Email has been piling up in my in box with interesting questions and funny stories.
A ‘very rare’ lei
My friend Alice Tucker told me a cute one about Daniel Inouye that I thought my readers would enjoy.
“In 1964 I was a Hawaii delegate to the national convention of AMA — the American Medical Association’s — fundraising arm for medical school scholarships and equipment donations. The meeting was in Washington, D.C.,” Tucker said. “The local chapter gave tens of thousands of dollars and lots of medical equipment to the UH medical school from the time it was just a two-year program. One of the pieces of equipment we gave was (obtained) by collecting 300,000 Betty Crocker coupons that came on General Mills cereal boxes, cake mix boxes, etc. Counting those suckers was horrendous!!!
“Barbara (Bobby) Mills and I were the Hawaii delegates to the national AMA conference. The newly elected Sen. Inouye was going to be the keynote speaker at one of the events.
“We ordered a fancy lei to be delivered to my hotel to put on Sen. Inouye right before he spoke. His speech wasn’t on the first day of the convention, and we wanted the lei to be nice and fresh when we presented it to him.”
A friend gave Tucker a purple vanda orchid lei when she left Hawaii.
“There was no refrigerator in our hotel room, so I just put it on the dresser in the hotel room, and of course it turned white and got droopier and droopier. You can tell where I’m going with this.
“The special lei we ordered didn’t arrive. The morning of Sen. Inouye’s speech came and we were in panic mode about the darn lei.
“The only solution: Put that old tired white (by now) vanda lei on Sen. Inouye.”
Tucker apologized about the droopy lei. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, it happens all the time.’ After the speech, people came up to him and asked about that fabulous WHITE vanda lei. They’d seen purple ones, but they’d never seen a white one.
“Like the pro that he was, he said, ‘Well, this is a very rare kind. It’s much valued and treasured by those of us who know how rare it is.’
“Thank you for covering my okole, Sen. Inouye. The photo of my giving him that tired lei made the first page of the next issue of the national newsletter.”
1 credit short
I wrote about Farrington High School last month. Ted Sakai shared a great story about a Farrington graduate who finally got his diploma at age 82! He was a famous musician, music arranger, composer and filmmaker. Can you guess his name?
“This young man was drafted in 1945, before he could graduate,” Sakai said. “After the war, he returned to Farrington, determined to obtain his diploma. Near the end of the semester, however, he was told that he was one credit short. He would have to attend summer school for it.”
After his first day in summer school, Eddie Kamae walked away, too bored to continue. He was instrumental in forming the legendary Sons of Hawaii with Gabby Pahinui, Joe Marshall and David “Feet” Rogers. Their music helped usher in the Hawaiian music renaissance.
With his wife, Myrna, Kamae produced 10 films on various aspects of Hawaiian music.
“During the 2009-2010 school year, Kamae was helping Farrington’s fledgling Hawaiian Academy,” Sakai recalls. “When Principal Catherine Payne heard that Eddie had not gotten his degree, she decided that his life work was worth far, far more than one credit. She granted Eddie the one credit he needed for graduation.
“She then got permission from the senior class to have Eddie march with them at graduation. On a sunny day day in late May in 2010, Eddie Kamae proudly donned the maroon-and-white cap and gown and marched into the amphitheater as a member of the Farrington High School Class of 2010.”
Great story! Eddie Kamae died in 2017.
The Pink Poodle
Nathan Chong asked about a short-lived restaurant on the corner of Lunalilo Home Road and Kalanianaole Highway where Koko Marina Shopping Center is. It was called the Pink Poodle.
Did Henry Kaiser have anything to do with it? he asked.
There was a Pink Poodle. Two, actually. They were ice cream parlors, one in Hawaii Kai, about where the Loco Moco restaurant is now, and the other on Kalakaua Avenue in front of the Waikiki Biltmore Hotel. They were open from about 1961 to 1967.
They had pink and white booths, white wrought-iron chairs and pink wall-to-wall carpeting. They sold sundaes, fruit ices and milkshakes in addition to regular food items.
Arthur Stuman, who owned Benson Smith drugstores in Honolulu, created the Pink Poodle for “teenagers and oldsters. Henry Kaiser talked me into it, and it turned out to be a little gold mine.”
My readers might remember that Kaiser liked the color pink and could often be seen driving a pink Lincoln Continental with his pink poodles in the back seat.
A bridge marker
Ken and Jill Peterson asked about a concrete road or bridge marker they found while hiking near Old Pali Road. It said “EJL 1919.” Did I know anything about it?
I didn’t and asked Kiersten Faulkner of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation, who asked Tonia Moy, an expert on the state’s historic bridges. Moy said it looks like the end post of a bridge on the portion of Old Pali Highway that was realigned and is only used for hiking today.
Don Hibbard, the foremost architectural historian in the state, said he is quite sure the EJL stands for Edward J. Lord and that 1919 is the date the bridge was built.
Lord came to Hawaii in 1900 and worked for 30 years on many of Honolulu’s public works projects, such as the Hawaii State Library, the Pearl Harbor Navy yard wharf and Piers 2, 8, 9, and 10 at Honolulu harbor.
Wise owls at McKinley
Rodney (didn’t give a last name) asked if there’s a story behind the owls on the pillars fronting McKinley High School. “There are two pillars each on both of the buildings that front King Street. Do you know their story?”
It’s an interesting question to me because I walk in the area a couple of times a week and have never noticed them before. I took a look.
The four owls are 3 to 4 feet tall and atop even taller pillars that surround the two buildings on either side of McKinley’s long, oval driveway.
Hibbard, who I mentioned earlier, says the buildings date to when the school was constructed in 1923. They were designed in a “Spanish Colonial” revival style. Honolulu Hale and the Royal Hawaiian hotel are in that style and were built at the same time.
The owl decorations are typical of the architectural style of the period, Hibbard says.
Owls have been associated with wisdom since ancient Greece, where the goddess of wisdom, Athena, had one as her symbol. Accountant Brian Walthall thinks the owls promise that those who enter will leave wiser.
The buildings were designed by architect Louis E. Davis and are on the state and federal lists of historically significant structures.
Louis Davis also designed St. Francis hospital in Nuuanu, the second Kapiolani Materity Home, the downtown police station on Bethel Street and the new Pawaa, Liberty, Princess and Palama theaters.
Reader requests
Shirley Miyamoto asked whether readers have any stories about Tip Top Cafe in Lihue.
Jon Miki asked whether you have any memories of the KIKU superhero TV shows “Kikaida,” “Rainbow Man,” “Kamen Rider V-3,” etc., or kid-oriented places like Keiki Land, Castle Park, Farrell’s Ice Cream or the Skyslide outside of GEM.
I’m asking readers whether they have stories about La Ronde restaurant atop the Ala Moana building, or any Hawaii drive-in.
Column insider
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Bob Sigall’s “The Companies We Keep 5” book contains 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.
