Last month I wrote about Edward “Skippa” Diaz, an all-star defensive tackle at Farrington High School, class of 1962. After a stint in the Canadian Football League, Skippa was a teacher and a coach at several schools. Farrington’s new athletic field is named for him.

Chip Davey wrote to tell more about Diaz. “When Skippa was head coach at Farrington, they played Saint Louis in the 1990 Prep Bowl. A huge fight broke out among players and Skippa went through the piles and literally picked up players — from both teams — and flung them aside to break up the fights. He was that strong.

“The great Al Minn (University of Hawaii women’s swim team head coach from 1974 to 1987) told me Skippa was a swimmer at Palama Settlement and the lad could have had a great swimming career.”

I asked Mary Diaz, Skippa’s widow, about this.

She recalled attending an event at Palama Settlement many years ago. “A swim coach told me he had been asked to check out this kid swimming at Palama. He expected to see this svelte swimmer’s body and there was chunky Skip gliding through the water.

“Skip swam for Palama, earning medals in the fly, freestyle and individual medley, but he wanted to play football more.

“You should have seen him do the fly,” Mary recalls. “He was so graceful. Can you believe that? He really was a water baby. He always said he felt freer in the water where there was less gravity.

“He taught me to swim, and every time I thank him for making me comfortable in the ocean.”

“Skippa devoted his time and energies to his players and students. He loved and treasured each one. He believed that life’s lessons were more important than winning football games or trophies. He truly lived the ‘Farrington Way.’ He ‘Entered to Learn and Went Forth to Serve.’”

Willson Moore told me that he was a great fan of the Kingston Trio (Rearview Mirror, Feb. 16). He said that a member of the trio, Bob Shane, was born Robert Schoen. Moore wondered about the name change.

I asked Bob Shane about this. He’s retired now and lives in Arizona. “There were actually two reasons I changed the spelling of my last name,” Shane said.

“First of all, on the concert contracts, it was always misspelled. They usually spelled it Shane, and we always had to correct them.

“What finally pushed me over the edge, though, was the birth of my first child — a daughter named Joan. It was supposed to be pronounced Jo-An, like Joanne, but spelled Joan.

“Since everyone always pronounced my name Shone instead of Shane, I didn’t want her to go through life being called Jone Shone. That’s the reason,” he says.

Two weeks ago in Rearview Mirror, Michael Mochi­zuki asked about a yellow- and-red graphic of a dragon painted on King Street in front of the Oahu Market in Chinatown.

“Do you know who did this art and when it was done?” Mochizuki asked.

Chu Lan Shubert-Kwock, president of the Chinatown Business &Community Association (CBCA), responded.

“We designed and paid for this Happy Dragon decal and donated it to the city in April 2014. It cost us $3,500.

“Our design was approved by the Dept. of Transportation Services and the Mayor’s Office of Culture and the Arts. The decal was ordered for us by DTS and an expert flew out from the mainland to install it. It took about five hours to install, shutting down part of North King and Kekaulike streets.

“It is dedicated to Chinatown as a sense of place and a landmark for our main crosswalk.”

A reader named Mike told me he grew up in Wahiawa and patronized many businesses there, such as the Wahiawa and Victory theaters, Big Way market, Fast Food, Kress, Okimoto Drugs and several others. He asked readers to share their stories of Wahiawa with me for a future column.

Richard Weigel inquired recently about Holiday City.

“Over 10 years ago, I lived in the Manana neighborhood, near the now-developed Walmart and other retail stores center.

“A community organizer told a story I had never heard before, that the area of lower Pearl City — approximately makai of current Moanalua Road — was originally known as Holiday City, and that the former Holiday Mart store at the Pearl City Shopping Center was named for that original geography.

“I’ve never heard that story before or since, and I took it with a grain of salt. Is Holiday City any place that ever existed?”

I looked through the online newspaper index and found a 1967 article about Holiday City. I then pulled the microfilm reel at the state library.

There IS a Holiday City subdivision. It was built “a few blocks mauka of Pearl City Tavern (Kamehameha Highway and Lehua Avenue), and a few blocks Ewa of Waimano Home Road.”

AND, it was built by Edwin “Eddie” Yee, who founded Holiday Mart.

He built 151 fee-simple duplexes on 48 acres of former sugar cane land. Touted as a new concept in homeownership — two houses under one roof — it was aimed at father-son families and similar relationships. It had never been tried locally on such a scale, Yee said.

A father might have his married son or son-in-law live next door to help him along in a few years, Yee said, or he could live in one unit and rent the other to lighten the mortgage.

Each lot would average 7,500 square feet and sell for between $48,000 and $57,000. Six styles would range from contemporary to Oriental. Buyers could choose from open beams to flat ceilings. A two-car garage was part of each structure.

The duplexes would have double-wall construction, shake roofs and underground utilities.

About 20,000 people lived in Pearl City at that time.

To put Holiday City’s 1967 development in perspective, that was a year before Leeward Community College opened in temporary quarters on the grounds of Lehua Elementary School. It was also four years before Pearl City High School opened.

Yee was one of Hawaii’s top property developers, but he was better known for opening Holiday Mart stores in Honolulu (1967), Kailua (1968) and Pearl City (1969). He estimated 250,000 shoppers came each week.

I don’t know why Yee picked the word “holiday” for his store or subdivision. Do any of my readers know?

Bob Sigall’s “The Companies We Keep 5” book has arrived, with stories from the last three years of Rearview Mirror. “The Companies We Keep 1 and 2” are also back in print. Email Sigall at Sigall@yahoo.com.