Charlotte “Nani” Puanani Dias Kamaka, who raised a family of five by delivering the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Star-Advertiser for more than half a century — usually with her blind husband by her side — died Oct. 19 from complications from a stroke at the age of 73.

Kamaka was still delivering the Star-Advertiser and its related publications when she suffered the stroke Oct. 8, said her granddaughter Malena Cabalis, who lived with Kamaka at her home at the Papakolea Hawaiian homestead.

“That’s the day she stopped delivering,” Cabalis said.

Seven days a week, starting at the age of 18, Kamaka took on the biggest routes on Oahu — a job that over the years grew to include her own children, who would fan out across Kamaka’s route delivering their share of the newspapers from their bicycle seats.

She and her husband, Charlie, who died in 2000, started out driving their kids in a 1957 Chevy with her at the wheel and him in the passenger seat.

“Everything on the right was his, everything on the left was hers,” said Kamaka’s daughter Cindy Freitas, who lives on the Kona side of Hawaii island. “She would tell him, ‘Throw ’em, Charlie,’ and he would throw ’em.

“They would take the hill parts, and we would take the flat areas,” Freitas said. “We had the biggest routes, including all of Nuuanu. We had it down. Within two hours it was all done.”

Kamaka typically had 200 customers while the average carrier normally had half as many, said Kamaka’s onetime boss Steve Tomino, who is now neighbor island distribution manager for the Star-Advertiser.

Even after the Star-Bulletin became the Star-Advertiser in 2010, Kamaka still had one of the biggest routes on Oahu, delivering to the entire Tantalus area.

“She had the whole mountain, from Round Top Drive all the way up the mountain and all the way back down,” Tomino said.

But it was her compassion for her customers that made Kamaka stand out among all of the newspaper carriers, Tomino said.

“She had that local-Hawaiian personality — so full of aloha, full of energy,” Tomino said. “You couldn’t find anybody who would say a bad thing about Mrs. Kamaka. She would tell me that during the Christmas season she would get tips, like over $1,000, from her customers. She would take the time to talk to them and spend time getting to know her customers. She really enjoyed what she was doing, and it showed in her work. It was like a big family.”

During the holidays the family living room would fill up with goodies from customers — turkeys and ham at Thanksgiving, “lots of candy” for the kids at Christmas and baskets full of goodies at Easter, Freitas said.

“Our living room of 24 cubic feet was full of candy,” she said. “Year after year we would deliver to the same people. We had a relationship with them.”

Kamaka was born Aug. 6, 1944, at what is now St. Francis Medical Center, and spent the rest of her life in the Papakolea homestead.

She became pregnant at the age of 13, dropped out of what is now Stevenson Middle School and never went to high school.

But 55 years delivering newspapers represented more than just a job, Cabalis said.

“It was something she loved,” Cabalis said. “It would have been hard for her to walk away. Some of her customers still don’t know she passed.”

Along the way, Kamaka — who was 50 percent Hawaiian — instilled her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with lessons of humility, compassion and respect for the land.

“She had a warm compassion for people,” Freitas said. “She would take off her shirt (for strangers) even though she never had anything. She would give ’em whatever she had. That was her nature. (Despite) the hardships she had growing up, she would do whatever for whoever needed it, whether a cousin or a stranger on the side of the road. She was a very compassionate person — a very well-liked and a very humble person.”

Services are scheduled for Monday at Hawaiian Memorial Park Mortuary in Kaneohe. Visitation is scheduled for 5:30 to 9 p.m. with a wake service at 6:30 p.m. Graveside service and burial will be held Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Valley of the Temples Memorial Park.

Kamaka is survived by children Albert “Honey Boy” Kamaka, Charlotte “Honey Girl” Kamaka, Cindy Freitas, Charles Kamaka Jr., and Denise Kamaka; sisters Katie Palama and Yvonne Heanu; 17 grandchildren; and 22 great-grandchildren.