Email brings back memories of Kamae

I received an email a few days ago from Eddie Kamae’s widow, Myrna, reminding me that PBS Hawaii will show all 10 of their documentaries Thursday through April 9, and how happy they were that 40 years ago I reviewed their first one, “Li‘a: The Legacy of a Hawaiian Man.”

It’s wonderful that PBS is remembering Eddie this way. He died Jan. 7. “Things are a lot different now without Eddie and I seem to miss him even more each day,” Myrna wrote. “How lucky I have been to have had such a special man in my life for 51 years. I am so happy that Leslie Wilcox and PBS are paying this special tribute to Eddie by showing all of our documentaries.”

Eddie died when I was flattened out with shingles and could not write about his death. That bothered me. I was close to the Kamaes. I’ll never forget one lengthy afternoon when I was drinking with Eddie and two of his Sons of Hawaii, who had performed at a swell party thrown by Charles “Fat” Guard at his Kailua beachfront home in the early 1980s. After the music, Fat brought out some fabulous okolehao. Eddie, Joe Marshall, David “Feet” Rogers and I were well positioned at Fat’s bar and became cemented to our stools when he brought out the rare okolehao. No way we were going to leave when that liquid treasure was being poured. It was magnificent.

While we were sucking ’em up, Fat’s younger brother, Tim Guard, an accomplished waterman, was offshore catching waves in a small outrigger canoe with his son Matt, who was a youngster then and is now president of his dad’s stevedore company, McCabe Hamilton & Renny. Tim remembers that Sunday afternoon party well. He said his dad, Jack Guard, told him about that great okolehao when he was on his death bed and said he’d better get it where it had been hidden in his liquor cabinet for many years or his brothers Jack Jr., Dicky and Fat would. Tim gave Fat a bottle, and that’s what we were drinking that day.

The okolehao was distilled by millionaire Chris Holmes in Kona. Holmes, an heir to the Fleischmann yeast fortune, also had a beachfront mansion on Kalakaua across from Kapiolani Park. The property had a concrete fence that had large plank surfboards fastened together for a gate. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a World War II visit to Hawaii in 1944, he stayed there, as the home had an elevator and FDR was disabled from polio. Tim remembers FDR waving to him and his dad from the back seat of a convertible as the president’s motorcade passed while they were waiting at a Kalanianaole Highway crossing in their car.

Holmes’ Kalakaua home later became Queen’s Surf, where Sterling Mossman and his Barefoot Bar gang, Kui Lee and Puka Puka Otea performed. Sterling’s mom was Bina Mossman, whose renowned music was featured at last month’s Kamehameha Song Contest. She was Jack Guard’s office manager at McCabe. Small world. Holmes also owned Coconut Island off Kaneohe Bay where zebras and other animals roamed freely.

Hawaii International Film Festival founder Jeannette Paulson Hereniko put Eddie’s films in the HIFF lineup. “Eddie could get people to say cultural things that no one else could get,” she said. “He’d get them to open up and reveal their heart. It’s a gift that only a few people have. Eddie had it, Wilcox has it and you have it.” (She’s overrating me; I’m not in their class.)

Jeannette is someone who has that gift. “Eddie saw the nobility of everyone,” she said. “He and Myrna believed the process of presenting their films was just as important as the product itself. Their presentation of each film at the festival included music, food, aloha and love.”

I asked Jeannette to speak at my wife Brita’s memorial service more than two decades ago, and she did a wonderful job.

Hula goddess Iolani Luahine is featured in Eddie’s film “Keepers of the Flame: The Cultural Legacy of Three Hawaiian Women,” from 2005. She was Eddie’s favorite hula dancer, Myrna said. Some say she looked like a beautiful Madame Pele, slender with long flowing hair down her back.

Sterling Mossman obviously liked her hula, too. When he was making a comeback in the 1970s in a club on Kapiolani, he asked her to appear in his opening. Iolani was living on the Big Island but came to Honolulu to help out her friend. She appeared in two shows that night. It was late when it was all over and we were talking in a back room. She wanted some drinks but the bars were closed. I invited her to my apartment to have a few. She sat quietly as I put LPs by Eddie and the Sons of Hawaii, Sonny Chillingworth and Gabby Pahinui on the turntable. Suddenly, she stood up and started dancing. No matter if the song was slow or fast, she kept up her incomparable hula for over an hour. (There were beverage breaks.)

It was an experience I will never forget. As day began to break, I suggested she spend the night in my guest room. She said no, and I walked her to her car. She got in and drove off. I never saw her again.

Ben Wood, who sold newspapers on Honolulu streets during World War II, writes of people, places and things. Contact him via email at bwood@staradvertiser.com.