This oral history interview is a project of the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The legal rights of this material remain with the Outrigger Canoe Club. Anyone wishing to reproduce it or quote at length from it should contact the Historical Committee of the Outrigger Canoe Club. The reader should be aware that an oral history document portrays information as recalled by the interviewee. Because of the spontaneous nature of this kind of document, it may contain statements and impressions that are not factual.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
An interview by Kenneth Pratt
January 23, 1966
KP: This is an interview with Ernest H. Thomas (ET) who has been a member of the Outrigger Canoe Club since May 21, 1943. This interview is being conducted on January 23, 1986, at the Outrigger Canoe Club, Honolulu, Hawaii. The interviewer is Ken Pratt (KP) representing the Outrigger Canoe Club Oral History Committee. Tommy, before we get into the early days of the Outrigger Canoe Club, can you tell us something about yourself?
ET: Yeh, Ken, I was born in Missouri and spent my early year there mainly in Warrensburg, Missouri. I went to school there and got a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, then I went on to the University of Missouri in Colombia and got a degree in chemical engineering. As a matter of fact I had to go back after the War to take one semester to finish that degree.
KP: I see.
ET: But, I had joined the National Guard in 1934, and I was a Master Sergeant in 1940 and our guard unit, like all the other guard units, was called in to active duty for one year of training – that was pre-war training, and, we never got out, because the War started December 7th and we had gotten in on December 23rd, so we were in the War then.
KP: So you got nabbed. (Laughter)
ET: It was an excellent thing. In the meantime I had gotten promoted to, or demoted, as the case may be, to second lieutenant. So at that time I started on an officer in World War II. But I should say how we got over here, and of course, that was the beginning of my connection with the Outrigger, I was moved from the division that I’d been in, to a separate chemical company that was sent to Hawaii in 1942 – June of 1942. As a matter of fact, we started out when the Battle of Midway was beginning and we didn’t know whether we were going to be met with the Japanese…..
KP: That would have been around June of ’42.
ET: June of ’42.
KP: I see.
ET: So, in a very quick nutshell…Of course, stepping back a little bit more, I had always loved water sports and things of that nature. I’d been a life guard in Warrensburg for four summers while I was going to school and so that added to my enjoyment of Hawaii when I got here. It was strictly that I loved that sort of thing.
KP: Tommy, what was your earliest recollection of the Outrigger Canoe Club?
ET: Well, it is strange, but Colonel Unmacht – George F. Unmacht, who I am sure a lot of old timers…..
KP: I know him slightly.
ET: Right. You probably would know him, he was the gas mask man. I had, by some strange circumstance, gotten moved into his headquarters because I had a knowledge about chemical warfare supply that no one else seemed to have around here, and so one of the early days – I got down here probably in August of 1942, I had been transferred to Fort Shafter, and some time along there he brought me down to the Club, and he had some old cronies down here at the Club. Their whole use of the Club, as far as I could see, besides eating was er…they had a patch of sand out by the Hau Terrace, they’d go out there and lie down on the sand and they called it the ‘Horizontal Athletic Club’. (Laugh)
KP: I remember that location well. (Laughter)
ET: He had me out there and, of course, I got nicked for a dollar initiation fee to the Horizontal Athletic Club. I was way too young to be a member of that club, but anyway, I believe that is the first recollection of the Club.
KP: Well, that’s interesting. I believe Colonel Unmacht used to come and talk to us once in a while – I was with the BMPC, the civilian guard you know, and a very, very fine man. Now, he didn’t sponsor you?
ET: No, he didn’t. It was R. Q. Smith, one of our past presidents – twice past president.
KP: Now what year was that?
ET: That was in ’43. But R. Q. was also in the chemical warfare service. We were in the same office, but I got acquainted with him very early in the time I was here because I was involved in supply and he was at the depot at Schofield. So anyway R. Q. and Clara – you know Clara was able to stay here during the war because she worked in the censorship office…..
