At Diamond J Ranch in Waianae Valley on a hot, dry Sunday morning, against the rugged backdrop of the majestic mountain range, six riders on horseback kicked up the dust in a big corral. It was a scene out of a Wild West in which women ruled.
They were a queen and her court, after all — the pa‘u queen and the attendants who would ride with her in this year’s King Kamehameha Day Floral Parade, which will traverse Honolulu on Saturday for the 100th time. They sat tall in their saddles wearing cowboy hats, pale pink T-shirts, faded jeans and boots to die for as they rehearsed the presentation they would make to the statue of King Kamehameha I, across from Iolani Palace, at the start of the parade.
“Right hand out, turn and kunou — bow your head,” parade queen Gayle Fujita Ramsey, a fine-featured woman in a crisp white cowboy hat, called from the back of her big Clydesdale quarter horse.
The “Queen’s Unit” T-shirts were pink because Ramsey, 49, is a breast cancer survivor. She has ridden in the parade for nine years, starting after her hair grew back from chemotherapy. She dedicates every ride to fellow patients, supporters and the quest for a cure.
A telephone pole alongside the corral stood in for the statue. “Keep moving, you’re not allowed to stop,” Ramsey said as the women rode slowly past the pole.
This was their third practice. It was mid-March, and the parade was three months away, but although Ramsey smiled and kept up a cheerful patter as she put “my girls,” as she calls them, through their paces, worry lines showed around her eyes and mouth.
Risk readiness
It was essential, Ramsey said, that her unit practice as much as possible in order to execute the crucial turn from Richards Street onto South King Street, greet the statue and then stay in formation for the 4.5 miles of what is the longest parade route in the U.S.
Horses have been afraid to step on the white lines in crosswalks, holding up the parade, Ramsey said. In 2010, when she rode as princess of Kahoolawe, her horse suddenly went lame. In 2014, when she was princess of Niihau, an attendant fell off her horse when it bucked. Although she got back on and, to their surprise, they won the outstanding princess unit, Ramsey told her riders, “I don’t need to win. I just need to live.”
She extended her arm toward her girls. “See the love going from me to you,” she said.
The five women — Heather Hana Mullaney, Candi Smith, Malissa Kaopua, Lovelyn Kenison (Ramsey’s daughter-in-law) and Lacy Matsumoto, the one novice rider in the unit — watched and listened. Riding around again, they reached out their arms to the pole, this time with an expressiveness worthy of hula dancers.
Suddenly, Mullaney’s horse stopped. “Is he peeing?” Ramsey asked. “Horses cannot pee and walk. If it happens in the parade, you gotta holler so you guys all stop.”
The 100th anniversary of the parade will be marked with unprecedented extravaganza — and added pressure. In addition to the queen’s and pa‘u marshal’s units, each of the eight main Hawaiian Islands will be represented by a floral float as well as by a pa‘u princess unit. There will also be floats for Kamehameha I and for every Hawaiian monarch.
Many of the floats will have live music and dancing, which may distract the horses.
“No, no, no, no!” cried Matsumoto, whose chestnut horse was trotting back to the corral gate. “Slider’s trying to go home! I’m falling out of my stirrups!”
Standing watch by the gate, Xavier Keola Swain, Ramsey’s son, who has ridden with her in every parade, grabbed Slider’s reins. During the parade Swain will be an outrider, “basically making sure everybody stays safe in our unit,” he said. He and the other male riders will help the women, their legs encumbered by 12 yards of heavy pa‘u skirt, if a bridle breaks or their horses misbehave or go lame.
Ramsey dismounted and came over to fix Matsumoto’s stirrup. “No panicking allowed,” she said. “In the parade that means someone’s gonna get hurt.”
Britt Faborito, a horse trainer who co-owns the ranch with her husband, Kenneth Faborito Jr., offered advice. “Heels down,” she said. “Next time, bring food,” Faborito added. “Horses love Nutter Butter.”
“And Red Vines,” said Smith.
Love and finances
In the parade, Smith, Kaopua, Mullaney, Matsumoto and Swain plan to ride the horses they had practiced on, rented from Diamond J Ranch. Ramsey, her husband and Kenison, who is Swain’s wife, plan to ride Ramsey’s own three horses.
To help defray the cost of the horse rentals, Ramsey scheduled several fundraisers. Her riders were paying out of pocket for their expenses.
All of the parade participants are volunteers who cover their own costs, and every unit holds fundraisers, said Beverly Lee, a former parade queen and the event’s pa‘u chairwoman since 2010. While some private organizations pay for floats, the parade receives no money from the state, Lee said.
