Molokai resident Clarence Kahilihiwa says there was a time when even conversation about Hansen’s disease and those afflicted by it was hushed, "taboo" subject matter.
Serving as evidence that those days are long gone, plans are in the works to name a bustling New York street after St. Damien, the Roman Catholic priest who devoted his life to the care of thousands of Hansen’s disease patients on the remote peninsula of Kalaupapa on Molokai.
"I honor him. I always pray to him every day," said Kahilihiwa, a patient at Kalaupapa. Kahilihiwa is part of a group of Hawaii residents preparing to travel to Manhattan to participate in a May 11 street-naming ceremony, during which 33rd Street between First and Second avenues will become Father Damien Way.
A 19th-century priest from Belgium, Father Damien de Veuster arrived in Honolulu in 1840 to work alongside Catholic missionaries. In 1873 he moved to Molokai to live among Hansen’s disease patients who were sent there by the Kingdom of Hawaii’s order. Damien would spend the rest of his life on the island: He died in 1889 after contracting the disease himself.
During Damien’s lifetime the chronic, contagious disease also known as leprosy was shrouded in fear and mystery, despite having afflicted humans for millennia. Decades after his death, a sulfone drug was developed to treat people with the disease.
Left untreated, leprosy, which weakens the immune system, can open the door to potentially deadly infections like pneumonia.
More than 8,000 people with Hansen’s disease were quarantined at Kalaupapa, according to Kalaupapa National Park. The quarantine was lifted in 1969, but some patients chose to stay.
The government of Flanders, a part of Belgium where Joseph de Veuster was born and raised, is organizing the street-naming event near Bellevue Hospital where patients are still treated for Hansen’s disease.
Guests include Geert Bourgeois, minister president of the government of Flanders, and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York.
New York resident Patti Danko, who has been helping to organize the trip for the Hawaii contingent through the New York-based nonprofit group Halawai, said the effort is a blessing. People are stepping forward to help, she said, noting that Hawaiian Airlines executives have arranged free travel for Kahilihiwa and his wife, Ivy, who also is a patient.
Retired English professor Vinnie Linares of Maui, who is part of the Hawaii delegation, will perform the late playwright Aldyth Morris’ "Damien" in Manhattan as part of the celebration. His performance is slated for May 10 at Westbeth Community Center in Greenwich Village.
Linares said he thought his days of portraying Damien at various playhouses and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland were over. Still, he said he jumped at the chance to reprise his role for this occasion.
"It’s a tremendous honor," Linares said. "I never thought something like this would happen."
Kahilihiwa, 74, one of a handful of patients still living in Kalaupapa, was among a contingent from Hawaii to visit Belgium and Italy in 2009, when Damien was canonized and became a saint.
Kahilihiwa, who moved to Kalaupapa in the 1950s, said he supports the street-naming, memorials and other efforts to share the stories about struggles tied to Hansen’s disease and the quarantine as a means to promote understanding and empathy.