KP: I see.
ET: …and they had their home here, and kept their home.
KP: So he had been in for many years…..
ET: …As a reservist, yes.
KP: As I recall he was President of the Outrigger in the early ‘30s.
ET: That’s right, but he…oh, yes, he’d been a member of the Outrigger since the early ‘20s. But anyway, he would bring me down – invite me to breakfast at the Outrigger quite often, maybe in late ’42, ’43 or so, and introduced me at that time to some of the young fellows around here, mainly to George Cook. You know George.
KP: Sure.
ET: He was the first guy I met at the Outrigger through R. Q. and George would introduce me around and I began to get acquainted with the people before I was a member even. Anyway, it was a very nice thing and quite often R. Q. would bring me down to breakfast, Sunday morning breakfast, and then he asked me if I wanted to join. I said, sure I wanted to join, and so he sponsored me and I paid my $27.85 initiation fee as a service member, and I got in, I think the next week. (Laugh) It was quite different in those days…I found a reference to my getting in the Board minutes one time, you know I was a captain at the time – I’d gone up to captain from lieutenant…..
KP: Tommy, getting back to this…you mentioned that you had breakfast down there, now could you give us a little description of what you remember of the building there – now that had not been constructed too many years earlier…
ET: No, it had been built in 1939.
KP: Yep.
ET: It was the so-called ‘new Club’ then.
KP: Yeah.
ET: It was the building out on the beach and the bottom part of it was the canoe shed on the sand. There were rooms at either end of it, however, as I recall, in fact the Beach Captain had his office there and all the beach boys worked out of it, and for a while I remember it was in the left room and then it was in the room toward the Royal Hawaiian. As long as I knew Sally Hale he was the beach captain. He ran a tight ship. He ran the beach boys – he picked out which beach boy was going to take out what tourist group, and so on. So he ran the ship…..
KP: He ran a firm ship…..
ET: …And he ran the members. If a member wanted to take one of the canoes out – of course they were all koa – and it was first break, there was no way you were going to take that canoe out. He just grounded all the canoes, and we did what Sally said, which was great. That was great.
KP: Now, Tommy, you speak of the two offices, one on each and maybe, now there was another little spot where the Club carpenter had a little shed of some sort – do you remember that? Do you remember his name?
ET: Yeah. It was somewhere under there, it was in the area…..
KP: He kept all his tools there and…..
ET: Actually, as I recall the racing canoes, particularly, were hanging from the racks underneath there so there was room to go under them during the day. For a while, now I don’t know the timing on this, I think it was probably right at the beginning, there was one area where they had a snack bar and it was under the main building – the building that was closest to the ocean – and there were seats along there and a snack bar and you could get hamburgers, and so on. I want to say that the food service at the old Club, I mean during those years, was so delightful, the food was so good, it was really so good.
KP: I agree with you one hundred percent.
ET: They had…Henry DeGorog, now his father was with Matson and I found this out to be a fact some time later, but he was able to ship meat and things into the Outrigger Canoe Club through his father that you couldn’t get but through…..
KP: …Because of the War restrictions…..
ET: Yeah, through War restrictions, and so every day there was good food at the Club.
KP: …and you got butter, too, I’ll bet. (Laughter)
ET: But the breakfasts were so delightful, I just remember R. Q. would get a group of people and we’d sit up there and eat and enjoy the view, and even after I got in of course we kept doing that all through ’43, ’44, ’45, and so many times we’ve had that Sunday morning breakfast. But what I started doing – back to the food – as soon as I got to be a member…let me back up…about the first six or eight months or so that I was at Fort Shafter I about worked myself to death. I would work all day and I would just take time out for dinner, and go the Officers’ Club, come back and try to finish up the paperwork. I had the darndest job you ever saw, I was harassed from morning to night with telephone calls, with paper work. Gradually I was able to get a staff – people to help me, but at first there I was…
KP: You were doing two or three man’s work…..
