Last week I wrote about Jackie Kennedy visiting the islands in 1966. I was inspired by an article about her in the Beacon, a magazine that was published in Hawaii from 1961 to 1974.
This week I thought I’d write about three other people whose stories appeared in the Beacon: James A. Michener, Jack de Mello and Patsy Mink.
In May 1961 a Beacon reporter interviewed author James A. Michener, who wrote over 40 books, including “Hawaii,” “Sayonara” and “The Covenant.”
Michener said that a writer had to synchronize his thoughts and typing speed. “If you type with all ten fingers,” he said, “you go so fast that your words outrun your thoughts.
“Fortunately I type with two fingers and it’s just about the speed of my thoughts. I don’t see how a person could possibly compose with all ten fingers at the same time.”
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On his first book, “Tales of the South Pacific”: “The book never made me any money to speak of. It was published in 1947 and it died. It got very good reviews but it didn’t sell very well.
“A year later, it got the Pulitzer Prize and it was revived a little bit, and then it died pretty fast again.
“In 1949, it became a musical (on Broadway), which revived it and then nine or ten years later it became a movie, and that revived it again. It’s had a very up and down record.”
“Tales of the South Pacific” was set in World War II and explored racial prejudice through characters who fell in love with someone of another race. Michener married Mari Yoriko Sabusawa, whose parents were Japanese immigrants.
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On the second draft of his writing: “You write the first draft really to see how it’s going to come out.”
Characters that he did not plan on being important rose to the forefront, and others were discarded.
“My original ideas aren’t very good, really. I’m not a very good writer at all. I find it difficult to keep my mind focused. I’m particularly weak in the selection of words.
“I’m quite prone to repetition, which I don’t detect as I’m writing. I’m given to cliches.
“The first draft is really to see how the thing is going to come out. Oftentimes when writing, I think ‘oh that’s lousy.’ The joy of writing comes with the second draft.”
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The second iteration of something was also important to composer Jack de Mello, he told interviewer Ed Sheehan in 1965.
De Mello is the man who brought big-band symphonic sound to Hawaiian music, Sheehan said.
De Mello said he “gives birth” to a record album in a small room in his Diamond Head apartment. He sits at his desk behind large sheets of lined music paper. No piano is present.
He tunes out the washing machine rumbling next door, the children playing, the television in the other room.
“Jack hears none of this,” Sheehan wrote. “Long ago he developed the ability to turn his ears on and off as casually as he would flick a switch.”
He writes and scores music for a 55-piece orchestra and a chorus of 19 voices in his head. Each song takes about 20 hours of his time to write.
“The music is imagined, debated, written, erased and rewritten. There is the balance of the violins to the cellos to be considered. There is the use of brass to punctuate the melody. In his mind’s eye and ear, he even feels and hears the swelling of the chorus to come.
“In ten days, he will be entering the recording studio in Hollywood. Before him will be 55 of the finest and most expensive musicians in America.”
Twenty-six microphones will be strategically placed. An album of 12 songs will be recorded in two three-hour morning sessions.
“I aim for a ‘take’ the second time we do a tune,” de Mello said. “We rarely get beyond a third playing. If we do, it’s usually for a technical problem, not a musical one.
“The first time through, there are no mistakes. For a second performance I may ask for nuances or interpretations that can’t be noted on a piece of paper. I shoot for a final take on the second playing.
“This second time is always the musicians’ best performance. It’s absolutely electric. When I drop my hands it comes roaring at me like a lion. … It’s thrilling.”
De Mello has recorded nearly 160 albums containing about 500 Hawaiian songs. He has produced albums for the Brothers Cazimero, Emma Vearly, Marlene Sai, the Beamer brothers and many others.
Today de Mello is 99 and lives most of the year in Las Vegas. His son, Jon, founder of the Mountain Apple Co., said Jack de Mello will be 100 in November and is still writing music every day.
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My last vignette from the Beacon is not about seconds, but a woman who was first in several ways.
In January 1965, Patsy Mink wrote about her first few months in Washington, D.C., as a member-elect of Congress.
Mink was the first congresswoman of Asian ancestry, and everybody wanted to interview her. The most common question she got was, “How do I feel about being the only women present?”
Her reply was that she wasn’t the only woman in Congress. She was one of nine in the House of Representatives.
She went on to say she was used to being in the minority. “I was the sole woman senator in both the 30th Territorial Legislature and the Second State Legislature, and it’s a condition I’ve learned to live and work with.”
At the President’s Reception at the White House (for newly elected members of Congress), Mink and Lady Bird Johnson were the only women present.
President Lyndon Johnson took her aside. “He turned on the charm for a while then abruptly became serious,” Mink recalled. “He looked forward to having more women in his Administration, he said.
“He’s searching for women with practical experience and he asked me to help him in his talent search.”
Mink said her aim was to “make the world a better place in which to live. Where can I be more effective, she asked herself? What are the problems for which the quest for solutions are the most meaningful?
“The function of an elected official is to lead the thinking of his time.”
Patsy Mink went on to serve 12 terms in Congress and championed women’s issues in particular. Her landmark Title IX Amendment to the Higher Education Act, passed in 1972, paved the way for equality between men’s and women’s athletic programs in public schools and colleges.
Mink was the first Asian-American to run for president, in 1972 as an anti-war candidate.
Today there are 84 women in the House of Representatives. That’s a long way from nine, but it’s still less than 20 percent of the total.
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.
