If you’re looking for a model of a public-minded citizen, you couldn’t find a better one than Randy Moore.

Moore, born and raised in Honolulu, retired two decades ago as the top executive at Kaneohe Ranch after a long career that included executive positions at Castle & Cooke, Oceanic Properties and Molokai Ranch.

His idea of an executive retirement wasn’t touring the world’s great resorts, but starting a second career from the ground up in a field of public service that had caught his interest from his work with the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation: public education.

Moore, who holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Swarthmore College in addition to his master’s degree in business from Stanford University, earned a teaching credential from Chaminade University and was hired as a math teacher at Central Middle School with the hope of eventually becoming a public school principal.

That didn’t last long, as then-schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto saw a higher use for his experience and persuaded him in 2006 to join her executive team to lead construction and maintenance of school facilities, along with food and transportation.

I’d see him on his 10-speed bike around the Department of Education building, and he always had something level-headed and perceptive to say about the hot issues of the day.

Moore retired again six years later, only to end up serving a decade under two governors on the University of Hawaii Board of Regents, much of it as chairman.

He also found time to chair the Hawaii Housing Development Corp. and serve as a director of Grove Farm Co. Inc.

His steady hand kept UH mostly on course amid the disruptive drama of state legislators ignoring the university’s constitutional autonomy by punitively using their power of the purse to usurp the regents’ authority.

Moore and his wife, Lynne Johnson, were generous in their philanthropy to UH, giving $1 million to create a sustainability fund for climate change research and endowing a fund to benefit the university’s music department.

Moore retired again in 2023, but not for long.

After DOE came under intense criticism for failing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars allocated to upgrade facilities, Superintendent Keith Hayashi was like the mayor of Gotham sending a Batman symbol into the sky calling for help.

Moore, at 85, was happy to answer, stepping back into essentially his old job as interim deputy superintendent running facilities, fiscal services, talent management and information technology.

He told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Kacie Yamamoto that effective management of “back- of-the-office stuff like the facilities, the school bus, the school lunch and the accounting system” are critical to maximizing DOE’s ability to serve students.

“We educate students, but I like to think of our job, really, as empowering students,” Moore said. “I think that the objective of public education is to empower students to achieve, to have their own lives, to be productive and satisfying, and have them be contributing members of the community.”

The thing that always struck me about Moore is he’s usually the smartest person in any room he’s in. And also the most humble.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.