Rearview Mirror: Counting down the best among 500 columns

Ten years ago Business Editor David Butts asked whether I’d be interested in writing a regular feature in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. We met and discussed it, and Rearview Mirror was born in April 2011.

It’s hard to imagine that next week will be my 500th column. Former longtime Editor Frank Bridgewater suggested I note the milestone by reviewing some of my favorite columns. I’ve gone over my list and selected 15 articles. I’ll present some this week and the rest next week.

So here is a countdown beginning at No. 15. I warn you, it will bounce around from the sublime to the ridiculous.

15. Prince David of Punaluu

In May 2019 I wrote several articles about Punaluu. In my research, I came upon an inspiring and remarkable man. His name was David Kaapu. Many called him the “Prince of Punaluu.”

In 1928 Kaapu bought 2 acres on the Windward side. He called his home “Nature’s Kingdom.” He built a 1-acre pond and lived in a grass shack. He made his own poi. He built a canoe, wove nets from coconut fibers and went fishing in the ocean. He cultivated breadfruit and coconut. He raised chickens and pigs.

Kaapu’s natural gregariousness attracted passersby who were longing to see something of old Hawaii. They found him wearing only a bright red malo and straw hat.

“I am here,” he told syndicated reporter Bob Davis, “to prove that life, as lived by my people before civilization came to our islands, is the right life and that man needs no more.

“All I need is there” he said, pointing to his homestead, “and here,” he said, touching his chest.

Shirley Temple and Babe Ruth visited Kaapu in the 1930s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on an Oahu tour in 1935, stopped in Punaluu to see his Hawaiian compound.

The Prince of Punaluu served the president kalua pig and other Hawaiian food. After that visit he named the entrance to his property “Roosevelt Aloha Way.”

14. Elvis

In 2014 former Poi Boy Ron Jacobs told me about a connection between the old Civic Auditorium, roller derby and Elvis Presley — the oddest trifecta I could envision.

In 1957 roller derby was big at the Civic Auditorium. Jacobs was the on-track announcer. He earned $10 a night. The first of the four-night competition was usually slow, but it would be sold out by the last night on Saturday.

Jacobs suggested a grudge match roller skate-off contest between himself and fellow deejay Tom Moffatt to boost opening-night attendance.

“Tom was the athlete and would ‘beat’ me,” Jacobs said. “The crowd loved him and cheered wildly. I ‘lost’ and skated off, hanging my head.” The promoter offered Jacobs and Moffatt 50% of any increase in revenue they brought in.”

“We filled the auditorium that night, and we each got a check for $3,000” ($28,000 in today’s dollars).

Moffatt and Jacobs each bought a new 1957 Ford Skyliner. A few months later, in November 1957, Elvis came to Hawaii for the first time. Jacobs concocted a publicity stunt for the day of Elvis’ arrival.

He dressed deejay Donn Tyler in an Elvis wig and put him in the back seat of his Ford Skyliner with the top down. Jacobs, dressed in a hat similar to Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, drove them around town for a “tour” of the island.

Moffatt was on the air on KHVH, describing what was “happening” to the hunka hunka burning love. It created a public frenzy.

Afterward the real Colonel Parker called. “That was the funniest thing I ever heard in my life!” he said. Parker introduced them to Elvis and invited the deejays to emcee his concerts at Honolulu Stadium. Parker and Jacobs became lifelong friends.

13. Toilet paper

Earlier this year I wrote about the toilet paper shortage in Hawaii and its roots to dock strikes of 60 years ago. I didn’t take the article too seriously until the Washington Post excerpted it and BBC Radio called to interview me. In 500 columns, that never happened before. I guess toilet paper is the glue that holds society together.

12. B-24 bomber

A former principal at McKinley High School told me that during World War II the students raised enough money selling war bonds — the equivalent of over $5 million today — to buy a B-24 Liberator bomber. It was named Madame Pele and had a drawing of her coming out of a volcano on both sides of the plane. A photo of it hangs in the school’s administration building.

11. Oprah’s Hawaii connection

I was surprised in 2012 to learn that an “Oprah” TV show inspired the creation of the Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii, an organization that helps tourists who are victims of crime and bad circumstances.

It began in 1993 when a Bakersfield College professor named Chuck Wall heard a news story about a “random act of senseless violence.”

Wall wondered, What if people created “random acts of kindness” instead of violence?

Five months later he was on the “Oprah” show and the phrase became known around the globe. Millions of people were inspired, including the Rotary Club of Honolulu, which created a Random Acts of Aloha Committee in 1997 to help tourists in need.

It became the Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii, headed by Jessica Lani Rich, who makes sure that visitors who face crises here find the aloha they came to Hawaii expecting to find.

10. The flying skirt

Many readers responded to my article about Patti Smart, a stewardess for Aloha Airlines from 1957 to 2007. A passenger knocked a tray of pineapple juice onto her skirt during a flight.

Smart changed, washed out her skirt and held it up to the window in the cockpit the co-pilot had opened for her. Whoosh! It flew out. The pilot radioed dispatch to call her mother to bring her another skirt, but all the planes in the Pacific were on that frequency and the story spread like wildfire. Bob Krauss wrote about it in his Honolulu Advertiser column, and the whole state knew she had lost her skirt.

9. Machu Picchu

I was surprised to learn that a local boy was the first non-indigenous person to discover Machu Picchu, which he called the “Lost City of the Incas,” high in the mountains of Peru.

His name was Hiram Bingham III. His grandfather founded both Kawaiaha‘o Church and Punahou School. Like his father and grandfather, he became a minister, but then he met someone who knocked him off his career path. A woman.

Her name was Alfreda Mitchell. Her family was heir to the Tiffany fortune. They did not approve of her interest in a poor priest, so he left the priesthood, got a Ph.D. from Harvard and became a pioneer researcher and teacher of South American history.

While in Peru in 1911, Bingham was told of ruins high above them in the Andes. With just one guide, an 11-year-old boy, Bingham made the trek up to the 13,000-foot peak and discovered what today is considered one of the wonders of the modern world.

Machu Picchu had been constructed at the height of the Incan empire around AD 1450. It was abandoned around 1572.

Bingham married Mitchell. He later became governor of Connecticut and then U.S. senator. He is also cited as one inspiration for the fiction character “Indiana Jones.”

Next week I’ll review my top eight stories of the past 500 columns.

Bob Sigall is the author of the “The Companies We Keep” books. Send him your questions or stories to Sigall@Yahoo.com.