I taught business at Hawaii Pacific University from 1997 to 2013. One assignment required my students to attend business networking events and interview one company president.
One of my students, Adriana Camara, asked whether she could interview the president of HPU, Chatt Wright. I was impressed with her daring and gave her a green light.
She found out several interesting stories about HPU that I hadn’t known before, and it opened my eyes. I realized that Hawaii’s schools often have fascinating stories.
Here are some of the things about Hawaii schools you might not already know.
Royal School
Before the missionaries built a school for their own children (Punahou in 1841), they built a school for the children of alii (the Chiefs’ Children’s School) in 1839.
Juliette and Amos Starr Cooke ran the school from their home, which was in the grassy area just Diamond Head of the state Capitol and mauka of the State Library.
The students included David Kalakaua, Lydia Lili‘uokalani, William Lunalilo, Bernice Pauahi, Victoria Kamamalu, Lot Kapuaiwa (Kamehameha V) and Alexander Liholiho (Kamehameha IV) and his future wife, Emma Rooke.
One of the major dramas at the school was the romance of Bernice Pauahi and Charles Reed Bishop. Pauahi’s mother and father (Laura Konia and Abner Paki) wanted her to marry Prince Lot, who became Kamehameha V. She met with Lot and told him that she did not love him, and he released her from their childhood promise. Lot never married.
Charles R. Bishop was the collector general of Customs and called on Bernice nearly every evening. He was “in every way worthy of her heart and hand,” said Juliette Cooke.
Despite her parents’ opposition, Bernice Pauahi married Charles Bishop on June 4, 1850, in the parlor at Royal School. Paki and Konia refused to attend. The ceremony was small. Only six people attended.
In 1851, after its royal students graduated, the school moved to its current site, between Punchbowl and Queen Emma streets. It had been affectionately called the “Royal School” since its beginning, but the name was formally adopted in 1846.
Lahainaluna
Lahainaluna opened in 1831, before California or any state west of the Mississippi had schools. Families in California and Russia sent their children to Hawaii to be educated. In 1850 it became a public school.
Hilo Boarding School
The second school founded in Hawaii was the Hilo Boarding School in 1832. It was a vocational school that prepared students for jobs in the real world. If Hawaii had been part of the United States then, it would have been the first vocational school in America.
Hilo Boarding School also taught teachers. Its educational model was the blueprint for Kamehameha Schools, the Hampton Institute in Virginia and Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
McKinley High School
The oldest public high school on Oahu is McKinley High School. It is 160 years old this year and has had three names and five locations.
It opened in 1865 in the basement of the Fort Street Church (now called Central Union Church). In 1869 the Fort Street English Day School outgrew the basement and moved to what is now the corner of Pali Highway and School Street.
School Street then was two blocks long. The English Day School was at one end, and Royal School was at the other.
In 1895 it moved into what had been Princess Ruth Ke‘elikolani’s palace and changed its name to Honolulu High School.
In 1908 it moved into its fourth location on the corner of Beretania and Victoria streets, across from Thomas Square. Sharing the property was the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now called the University of Hawaii, as it waited for its Manoa campus to be ready.
Honolulu High School was renamed in honor of President McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901. The 17-foot-tall statue of McKinley was designed by Gordon Usborne of Honolulu. It weighs 1,600 pounds. It was first erected in front of the school in February 1911.
McKinley High School moved in 1923 to its fifth and final location, in what had been rice fields at 1039 S. King St.
The site at Victoria and Beretania streets became Lincoln (Linekona) Elementary, then the Ala Moana School, and is now part of the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Ke‘elikolani Middle School
Princess Ruth Ke‘elikolani built a magnificent home, called Keoua Hale, on Emma Street in 1883. She held a three-day housewarming and birthday party but became ill and retreated to Hulihe‘e, her Kailua-Kona residence, where she died.
Her cousin Princess Bernice Pauahi and husband Charles Reed Bishop inherited the house and moved in. The Board of Education purchased it following Pauahi’s death in 1884.
Honolulu High School was there from 1895-1907. In 1908 the site became Central Grammar School. In 2022 it was renamed Ke‘elikolani Middle School.
Kamehameha Schools
Princess Ruth had three children who died before adulthood, and Princess Pauahi was childless. The two princesses were great-grandchildren of Kamehameha I.
The cousins pooled their resources to build a school for the children of Hawaii. Charles Reed Bishop established the boys school in faraway (at the time) Kalihi in 1887. The girls school opened in 1894.
The Rev. William Oleson, former principal of the Hilo Boarding School, came to help organize the school. By 1955 the schools had moved to their current Kapalama Heights campus.
Saint Louis School
In 1846 the Sacred Hearts founded Ahuimanu College just north of Kaneohe for the education of Hawaiian boys. Ahuimanu means “a gathering of birds.”
The school moved in 1883 to its second location, at Kamekela on the Ewa bank of Nuuanu Stream at the end of Beretania Street. The path entering the school was named College Walk.
The school’s name was changed to Saint Louis College to honor Honolulu Bishop Maigret, whose patron saint was Saint Louis (King Louis IX of France).
Louis IX led two crusades (hence the school nickname “Crusaders”) and died during the second crusade at the age of 56 in Tunis. The city of St. Louis in Missouri is also named for him.
In 1923 the school bought 204 acres of Kalaepohaku (“the rock pile”) in Kaimuki from Bishop Estate for $65,000. A few years later, 80 acres were sold to a contractor who developed Saint Louis Heights. The $100,000 he paid funded the new school buildings.
Hawaii Pacific University
I trace the earliest incarnation of Hawaii Pacific University to 1949 and a man named Sgt. Dewey Wayne Jackson, a Pearl Harbor Marine who was stationed in Hawaii after World War II.
Jackson wanted to do “something for the Territory” with $8,000 he had saved (over $85,000 in today’s dollars). He gave it to the Rev. Louis Barrett to purchase property at 2655 Manoa Road for a Christian college.
Jackson College had financial problems due to low enrollment and by 1965 was three years behind in its mortgage. Banks foreclosed on the property.
Former teachers and administrators then established Hawaii Pacific College from the remnants of Jackson College. Hawaii Pacific College used the Jackson College campus, and its former students were welcomed at the new school. Hawaii Pacific University uses this 1965 date as its beginning.
Mills College
Many Hawaii women have attended this Bay Area school. It was named for Cyrus and Susan Mills, who taught at Punahou.
Several Hawaii royals visited the school, including King Kalakaua, Queen Kapiolani and Queen Lili‘uokalani.
One woman, who was excited to meet an actual king, was aghast to find out he was “colored.”
Do you know something interesting about a Hawaii school? If so, please share it with me.
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider. com.