ET: Yes. And what happens when you do that, you get to putting away the hard stuff and doing the easy stuff, so I’d end up with a stack of paper on my desk, but anyway, when I joined the Club I decided to get out of the office at 4:30 and I made a policy…I thought I’d probably be sent to the South Pacific…(Laughter)…but, I didn’t. What happened was I’d come down to the Club, I learned how to ride a surfboard, I got on a canoe paddling team – was on the junior crew from June of 1943, I believe until 1949, it may have been ’48, but ’49 I believe, George Cook. Bill Cook – Bill Cook was the steersman all the time – and we had Harry Shupak who was “The Beef”, and me and, er, well there were several that were the other ones…..
KP: You mean a six-man…..
ET: A six-man crew, but we won race after race, and every time there was a race we were in there with the Junior Six, sometimes there’d be a Junior Four and sometimes there’d be a servicemen’s sprint race, and there were relay races – sometimes most of us would paddle all races that day. It was a good way of doing it…..
KP: Had to be an iron man, eh? Now, were they racing up in Kona in those days?
ET: No.
KP: That had been discontinued.
ET: That had been discontinued, most of the races were right out front of the Club, and it was when the Macfarlane races started down there, there were four-and-a-half mile races – they went clear out and back and out and back and that was when Duke had his Senior crew that were unbeatable, you know. They paddled four-and-a-half miles, not like they do now, I don’t know what it is.
KP: Duke was steersman then?
ET: Duke steered, and Duke helped train us – he helped train our Junior crew, in fact one day we used the Princess (remember the old Princess?)…..
KP: Yes.
ET: You could hardly reach the water from the seats – well we used that for training. He had a theory that if you could paddle that you could…..(Laughter)
KP: Then, you’d get into a canoe that was fairly light, you’d take like…..
ET: Usually we’d swamp at the first stroke. (Laugh)
KP: Is that right?
ET: One day Duke got into the seat in front of me facing me, and I had to paddle in my seat in the Princess and we went all the way to the yacht harbor and back with him looking at me paddling every stroke, I tell you…he insisted on a whirlpool every paddle and not hitting the canoe – something that nowadays you hear the canoes go thump, thump, thump, the kids are all hitting the canoe, boy, Duke wouldn’t stand for that for a minute.
KP: Seems to me you used to go fishing with him, too.
ET: Yes, I went – not fishing – sailing.
KP: Oh, sailing!
ET: It was later in the War, and on Sundays. For almost a year I went out sailing with him, and sometimes Tommy Arnott would go, in fact, quite often. He was another crew member for Duke, but we’d go down to the yacht harbor and he’d say, “Tommy, scrape the keel,” so I’d put on a face mask and go under the sailboat and scrape the keel.
KP: Was this his boat?
ET: Yes, I think…it was his boat, yes. There was some question that it belonged to another person, but I am sure it was his. But, I kept thinking what I was missing at the Club, and it never did really take, but he was very good, he’d teach you how to sail. We would win race after race because he would know whether to go inside or outside for the wind, and he would do it. Sometimes the whole fleet would come about when he would – when we would – and then he’d flip-flop back and they were caught – but he was great, a great water man.
KP: Well he was an amazing man and as I recall he was sailing right up until the day of his death. Wasn’t it down at the parking…..
ET: Yes, I think that was where he fainted. Sometime before he had had a stroke, you know, that happened down there – he fell, and evidently Dr. Silva operated on him quickly and took cup of blood out of his brain area or he would have died them.
KP: That would be in the early seventies or late sixties?
ET: Oh, that was in early sixties. He had a heart attack first and they grounded him as far as swimming, so instead of swimming he would porpoise – he’d go down to the bottom to the sand and push off, he could still out-swim me even doing that. (Laugh) And then he had a stroke – he really was all right except he was a little weaker from then on. I would like to say one thing about Duke, he loved this site, he loved this Club, and that’s very important. You know you’d think that maybe he’d have been one who would have hated to leave the old site because that was where he learned to swim and surf and everything, but he came up here and told me many times that he thought this was wonderful and he’d lay out in the sand area there getting sun, and just enjoyed it so much. So I wanted to go on record in reporting that because I heard it so many times from him, and I know he really did.
