Usually, my column is about one topic. But this week I’ve strung a few short subjects together. They’re all based on things people have said to me in the past month.
Kamehameha statue
I was talking with DeSoto Brown, the collections manager at the Bishop Museum, earlier this month when he told me a few interesting things I hadn’t heard before.
In the past two years, I’ve written about some zany ideas that were proposed for Oahu but never came to fruition. These include Kane Fernandez’s Cane Land theme park; a Disneyland in Kahuku; an underwater city off Ala Moana; a floating convention center off Waikiki; and Doris Duke’s Southeast Asian Art and Cultural Center near Kaneohe.
Brown had one to add to the list. He asked whether I heard about a proposal to build a 500-foot-tall statue of Kamehameha the Great on Tantalus! I hadn’t.
The idea was put forth by Jack Mahakian, president of International Syndications in 1973. He said it would cost about $8 million.
“The statue will be on every postcard sold in Hawaii,” he said. “There will be a bank of four elevators to the top, where you will be able to see over the mountains to the North Shore.
“The building will be of concrete and steel with a 400-foot-tall concrete lei hanging from Kamehameha’s arm to the ground. Airplanes and ships will be able to see it from miles out at sea at night,” he said.
Mahakian thought it would be like the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower.
He found no support for his idea, and it went nowhere. Mahakian also ran for governor and garnered just 206 votes.
Expelled from Punahou
DeSoto Brown also told me that Lorrin Thurston was expelled from Punahou School. I had never heard that, either.
Lorrin A. Thurston (1858-1931) was publisher of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser and played a prominent role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893.
Thurston Twigg-Smith, who published The Honolulu Advertiser, said his grandfather was sent from Maui back to Oahu as a boarder at Punahou School in 1872.
“He held jobs to earn his way, such as the 50 cents a week he received for caring for the president’s horse. As part of the work program, he was required to drive a wagon along Beretania Street, picking up younger students and delivering them to school.”
After just over a year at Punahou, in 1874, the school said the 15-year-old was incorrigible.
“Three offenses led to the Punahou letter of dismissal. The offenses are laughable today, but there probably wasn’t much laughter in the Thurston home the day the letter arrived,” Twigg-Smith said.
Principal Amasa Pratt listed his violations. “In earlier months, Lorrin had ‘taken liberties’ in quoting scriptural verse reflecting on women as teachers.
“The major offense, though, was racing the wagon up Punahou Street in competition with the Dillingham boys, who lived on the corner of Beretania and Punahou, where Central Union Church now stands. The little girls on his wagon screamed and yelled in terror,” Pratt said.
But the clincher was an affront to his English teacher. Young Lorrin had used an ampersand — & — in place of the word “and.”
“He was ordered to rewrite the essay,” Twigg-Smith said. “He did so, but in every case where ‘and’ appeared, the young rebel wrote it as large as the space between the ruled lines, while writing the rest of the composition in very small characters.
“This could not be tolerated, and Lorrin was out of Punahou — until in an ironic reversal he was invited back two decades later in 1896 as a trustee, a responsibility he fulfilled for the following 34 years.”
He never did graduate from high school.
Jackie Robinson
Peter Rosegg, former corporate relations specialist at Hawaiian Electric, asked me about whether Jackie Robinson faced discrimination when he came to live in Hawaii in 1941. This was six years before he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“The story is that when Jackie Robinson played football for the Honolulu Bears in 1941, he stayed in the dorm at Palama Settlement because the hotels would not take him,” Rosegg said.
“Do you know if such segregation existed in Honolulu in those days? Have you ever written about this for the newspaper?”
I wrote about this in 2013. Robinson left UCLA in 1941. The National Football League passed on the All- American, and the only job offer he received was with the Honolulu Bears senior football team. He was paid $2,000 a game (in 2023 dollars).
The Honolulu papers reported that he was a triple threat. He could run, pass and kick the ball. He averaged 12 yards per carry when he was in the backfield at UCLA in 1939. That made him the top running back in the country. His punt returns averaged 20 yards.
Crowds of spectators came out to Cooke Field at Palama Settlement to watch him practice in September 1941.
J. Arthur Rath III, whose grandfather James A. Rath was the founder of Palama Settlement, wrote in 2011 for the Hawaii Reporter, “When he wasn’t in the backfield, where could they put Robinson other than on a couch in a player’s home?
“Only whites could stay in Hawaii’s hotels. Hawaii’s fancy hotels catered to mainlanders, where that attitude originated.
“‘Bring Mr. Robinson to Palama, they’ll give him the guest suite and all the kids will love him,’ said Bears players, who’d grown up playing barefoot football for the Settlement.”
Ten years ago, in 2013, Palama Settlement found some old photos of Robinson that he had autographed. One said, “To our pals. Best of luck. Jack Robinson.”
“His team was staying in Waikiki, and he was denied entrance to the hotels,” Palama Settlement Executive Director Jean Evans said. “So we put him up here.”
On Sept. 17, 1941, the Honolulu Bears played the 35th Infantry “Cacti” at Schofield Barracks.
The Bears scored first on a 40-yard touchdown run by Eddie Hulihee. Robinson set up the second touchdown with an interception and runback of 40 yards.
In the fourth quarter, The Honolulu Advertiser wrote, “Robinson worked the ball 70 yards down the field with brilliant passing and faking. Two short passes set the ball up for a surprise play.
“Robinson faded back deep and then cut to the right. When he got close to the line of scrimmage, he reversed his field going back near his starting point.
“There he sent a long bullet pass to Hulihee, who stepped out of bounds after having reeled off 45 yards.
“With but yards to go, Robinson cut to the left in an end sweep and then hit the air with a cross-field pass to John Wright for a touchdown. The Bears won 27-6.”
Over 20,000 fans came out to see Robinson and the Bears lose their next two games in October to the University of Hawaii and the Healani Club. Robinson hurt his ankle. The Bears fared poorly, and the attendance dropped to 600 at his last game.
Robinson left Hawaii on Dec. 5, 1941, aboard the SS Lurline. The captain called the passengers together two days later and notified them of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Robinson joined the Army as a second lieutenant but refused to sit in the back of a military bus in Texas. He was court-martialed and acquitted but left the service.
In 1947 he donned a Dodgers uniform at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn before a crowd of 26,000 and became the first African American in Major League Baseball.
If you drive past Palama Settlement on the H-1 freeway, look in your rearview mirror. You might catch a glimpse of where Robinson’s professional sports career started.
Spencecliff reunion
Fifty years ago the dominant restaurant chain in Hawaii was Spencecliff. It had, over the years, more than 50 different restaurants, such as Tahitian Lanai, Ranch House, Coco’s, Kelly’s, Fisherman’s Wharf, Queen’s Surf and South Seas.
The co-founders, Spence and Cliff Weaver, sold their chain in 1986, and Nittaku, the new owners, could not run them properly and eventually closed them all.
Chantal Weaver, daughter of Spence and Turere Weaver, is holding a reunion of all former Spencecliff employees and their families.
“We will have exciting entertainment, fabulous door prizes, a historical PowerPoint and delicious Spencecliff favors made famous from one of our landmark restaurants,” Weaver said.
The reunion will be at 10 a.m. Sept. 24. To RSVP, contact Weaver at hwnrealestate@gmail.com.
———
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.
