Patrice Kunimura Wright has been slowly sorting through her mother’s things, marveling at all the projects her mother started and the people she helped. “I look at her calendar and all her papers and I’m blown away by the number of things she was doing. She was 84 years old and she was so busy.”

Phyllis Ann De Graff Kunimura died Dec. 7. She was known as the “First Lady of Kauai” during her husband Tony Kunimura’s tenure as mayor, but perhaps even more so in the years after he left office, when she established her school and her place in the community as a woman who did big things by paying attention to small details and the littlest people.

She was born July 17, 1933, in upstate New York. When her older sisters went off to college to become teachers, she swore she would never follow in their footsteps. She wanted a life that was more adventurous. She eventually did get a degree in early childhood education from the University of New York, Brockport, but her quest for adventure led her to a teacher exchange program in Hawaii. In 1961 she arrived on Kauai and fell in love with the island. She met Tony Kunimura, then an up-and-coming politician, at a party.

“She was intrigued by him. She found him interesting,” Wright said.

Tony Kunimura, who had children from previous marriages, was brash, irreverent and fearless. Phyllis was composed and thoughtful. They soon married, had their daughter, and in 1963 Tony Kunimura was elected to the state Legislature, where he served for 10 terms before being elected Kauai mayor, an office he held from 1982 to 1988.

Phyllis Kunimura taught kindergarten at Koloa School for 25 years, often coming home from work in the late afternoon and then going out again that evening to accompany her husband to a community gathering or cam- paign event. She served on many boards and committees and was a co-founder of the popular Koloa Plantation Days annual event. She authored a book on early childhood education and studied painting, exhibiting her work in local shows. While her husband was mayor, the sorry state of the historic county building bothered her, so she took it upon herself to head a restoration effort that spanned two decades.

After her husband retired from politics, Kunimura founded a school for 3- and 4-year-olds that she named Kauai Independent Daycare Service, or KIDS. She implemented programs that developed both the creative and analytical sides of a young child’s brain, created anti-bullying programs years before such things were part of the national conversation, and vowed never to give up on any child.

“She was willing to take any child, even if that child got kicked out of another school,” Wright said. Kunimura believed in trying to work with a child’s individual learning style before they entered the public school system. She wanted to figure out what was going on with each student and how she could help.

Though she no longer taught in the classroom, she was director and vice president of KIDS and went to work several days a week.

A celebration of her life was held last month at Koloa Union Church. The school she founded will go on, a testament to her impact on the community.

“She never wanted to retire. She wanted to be at the school for as long as she could,” Wright said. “And that’s what she did.”