KP: I would just mention something about Duke. When I had my fiftieth birthday, my wife gave me a paddle – I used to paddle quite a bit back in those days – and George Downing made the paddle. It was quite a beauty. It was one that you didn’t have to turn when you pulled it from one side of the canoe to the other, either surface was great. Well, the Duke got on to that paddle and he liked it, too – so, by Golly, he was using it quite often when he took a big canoe out because it handled so beautifully. But here the Duke is still steering canoes in the late fifties so he must have been in his seventies.
ET: Well, he was born in 1890, so in the fifties he would have been…well in 1960 he would have been seventy.
KP: Tommy, bringing the ages into the thing, do you remember when we used to have our age group doubles competition…..?
ET: Oh, yeah.
KP: …if your partner was…..
ET: …two men over seventy, or something like that.
KP: It was fifty, I think. If you had a guy 20, you could have a guy like Chase in his eighties.
ET: I was Chairman of the Volleyball Committee in ’48 and ’49, two years, and we had some of the best – I am bragging! – Some of the best volleyball years that I think we have ever had. Every Tuesday night we’d have the businessmen’s league, four-man tournament, that carried on all summer and each team would play each other team, and everybody’d eat stew and rice and go home. But it was marvelous.
KP: I used to go there every once in a while. Did you compete with the firemen, or was that another…..
ET: Well, as a matter of fact, no…I have a picture of Duke refereeing a game sitting up on the stand down there, which were firemen, I think it was within the fire group then – they may have come in, but I think…..
KP: I know we had a tremendous player who was a fireman, a Hawaiian fellow – I can’t think of his name. Remember he used to play all…..
ET: Yeah, yah.
KP: Remember him?
ET: Yeah, I remember him. He was one of our members who was a fireman…..
KP: He died about five years ago, but he could slam, he could run like greased lightening.
ET: I have quite a few pictures of those days in volleyball. I took a lot of pictures then, and I still have a lot of them – someday I’ll get organized. (Laugh)
KP: Tommy, one of the most interesting things at the Club which doesn’t happen too often, just once in a great while, is a funeral service. Now, I wonder if you could tell us a little about the funeral service for Walter Mac – Macfarlane – back in 1943, I think it was.
ET: Yes, right. Well, what they held here was not a full-fledged funeral for him, it was a memorial service.
KP: Oh, I see.
ET: His body wasn’t there, but it was on a Sunday morning, and it was a case of R. Q. and Clara having brought me down to the Club, and they had a very nice memorial service with flowers and so on for him…Now I went to Pop Ford’s funeral service – that was different – we took his ashes and paddled out beyond the reef and had a service out there, circled the canoes around and his ashes were poured out there, and then all of the flowers that had been given were put out to sea…I was in a canoe at Duke’s funeral service out there…..
KP: Now getting back to Pop Ford. He died during the War years too, didn’t he?
ET: No, I think it was after the war. I don’t know where he had been, but he came back. You know that picture that’s in the bar area? That’s the way he looked then – and the Club sort of took care of him for a little while, he was a little feeble at that time – quite old, you know. He would be down nearly all the time and when he died the service was at the Outrigger…
KP: I see.
ET: …and his ashes sprinkled out beyond the reef.
KP: And you actually went out in one of the crews?
ET: Yeah, oh yeah, sure, sure. And about two weeks later I was spear fishing and I dived down and here was one of the wreaths. (Laugh)
KP: Oh no! For goodness sakes!
