Last month I wrote about Francis H. I’i Brown, Hawaii’s greatest golfer.

Teddi Hussey wrote in to say she was related to Francis’ longtime girlfriend, Winona Nancy Love, who was a well-regarded hula dancer.

Teddi asked where the two were buried. I know the I’i family has a plot at Oahu Cemetery and went to look at it. It had a marker for Francis I’i Brown, who died in 1976, but not Winona.

Teddi said there’s also a grave marker at Diamond Head Cemetery. "One morning, I came upon the tombstone of Francis and Winona. We were very happy to see these two resting together, forever. Winona died in June of 1981."

I’ve never seen two grave markers at two cemeteries for one person. Brown’s great-nephew DeSoto, who’s head archivist at the Bishop Museum, confirms his great-uncle is buried at Diamond Head Cemetery, but says he can’t recall why it worked out that way.

"Rumors were always expressed," Teddi says. "Whether they were true or false, I don’t really know. The one that stays in my memory and seems the most logical to me is that the couple couldn’t marry because of a stipulation in the will he was governed by … that he would lose it all if they did marry."

"They were a very happy couple. They entertained many national figures and were very popular.

"I am guessing … but I think that because they lived together for all those years like a married couple and because Francis died first, Winona did not have him buried in the family plot and that’s how they ended up in Diamond Head. I also feel that they both discussed their deaths and had agreed to the arrangement.

"My feeling is," Teddi concluded, "in the end love prevailed."

DeSoto Brown disagreed. "Because Uncle Francis was a high-profile person in the community here and elsewhere in the world, too, for his golfing prowess, his living unmarried with Winona was never covered up. It couldn’t be.

"Yes, there were lots of stories and rumors as to why they weren’t married. The most usual was that he would be disinherited if he married a Hawaiian woman, or similar.

"Actually there was no such stipulation. In the first place, Francis himself was half Hawaiian. In the second place, his mother had died in 1922 and was no longer around to be able to control him, and his father (who died in 1937) was estranged from both his sons and had long since moved back to Massachusetts. He had no control, either.

"A former co-worker (now in his 70s) suggested to me, and I think it’s very reasonable, that Winona’s family most likely came up with that story as a way of trying to explain or justify this situation, which of course was socially unacceptable at the time.

"I think it happened because Uncle Francis was a willful man who had the wealth to live as he pleased, and he just didn’t want to conform to what was expected of him.

"I also remember," DeSoto continues, "that it was said that when he died that he wanted to be at Diamond Head because he’d lived near there for a long time, although in different places. He had a house on Diamond Head Circle in the late 1950s and early ’60s, then a condo on the Gold Coast, then lastly a house just outside the entrance to the Waialae Country Club."

Winona Love was a grandniece of Queen Kaahumanu. She became a professional hula dancer at age 14 and danced at the grand opening of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in 1927. She graduated from McKinley High School in 1929.

Her dancing greeted many ships during Hawaii’s "Boat Days," and she performed for Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra, Ruby Keeler, European royalty and many others.

When Francis was hospitalized after a car crash in 1933 near Kalakaua and Beachwalk in Waikiki, Winona and others came to dance, sing or entertain him. Francis was 41 and Winona was 22. They fell in love, and from then on the two were inseparable.

Honolulu Advertiser columnist Sammy Amalu said she "threw marvelous parties and would sing, dance and entertain. She was a gracious hula dancer who wore high heels and long holokus."

Francis and Winona were together for 43 years. Amalu called the relationship "Hawaii’s greatest love affair."

After Brown’s death, Bing Crosby said, "The man I most admired and wanted to be like was Francis I’i Brown."

Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com.