Every now and then, I stop to reply to reader comments and requests in this column.

My article about Kapiolani Community College and the Diamond Head area five weeks ago prompted Norborne Clarke to tell me his family was stationed at Fort Ruger in the 1950s. They lived on a circle with maybe a dozen homes around the edge. In the middle was a parade ground. It was a great place to grow up, he said.

“One of the men who lived there worked at Fort Shafter,” Clarke recalled. “He was a pilot and commuted from work to home in an Army helicopter. He flew from Fort Shafter to Fort Ruger and landed right on the parade grounds in front of his house. The Army and FAA were less strict in those days.”

Several times, apparently for fun, he landed on the pillbox at the highest point on Diamond Head. “On one occasion, a gust of wind blew the helicopter off the concrete structure, and that put an end to his exploits,” Clarke said.

AIRBORNE HIGH JINKS

Former First Hawaiian Bank President Jack Hoag wrote to tell me he knew the pilot who stole the B-25 bomber in 1965. I wrote about this on March 26. He said James Ashdown had the nickname “Crashdown.”

Hoag was a pilot himself. “Back in the ’50s,” he told me, “before statehood, we got away with things that would have put me in the stockade today.

“I aspired to court this lovely Miss Aloha Hawaii, a Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant who lived on Olohana Street in Waikiki. I’d fly my Sikorsky helicopter or Cessna observation plane down the Ala Wai, just over the treetops and buzz her apartment on her occasional day off.

“She and her roommate, another flight attendant, didn’t really appreciate it. Fortunately the FAA didn’t hear about it! I guess she forgave me, as we have been married for 56 years.”

James Ashdown’s mother, Inez, was also mentioned in my article. Both of them had spent a lot of time ranching on Kahoolawe. My article said she was a hanai daughter of Queen Lili‘uokalani, which I found in her obituary and several other newspaper articles about her.

Rianna Williams and Gussie Schubert both wrote to question that. Schubert said she is a Dominis descendant and the granddaughter of Aimoku, one of three children who were the queen’s hanai.

She told me she went through the queen’s diaries and did not find any reference to Ashdown. She also found two interviews with Mrs. Ashdown “and she did not mention being a hanai, something that I think she would talk about.”

Based on that, I’d have to conclude that she was not a hanai daughter of Queen Lili‘uokalani.

WHO IS THAT MODEL?

My favorite food truck is Camille’s on Wheels. Camille Komine wrote me recently with a question I am passing on to my readers.

Komine says she was shopping at Savers and found this painting of a woman for $4.90. Based on the hairstyle and wardrobe, she thinks it was painted in the 1950s or 1960s.

“I would love to know who she is,” she told me.

Komine discovered the artist, Boris Chaliapin, was quite famous. For decades he illustrated Time magazine covers. Some of his work is in the Smithsonian.

Komine asks whether any of my readers recognize the woman. I think she looks like Kim Novak, but Komine thinks she may be a local woman. Any ideas?

MISS M, BACK WHEN

Earlier this month, I interviewed Adrienne Liva Sweeney, who was Don Ho’s personal secretary. She had stories about Bette Midler and Iolani Luahine.

“Bette Midler worked for my husband, Ray, at KHAI radio, as a receptionist, just out of high school. He once told her, ‘Bette, if you don’t learn to type, you’ll never make anything of yourself!’

“We had no idea she had so much talent,” Sweeney recalled. “Management would yell at her, ‘Bette, get back to work!’”

Midler, 71, was born in Hawaii and graduated from Radford High School. She sand, danced and acted in the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” at the Honolulu Community Theatre (now Diamond Head Theatre).

“She invited the KHAI staff to see it and they were absolutely blown away by her,” Sweeney said.

Bette got a part as an extra in the movie “Hawaii” and then struck out for Broadway. Her first big break was getting cast as daughter Tzeitel in “Fiddler on the Roof” in 1966.

In about 1970, Midler came home for a visit and had lunch with the Sweeneys.

“She started to tell us about the bathhouse she performed at in New York, the Continental Baths. It was the beginning of her Divine Miss M character.

“‘It’s a little campy,’ she told us, and we looked at her like, ‘uh-huh, uh-huh,’ as she tried to explain what she was doing. We couldn’t quite grasp it. We didn’t even know she could sing that well at that point.”

The Continental Baths, a gay club, hired Bette as a weekend entertainer for $50 a night. She dazzled her audience with hits from the 1930s through the 1960s. Accompanying her on the piano was a then-unknown Barry Manilow.

Midler told the Sweeneys: “I would stand at the top of a little staircase with a towel round my head and act out wacky movie heroines. I wasn’t there long, but I was there long enough to make a splash!”

Hawaii newspaper columnist Eddie Sherman described her as a “wild, young Carmen Miranda with a touch of Mae West.”

In 1972 Atlantic Records released her first album, called “The Divine Miss M.” The album sold more than 100,000 records in its first month and included the hit “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

That led to movie roles and TV appearances. When Johnny Carson retired from “The Tonight Show” in 1992, it was Bette who sang the last song, “One for My Baby and One for the Road,” a fitting finale for the king of late night.

KAMAE MIND TRICK

Adrienne and Ray Sweeney went to the first Hana Music Festival on Maui in 1970. It is now considered to be one of the first steps of the Hawaiian music renaissance. Carl Lindquist of Trade Publishing organized it.

Adrienne Sweeney described a “chicken-skin moment.”

“Before the program began, we were talking with Iolani Luahine, the legendary dancer and kumu hula. The Sons of Hawaii were there to perform and Eddie Kamae was about 30 feet away from us. Luahine said to us, ‘I’m gonna make Eddie turn around,’” Sweeney said.

“‘What?’ we asked.

“‘Watch. I’m gonna make Eddie turn around.’

“He had his back to us and was talking to someone. And she stood there and did whatever she did mentally, and he turned around and said, ‘Io, cut that out!’”

MERRIE LINEAGE

The Merrie Monarch Festival just concluded, and it was spectacular. I found out recently that Kimo Kahoano, longtime festival announcer, is a distant relation to the Merrie Monarch himself, King David Kalakaua.

Kimo is the great grandson of Archibald Cleghorn, father of Princess Kaiulani. Cleghorn’s wife was Miriam Likelike, who was a sister to Kalakaua and Queen Lili‘uokalani.

Several people asked me why Kalakaua was called the Merrie Monarch, and why it isn’t spelled “Merry.”

Kalakaua was a patron of the arts, especially music and dance, according to the Merrie Monarch Festival website. He was called the Merrie Monarch because he “restored Hawaiian cultural traditions that had been suppressed for many years under missionary teachings. He advocated a renewed sense of pride in such things as Hawaiian mythology, medicine, chant and hula.”

“Merrie” is an old-fashioned spelling, according to my Harper Collins Dictionary. Its use peaked in about 1750. “Merry” became more common after 1900.

6 YEARS LOOKING BACK

May begins my seventh year contributing to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. I want to thank Star-Advertiser staffers and readers for their interest and support of “Rearview Mirror” during its first six years. Mahalo.

Bob Sigall, author of “The Companies We Keep” series of books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Contact him via email at sigall@yahoo.com.