ET: Sort of spooky!..But Duke’s was marvelous. I was in a canoe for that, too. Let me say one thing that was standard – I went to maybe four or five of them over the years. There was one standard thing about funerals and the sprinkling of the ashes at sea, and that was slowly going out in line, and then in a circle out there, and usually Reverend Akaka would say something out in the ocean and so on, and then we raced back. Race back to shore, invariably race back to shore. That was part of the tradition – you tried to beat everybody back to the shore, and that was a tradition about those funerals.
KP: In other words, it was not a spirit of being sad – this was, life goes on and let’s have fun.
ET: Invariably it was that way, and everybody expected it. You took off for the shore and tried to catch a wave and beat everybody else, and it was kind of nice.
KP: A few swamped…..
ET: Well, I don’t know about that. There have been funerals I have been out on for beachboys, some of the old beachboys – you know, pre-war, beachboys who would die, they had their ashes scattered out there, and so it, it was quite a tradition.
KP: Bill Mullahey had services done here – I mean they had services for Bill Mullahey. His is the only one I went to….. Now, Tommy, you had not joined the Club when Walter Mac, which Macfarlane was called in those days, took the helm as President at a very, very critical time, but do you remember hearing about the problems there?
ET: Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that story so many times and it is so great, he really did – he padded around the financial center in Honolulu and got big money from some big people to build the Club. As a matter of fact, I was also told that they had some members from those financial organizations who were on the Board kind of watching the money for a while. (Laugh)
KP: Yes. (Laughter) Would Leslie Hicks be one of them?
ET: Well, Les…you know it was very soon…and I believe he must have started being Chairman of the Investment Committee early in the War. At the start of the War not only were they broke, they were in debt – the Club was in debt – for the new buildings. They sold bonds though…
KP: $90,000, worth, as I recall.
ET: OK, but they did, they sold bonds and some of the people though it was more in the nature of a contribution than anything else (Laugh), but anyway, they owed money. They had bonds outstanding and they were in debt. But anyway, Les Hicks realized that they’d better accumulate money. Of course the Club let in people like me – here I’m a service member…I am an officer – they didn’t let in enlisted men as a whole. Local ones, they would, but Mainland G.Is – no, but a Mainland officer and of course, we got by with half of the initiation fee and half dues, I only paid $3.00 a month in those years – during the War years as dues. I ate practically every evening meal from about 1943 through the end of 1945 at the Outrigger Canoe Club. I’d come down to the Club, play some volleyball or go surfing, or train for the canoe races or something involving the Club, spear fish or something, and then I would shower, go upstairs to the dining room and eat a good meal, and they were good meals, and the waiters had come over from the Royal Hawaiian to work at the Outrigger during the war…..
KP: Is that right?
ET: Yes, and some of the best waiters you ever saw.
KP: Of course, the Royal was taken over the services…..
ET: Right. There was one particular one, and you know I’ve tried to rack my brain for his name – I think it was Walter, but I’m not sure – but he was so marvelous and he waited on me almost all the time. He was a waiter-captain at the Royal Hawaiian before the War!
KP: Fabulous.
ET: A fabulous waiter, just smooth, you know and so friendly and so on. They allowed tipping – they suspended the no tipping rule so people like me – I say, like me you know, young officers and so on could tip and help pay some of these waiters a little bit more, you know. Walter one time said, “You tip too much”. So that’s the kind of people they were. But anyway, the thing was, Les (Hicks) realized that he should invest the money properly and he did, I think single-handedly, invested the increased money that the Club had and he ended up at the end of the War with no debt, as I recall, no debt – paid off everything and by the time we were ready to move down here he’d accumulated I think $700,000. That was a lot of money in those days and it was the seed that we needed to go out and borrow – I think we borrowed $1.5 million – to build this. In fact, I signed the mortgage …..
KP: Oh, is that right? You were Treasurer at the time I take it.
ET: Secretary. But anyway, he did a marvelous job, and a lot of it by good investment.
KP: A lot of that build-up of cash and the switch from the critical days of ’39 and ’40 and early ’41 was due to the fact that you and Colonel Unmacht and Colonel Smith – R. Q. Smith – and many, many others were able to join as military serviceman.
