It was January 1970.

Maui’s first mayor, Elmer F. Cravalho, had been in office just one year, and already there was a big testimonial luau in his honor.

More than 500 people attended the party hosted by the Maui Young Democrats at the Aloha Restaurant banquet room — and if you are from that era, you just got a flashback to the long tables topped with butcher paper, the hard wooden bench seats, strawberry Star Soda in bottles and stoic servers bringing paper bowls of squid luau.

State Senate President and state Democratic Party Chairman David McClung told the luau guests, “You’re just damn lucky to have a man like Elmer F. Cravalho at the head of the ship of state in the County of Maui.”

That was how businessmen and politicians spoke in 1970. “Damn” was an intensifier. If something was better than “good,” it wasn’t “really good,” it was “damn good.”

Elmer Cravalho was damn smart.

His death this week at age 90 marks the passage of a rare type of Hawaii politician: a man who didn’t bow to public opinion and who said just what he meant.

At the 1970 luau, which was covered by local newspapers, McClung told a story about first meeting Cravalho in the state Legislature. Cravalho had “a big Portagee mouth,” McClung joked.

Cravalho wasn’t about to let that go. He punched back with a joke of his own: “What is black and blue and crawls in the gutter?” he asked the crowd. “It’s guys who tell too many jokes about Portagees.”

Cravalho was a man who kept his own counsel. His career spanned a time when people didn’t demand full disclosure of public leaders. He held himself apart and didn’t make a spectacle of himself doing the typical glad-handing. He was so different from modern Hawaii politicians who count their Facebook likes and tweet pictures of themselves holding golden shovels. Cravalho’s elections weren’t won by popularity. People voted for him not because they liked him, but because they knew he’d get the job done. He was not a big man or a loud man, but his intellect was scary.

Hannibal Tavares, a friend of Cravalho who later succeeded him as mayor, would give this advice: When presenting a proposal for Cravalho to sign, type it in triple-space and write “DRAFT” on the top in red pencil, underlined three times. That way, Cravalho could go through the document to delete and add as he saw fit. Sometimes Cravalho wouldn’t make many changes, but he wasn’t going to sign anything that didn’t allow him full control and final say.

At that luau in his honor, despite the jocular mood of the event, Cravalho maintained his control and distance.

“The mayor’s office must stand strong and not bend with the wind,” he told the crowd. “It is your job as well as mine to keep this county safe for old people, the young and those who work. This requires strength and great loneliness. I cannot pass the buck to anyone else.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.