who died in December. He was 78.
Sam was a descendent of missionaries Amos and Juliette Cooke and grew up on Molokai and Oahu.
“Sam was a longtime chair and board member of the Hawaii Community Foundation,” says current CEO Kevin Taketa. “He was the founding chairman of The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii and raised more than $15 million for its programs and projects.”
He played a pivotal role in the merger of the Contemporary Museum with the then Honolulu Academy of Arts, founded by his great-grandmother Anna Rice Cooke.
Sam was a great storyteller. He told me stories about three of the pieces in the museum, and I wrote about them in my column.
One concerned how James Michener, who wrote the best-selling book “Hawaii,” came to donate his 5,000-piece collection of Japanese woodblock prints to the Honolulu Museum of Art instead of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Michener went to New York to arrange for this gift to the museum. Driving into the city, he got lost, Cooke said. “He asked a New York policeman for directions.”
The cop was curt. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.” He sped off. Michener was livid.
He came back to Hawaii and got lost looking for the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Michener asked a Honolulu patrolman for directions.
“The policeman said, ‘Not only can I tell you, I’ll give you a motorcycle escort,’” and because of that, Michener decided to donate his 5,000-piece collection of “ukiyo-e” art to the museum here instead of New York.
There were once 14 heiau in the ahupuaa of Waikiki, and Sam and Mary Cooke preserved the last one, Kukaoo, on their property in Manoa. Kukaoo means “god of the digging stick” and is approximately 800 years old.
Sam and Mary turned their home into the Manoa Heritage Center, which has just broken ground on a new $4 million Visitor Hale and Education Center.
Sam was a great man and will be missed.
The Rearview Mirror Best Documentary of 2015 goes to “The Tank.” KHNL premiered the one-hour documentary on the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium on Nov. 8.
TalkStory Productions completed a herculean task: compressing nearly 100 years of Natatorium history and over 40 hours of footage into a one-hour prime-time documentary.
I wrote three columns this year of my readers’ Natatorium stories, and in the process I learned how important “The Tank” was in their lives.
I give this Rearview Mirror Best Documentary of 2015 Award to executive producer Donna L. Ching, producer/director Jason Lau and the entire staff and supporters of TalkStory Productions.
The Rearview Mirror 2015 Amateur Historian Award goes to Tanya Harrison, who found out that the Honolulu International Center (now the Neal S. Blaisdell Center) was dedicated as a war memorial in 1964.
Harrison says she learned the NBC was a memorial by accident in 2010 while researching Honolulu fishponds, which included the ponds on the former Ward estate.
“I found articles stating the Ward estate was condemned to construct a war memorial municipal auditorium.
“I spent several years researching the Blaisdell’s memorial history before I realized it was forgotten.” Harrison said it pained her that such a prominent memorial could be forgotten for so long. “That’s not supposed to happen. Something had to be done.”
Harrison found the original plaque said, “Honolulu International Center: Dedicated to All the Sons and Daughters of Hawaii Who Served Their Country in Time of War and in Special Tribute to Those Who Gave Their Lives in Order That Freedom and Justice Might Prevail Throughout the World.”
The plaque was moved and then disappeared. In November Harrison supported a rededication ceremony with a stone displaying a new memorial plaque, Ewa of the Concert Hall. Her website provides details, blaisdellmemorialproject.org.
My Rearview Mirror 2015 Media Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Ron Jacobs and Tom Moffatt. Jacobs and Moffatt were disc jockies at KHVH in 1957. A stunt led them to meet Elvis Presley and become the emcees of his first concerts here.
They were part of the Poi Boys and created many promotional events, such as the Wake-a-thon, Bowl-a-thon, Cycle-a-thon, Insult-a-thons, Hang-a-thons and Drum-a-thon.
Moffatt and Jacobs made some of the earliest music videos, 10 years before MTV, and with Casey Kasem created American Top 40, the most widely syndicated radio program in history, in 1970.
Moffatt has become the Showman of the Pacific and has brought hundreds of concert artists to the islands for nearly 60 years.
The Rearview Mirror 2015 Preserving the Past Award goes to Mauna Kea Galleries owners Carolyn and Mark Blackburn for preserving the McCully Chop Sui sign and the Stack family for preserving the Club Hubba Hubba sign downtown.
Lee Stack credits her mom, Elizabeth, as “one of the early pioneers in historic rehabilitation in the Chinatown district. She personally prepared, submitted and shepherded four preservation projects. The Hubba Hubba building (and sign) are actually the fifth project that she has been involved with.”
The Blackburns and Stacks, and the work they did to preserve those signs, has inspired the creation of these awards, and for that I thank them.
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.