ET: Service members. Right.
KP: And I think that was one of the big things that allowed the Building Fund to grow.
ET: Oh, it was, there’s no question about it, they took advantage…..
KP: They poured money into the Club.
ET: Right. Right. Now, I think as a result of that starting, the Kamaaina Hui was formed. I think the real purpose of the Kamaaina Hui was to have a voice in the Club’s operations which would keep the Club for kamaaina members and maybe not stress so much people like me and R. Q. and Colonel Unmacht taking over the Club, so the Kamaaina Hui was basically a bunch of local guys who had been members before the War. Wilford Godbold wrote the by-laws for it – he wrote the by-laws for the Kamaaina Hui. It has a Constitution and By-laws, I have a set of them yet. This group of local members formed the Kamaaina Hui and by some strange reason, I think it was because I knew George and Bill by that time, and I was accepted right away as a member, which is kind of strange because I always felt that the reason they had it was to protect the Club against people like me. (Laughter) Anyway, I really enjoyed that, and of course, I learned to know very intimately a group of the local kids. In fact, most of them thought I was a local boy. It was so strange, they’d say, “Did you go to Punahou?”
KP: Well, Tommy, let’s face it, some people like you can become a Kamaaina overnight, other people can live here 20 years and they are still coast haoles. (Laughter) Maybe they are born here and they are still coast haoles – each person is different.
ET: Yeah, that’s right.
KP: Incidentally, was that the club that Bing Crosby joined?
ET: No.
KP: That was a different group?
ET: Before the War there was a Kamaaina Beachcombers Hui …..
KP: Oh, that’s the one I joined, yes.
ET: That was before the War. It was different altogether – maybe some of the members…and I believe they were…but what I think happened there was Wilford (Godbold) and “Yabo” (Herbert Taylor) and some of the old-time executive members thought this thing up and started it, and they may have been members of the other one, but they named it differently and changed it, and made new by-laws. It has got beautifully written by-laws, about as good as the Outrigger’s. Really good. But, anyway, very strangely about the second year I was a member they made me the Secretary. (Laughter)
KP: You got sandbagged into more places!
ET: Well…and I know why, I had an office and my own private secretary and I could take the minutes, take them up and have my secretary….I’d dictate them to my secretary and then come back with nicely typed minutes. Then, up the line I became President of it – probably ’45, I guess, because it was right after Bill Capp was President of the Kamaaina Hui. We had, maybe, 50 members by that time. But, anyway it was very enjoyable. We would have meetings once a month and we would invite Directors to come down and explain things to us, so we really did keep a close contact with the operations of the Club – like Bill Mullahey came down when they wanted to redesign the bar.
KP: Ah, yes.
ET: Bill came down with charts and so on to one of our Kamaaina Hui meetings and explained it and convinced us that this was the right thing to do, you see. And then it came time for the election of Directors, we would push somebody and some of our people would get in.
KP: This was a power behind…..(Laughter)
ET: It was a power…We would have the darndest parties you ever saw, we collected our dues and would spend it on our parties. (Laughter)
KP: Go for broke, eh (Laughter)
ET: Oh, it was fun. I am sorry it died out. It died out after the War, because, actually we got in some – well, I shouldn’t put it that way, but some of the members who got in after the War were not really…I don’t know, it just died out, let’s just say that. Then we lost the files, Kenny Chaney was the Secretary and he got killed on Diamond Head when his helicopter crashed…..
KP: …I’ll be darned.
ET: …and so I tried to find where our records were – you know our roster and the whole thing. We didn’t lose the money, I think we still had…well, I don’t know what it is – $90 or something. But it was a little bit of treasury…the treasurer…I don’t know whatever happened to it, it is probably still sitting in somebody’s bank account.
KP: It has probably gone over to the State. (Laughter)
ET: But anyway, I never could find the roster, but I have in my – I squirrel away things, you know – and I probably have the record of the members somewhere in my files. I know where the by-laws are. Some day they probably should be distributed or printed or something.