Costs for each pa‘u rider run up to about $2,000, Lee said. That includes horse rentals for practices and the day of the parade; costumes; trips to the outer islands to pick flowers for floats and lei; and hair and makeup.
Think of a giant wedding party on horseback.
The previous weekend, the men and women of the unit had gathered at Ramsey’s Pearl City home to make pickled onion and prune mui. With the help of social media, the batches sold out, and there were so many orders that they would get together to make more. (In all, they would sell 675 containers of mui at $7 each, and 950 pounds of pickled onions at $5 each.)
At Hula Grill in the Outrigger Beach Hotel on March 23, the queen’s unit gathered with friends and family for a benefit “paniolo pau hana” featuring pupu made with local seafood, produce and meat and locally brewed beer and cocktails.
As they mingled between tasting stations, the team looked happy, perhaps even relieved, to see each other dressed up in their cowboy or cowgirl best, with nary a trace of trail dirt, ranch dust, onions or prunes.
Ramsey sat at the long wooden bar with her husband, Michael Ramsey Fujita. They reminisced about how they became friends at Bobby McGee’s restaurant back in the ’80s, when he was a bouncer and she was a precocious teen, then fell in love more than a decade later when both of their previous marriages had ended.
Although Ramsey fell in love with horses at age 3, when her uncle put her on a horse during a family trip to Canada, she didn’t start riding until she turned 30.
On her birthday, she remembered, “Michael asked me what dreams did I have, and I said to one day own a house, and he said, ‘You’ve got to have more in life than that. What did you dream about when you were little?’ I said I always wanted to own a horse.”
Within a couple of months, she did.
Countdown to the parade
The party made a nice break for the busy unit, which started preparations in October with a paradewide fundraiser, held a float-making workshop in February and a horse lei workshop in May, and practiced on horseback at least once a month since January at Diamond J Ranch.
But the 10 days leading to Saturday’s parade are a furious rush of activity.
They’ve learned how to place flowers in their hair from Uncle Henry Hanalei Ramirez, a part-Hawaiian, longtime parade rider who grew up in Brooklyn and sponsored a 20-rider multicultural immigrant pa‘u unit this year. They will pick flowers on Kauai and Oahu. They’ll have their hair done the night before the parade — at 11 p.m.
And on Saturday at 6 a.m. at Central Middle School, the women of the queen’s unit, along with the 30-some other pa‘u riders in the parade, will get wrapped in their pa‘u skirts — they wear jeans underneath — and helped onto their saddles by drapers, all men who belong to the Kapahulu Music Club.
“You have to make sure all 12 yards are going to be falling evenly on each side,” said Uncle Kimo Keaulana, who oversees the traditional draping and has been helping with the parade since he was 5.
“It’s in our rhyme and rhythm and blood already to make a parade fit for a king,” Keaulana added.
By 7 a.m. or so, the women will be sitting on their saddles, where they must stay until they reach the end of the route at Kapiolani Park, anywhere between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
“We tell them to eat and drink lightly that morning because they cannot dismount to use the restroom during the parade,” said Lee.
Click and save
Ramsey said that for her it was essential that the members of her pa‘u and float units enjoy the 2-1/2 hours of their ride on parade day.
Like the fresh flowers they would pick, like memory itself, the parade is an ephemeral event, and she wanted to make sure her team came away with good and lasting memories.
Lee agreed.
“It’s 4.5 miles, but you feel like you’ve been on the horse only five to 10 minutes,” she said, adding that she chose Ramsey to be queen this year “because her riding is excellent, and when you look at her on parade morning, you can just see the love that comes out of her.”
That love was apparent at Diamond J Ranch that recent Sunday, especially in the last 10 minutes of the practice, which were dedicated to free-form riding. “Have fun now and get to know your horses,” Ramsey said as, with a twinkle in her eye, she galloped her horse over to do some barrel racing with Swain. A little boy, horse trainer Faborito’s brother, chased a calf with a green lasso as two little girls watched from a stand outside the rails.
“So remember, guys, sit up! Smile!” Ramsey said as they finally let their horses go home. “No sunglasses day of the parade. Kunou to the people to your left and right. You need to have eye contact with the crowd. You might have the ugliest horse and lei, but if you connect they’ll love you.”
As with all live entertainment, the audience has a role to play. So if you’re watching the parade and a rider catches your eye, be sure to kunou back.
