Dr. Richard R. “Doc” Kelley, who has battled Parkinson’s disease since 2002, has completed a memoir on his family’s adventures running Hawaii hotels.

“Paddling the Outrigger: Inspiration and Insights from the Journey of a Lifetime,” which was written over nearly 40 years, is as much a testament to Kelley’s tenacity as it is a reflection on his family’s role in developing Hawaii tourism and giving back to the community.

His struggle with Parkinson’s, a progressive disease of the nervous system, might have caused a lesser man give up his dream of becoming a book author. Certainly, Kelley, who turns 88 on Tuesday, has nothing to prove. He lead Outrigger Hotels and Resorts for over four and a half decades and has many other accomplishments to celebrate.

Still, he persevered.

“I think No. 1, I’ve had a good time in life and I want to share those experiences with my family. At the same time, my family and I have experienced many iterations of Hawaii’s visitor industry, as well as many lessons, some of which are still relevant today,” he said. “I hope that aspect of this book can be helpful to somebody now and in the future.”

The book, which launched at the recent Hawai‘i Book &Music Festival, details Kelly’s most poignant memories from living through the Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor to the sudden death of his first wife, Jane, a well-known aviator who became ill while judging an air show in Arizona. She was only 42 when she died, leaving Kelley to raise their five children.

He also talks about finding happiness for a second time with his second wife, Linda, with whom he had two more children. She was a teacher before joining the family business and has become her husband’s main support through Parkinson’s.

“Paddling the Outrigger,” published by Bess Press, isn’t just a personal memoir. Kelley strives to give the reader a boardroom view of the inner workings of one of Hawaii’s most important hospitality companies. He also provides insight into issues in the broader Hawaii community through snippets of the Saturday Briefing newsletters he wrote while running Outrigger.

There wasn’t a similar guide when Kelley’s parents, Roy and Estelle, founded Outrigger Hotels and Resorts in 1947, beginning their hotel operations at The Islander. The rack rate at the four story walk-up in Waikiki was $7.40 a night, but a room could be had for as little as $5 when occupancy was low.

“In the early days, Mother kept track of all of the reservations, and a large percentage came by mail,” said Kelley, whose love of science helped bring the company into the computer age, when it was poised for expansion.

When the family agreed to sell the business in 2016 to Denver-based KSL Capital Partners LLC, the deal included 37 hotels, condominiums and vacation resort properties operated, owned and managed by Outrigger. Kelley is now a director at Seaside Ohana Investments Inc., which the family formed to manage assets from the sale.

The Kelley family is known for helping to open Hawaii to mass tourism in the days after jet travel. At the same time, the Kelleys developed “The Outrigger Way,” an operating style that turned them into early pioneers of protecting and preserving Hawaii’s natural resources and culture.

“The Outrigger Way defines the relationship between us, our employees and the customer. It’s about hospitality,” Kelley said. “This means everybody is involved, all day every day, in understanding their role and objectives as a host to those who visit and should expect visitors to be thoughtful guests. And, if not, to teach visitors to be good guests when visiting Hawaii.”

John De Fries, president and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority and former Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association executive director, said the Kelley family was already clearly established as a kamaaina hotel chain in 1973 when he entered the tourism industry as an entry-level tour guide.

“Over the years it became kind of fashionable for companies to just adopt the term ‘ohana’ in reference to their workforce, and in so many cases that ran hollow except at the Outrigger because the growth of the hotel chain was really emitting from the growth of their own family and their ability to expand the family embrace around each of the employees,” De Fries said during a panel discussion of Kelley’s new book last month at the Hawai‘i Book &Music Festival.

Kelley said Outrigger brought in the late George Kanahele to give employees an understanding of Hawaiian hospitality, where the host has the responsibility to learn the local culture and the guest has the responsibility to be respectful of the host culture.

“Our guests are part of our family, when they’re here and when they’re gone,” he said.

He added that the emphasis on family extended to Outrigger employees.

“My parents always valued their employees and treated them like family, and that was something we all grew up understanding,” he said. “And since any Kelley family member who wanted to work in the family hotel business had to start in housekeeping or at the bell desk hauling luggage, we knew we would be reporting to an Outrigger employee and we’d better listen to them, do a great job for them and be respectful.”

While Kelley grew up working in the family’s hotels, he didn’t join the business full time until 1970. His nickname “Doc” harks back to his days as a Stanford University graduate, Harvard- trained pathologist at The Queen’s Hospital and instructor at the University of Hawaii medical school. He left medicine after his father persuaded him to help open the Outrigger Waikiki, and from there he took on progressively higher leadership roles.

“A lot of things needed to be done. The world was changing. The big planes were coming to Hawaii,” Kelley recalled.

His desire to effectively communicate with employees as tourism and the company expanded motivated him to write to his employees every week for 40 years through the Saturday Briefings, which began with “photos of employees, their anniversaries, awards and recognition.”

“Early on, I shared topics that I believed were important for employees to know about — legislative initiatives that would impact their lives, such as public education for their children, and important things happening in the hospitality industry,” Kelley said. “Over time, the Saturday Briefing was translated into several languages, grew to several pages, and was distributed to people who requested a copy, including media and government officials.”

Kelley’s son Chuck Kelley, chairman of Seaside Ohana Investments, said the third section of his father’s book, which contains the Saturday Briefings, was his favorite part to read.

Chuck Kelley recalled that his father would research a topic for his weekly report and before publishing would vet it with those he believed would have strong opinions.

“Things haven’t changed that much,” Chuck Kelley said. “The debate over how much taxes are going to impact the hotel industry, how we should reform health care, global warming — those issues haven’t gone away.”

Another book festival panelist, Kitty Yannone, owner and CEO of Comm­Pac, recalled that Kelley was an early champion of her career who gave her the opportunity to prove she could lead a large Hawaii Convention Center project and chose her over a well-connected male contender.

“It would have been so easy for him to say let one of the guys take it. He has strong women in his life starting with Linda, and I know his first wife certainly was, and his daughters are very strong women,” Yannone said. “I’ve come to appreciate his sense of women being able to do whatever that they want to do and that made a big impact on me.”

Fellow panelist Ray L’Heureux, president and chairman of the Education Institute of Hawaii, said Kelley’s thoughts on public education from his time as chairman of the Hawaii State Commission on Performance Standards and after serve as a call to action.

L’Heureux said Kelley’s quote from Chapter 18 of his memoir, “These failed schools — and our politicians’ shameful acquiescence in that failure — have been cheating our children of their ability to compete in the world,” still rings true today.

“I would like to take that quote and use it as my banner as I go on forward to fight for the public education system here in Hawaii. The impact that Dr. Kelley made then is only going to connect the dots on what we need to do now. He was certainly a catalyst.”