KP: Now, getting back to the Outrigger proper. Wilford Godbold was President for, now many…..?
ET: Seven terms. As far as I…I am sure that’s correct.
KP: Now he was a great guy.
ET: Marvelous.
KP: We used to call him “Lefty”, do you remember?
ET: Yeah.
KP: Can you tell us a little about him?
ET: Yeah, Wilford was one of the finest executives, let’s put it that way, that I’ve ever come across. He ran the Club in such a smooth manner that it was just marvelous, and – well seven terms shows that. I sat in on some of the Board meetings. Of course, I never got to be on the Board while he was President. He took a liking to me, I guess you’d say, because he pushed me into…First thing you know, here I am right after the War, I am Chairman of the Volleyball Committee. Well, you know, that’s big push! And I think he had me on the judging of the Election Committee, I think that began about 1948 and every time you’d turn around he’d be doing something. He wanted me to run for the Board, and I ran in 1951 – didn’t make it, of course – and I think again I got pushed in 1955 or thereabouts – didn’t make it, and I finally made it in 1962.
KP: Takes a little time to get known.
ET: Yeah. (Laugh)
KP: Still talking about the fifties when you were going for your meals to the Club there and playing at lot of volleyball. Remember the volleyball courts were right between the eating place, you know overlooking the ocean, and where we changed clothes.
ET: Oh, yeah.
KP: Now, do you recall, in the late afternoon I remember you and “Rusty” playing – I can just see you playing right now – and seeing people going into the dining room-bar area and pretty soon Banzai punch was taking hold.
ET: Yeah.
KP: Can you tell me a little about that recollection?
ET: Oh, yeah, well, for a long time there was no fence between the volleyball court and the sidewalk or the people coming in, and several times there were some pretty close calls, but one evening there were four of us playing doubles in the senior court and somebody hit a slam ball, you know a spike one, and hit just right! A lady who was walking down the sidewalk carrying a cake (Laughter) and that ball came right up under that cake and it went flip, flip, and it was in a box and she screamed, “My cake, my cake”. So we all went over and helped her kind of get it back together, and she took it upstairs, and she came back later and said, “We ate it, and it was good”. Later there was a low fence, but enough to protect somebody from getting their head knocked off.
KP: As I recall, when the party started, there started to be light murmurs and so on, and then the Banzai punch took effect and it was like a hornet’s nest.
ET: The parties that were most of that were the Kamaaina Hui’s parties. We were really party people, you know, and I really believe that Anzai’s Banzai punch started at one of our parties.
KP: I see.
ET: I am standing over there by the punch bowl where George (Cook) and, I don’t know, whoever…
KP: Bill (Cook) maybe…
ET: We were just standing around there having a couple of Banzai punches, and we didn’t know that much about it, and have another one, have another one and then we sat down and had another one and somebody yelled, “Come and get your steaks” – we had to go get our own steaks – and I couldn’t stand up! (Laughter)
KP: That stuff was powerful, wasn’t it?
ET: Wow!
KP: I don’t know what it was made of but…..
ET: It’s bourbon.
KP: Oh, bourbon.
ET: But it was aged and smooth. So anyway, those were the days. It was the Kamaaina Hui parties that were the ones that got loud.
KP: Now, tell me, during the years ’50 to ’55 you continued to be very active in committee work. Do you recall which committees you were on, and something about them.
ET: Yeah. I had to look them up a while back because you forget those things, but I found it reported that I was on the Canoe and Sailing Committee, and I was on the Entertainment Committee for two years. I was on the Nominating Committee and, as I said a minute ago, it was 1955 that I was nominated to the Board again and I didn’t make it, but I stayed pretty active, but I didn’t really have all the time in the world then, because R. Q. (Smith) had me running all over the islands working for him, you know. I went to work for R. Q. after the War at Pacific Chemical and Fertilizer Company and my job was a lot of times off the island, so I didn’t have as much time as I had before.
