Former Gov. Ben Cayetano rarely is stopped in the middle of an argument, but even he concedes that Duke Kawasaki got the best of him.

Both were in the state Senate and arguing a point when Cayetano said Kawasaki — a big, burly fellow usually formally dressed in a white shirt, tie and blue blazer — should have an open mind.

“I promise to keep an open mind but not so open that my brains fall out,” Kawasaki shot back, ending that debate.

Kawasaki, a 20-year state Senate veteran, died Aug. 28. He was 94.

Services will be held at 9:30 a.m. Monday at First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu.

He should have been a straight-up, by-the-book Hawaii Democrat. Kawasaki grew up in McCully, attended McKinley High School and served in the Army in World War II.

He was president of the Young Democrats and helped found the Hawaii Government Employees Association.

Mostly Kawasaki was the exception to the rule. Instead of being a routine “yes” vote in caucus, Kawasaki, a former stevedore and amateur sumo wrestler, was the questioning and objecting “yes, but what about this” dissent.

“He was active in the Democratic Party but also a bit of a maverick; he supported people like (former Senate President) Dickie Wong who was one of the dissidents of his day and also (populist Honolulu Mayor) Frank Fasi who later hired him,” recalled Rep. Bert Kobayashi, who served in the Senate during Kawasaki’s last term in the Legislature.

Hilo businessman and former GOP Sen. Richard Henderson served with Kawasaki when Wong engineered a bipartisan coalition to keep control of the Senate.

Both Democrat Kawasaki and Republican Henderson had leadership roles.

“He was an unusually conservative Democrat, I was always surprised,” Henderson said.

Kawasaki was also an accomplished musician and had a 16-member band.

In his book, “Ben, A Memoir, from Street Kid To Governor,” Cayetano said Kawasaki started to call himself Duke after Duke Ellington and named his son “Guy” after another big band leader of the time, Guy Lombardo.

Outside the Senate Democratic caucus room, there is a large Yamaha grand piano that Henderson says was the result of Kawasaki’s stubborn lobbying that because the House had one, so should the Senate.

Friendships, if not loyalties, ran deep among those legislators, even when there was politics to be played.

The Senate coalition of 1981 collapsed in 1982 with challenges from both Cayetano and then-Sen. Neil Abercrombie.

Wong enforced his own discipline, stripping all the dissidents of their committee chairmanships, including Kawasaki’s vice presidency, but allowing Kawasaki to keep the big corner office.

When Wong asked Kawasaki, a one-time ally, to stick with him and Kawasaki refused, Cayetano wrote, Wong “became emotional and wept.”

Cayetano called Kawasaki an “iconoclast” and Abercrombie recalled when he became governor that Kawasaki had a lei for him when he was sworn into office.

The House piano is gone, but Duke’s piano remains just as he left it.