KP: Now, you mentioned that you did join the Board of Directors in 1962, I think the record shows. Now, how did you enjoy that as a new member?
ET: Marvelous.
KP: Where did you meet?
ET: We met usually on the sun deck of the old Club. Of course, the manner of meetings was somewhat in the open, but we could kind of…a long table around one end of the sundeck, you remember the old sundeck?
KP: Oh yes, yes.
ET: …and sit around and do out talking. It was fairly…people wouldn’t walk by us, you know, I think probably they…but anyway, it was marvelous and we had a very, very delightful Board. It was during that period, you know, that the Club was making decisions about moving up here in ’64, and right at the beginning of that period, I believe it would have been ’62 – well, I’m not really sure, but I think it was – there had been a plan developed for a high rise on this site. There was a feeling, it turned out later, a feeling that if we had a high rise the Club people wouldn’t have dues – the income from the high rise would sort of take care of the dues.
KP: Uh-uh, I recall that.
ET: But there was a big feeling, I think particularly on the Board, that really wasn’t what we wanted. We wanted a Club, so they decided to send out a survey – now I am not sure if this was ’62 or ’63, probably was ’62, it had to be – send out a questionnaire, I should say, make a survey to find out how much interest there was in a high rise, and get some more information and input from the membership as to what really they wanted in the new Club. Well it came back, as I recall, I think it was 64 members who said they would like to own or rent…..
KP: That many?
ET: That many, but that’s not enough…..
KP: Not enough to swing the deal.
ET: Not enough to swing the deal, in other words it would have to have been overwhelming to make it a deal.
KP: Wasn’t that the low point in the real estate market at that time?
ET: Well, it could have been. Yes, it was.
KP: It was a slow time.
ET: I bought my Colony Surf apartment in 1959 and in ’62 it was not considered very economical, people were not clambering to buy my apartment in 1962.
KP: You might have taken a loss. Inflation hadn’t set in then.
ET: No. But anyway, it came back it was very obvious that people wanted a beach Club, a Club like we ended up getting, and so we scrapped the plans for the highrise and had a new plan drawn up for a beach Club. Val Ossipoff was the lead architect. As I recall we had two other architectural firms so that it was spread out more, but Val was the lead architect. We did get input from the other two.
KP: I think the other two were more or less the one referring to the engineers.
ET: Yes. True. True.
KP: And Val was the one who gave it the beauty.
ET: But anyway, it was just marvelous. You know, getting back to the decision made to junk the highrise, I remember that vote 15 for us; I believe it was, sitting around this table. Ward Russell was the President and he said, “Each one of you make a statement as to what you want to do”. And it went around the table and everybody there made a statement and discussed what they wanted to do, to junk the old one, it was a big decision. That had already spent $60,000, or something, I think they did it before I got on the Board, for the plan some money, anyway, had been spent. So here were 15 Directors, each one gave his personal input into the decision and when we got through the vote was unanimous to junk the old one and go for the new one. That was a big decision; I repeat that, that was not something you would take lightly.
Then we had to sell the membership, for course, and what we did, we had Val come up with a design which was fabulous, he came to the Board and described in detail to the Board the concepts he had for the design just marvellous, marvellous, just the most professional thing I think I have ever seen was the way he gave those concepts. Then we approved it, but it still had to pass the membership, because it was a big deal, but we approved it and had the plans made into model, so a physical model was constructed of the new Club, then pictures were taken of the model in such a way that it looked like you were looking at the Club. They came out beautifully. Then we called a meeting of the membership, showed them those pictures, and it was so near unanimous I think there might have been one vote against it, and the rest of the membership went for it.
KP: Where was that meeting?
ET: At the Princess Kaiulani.
KP: At the Princess Kaiulani, I recall that.
ET: There was one member, a fairly new member, and he had been pushing our Club staying on the present site and taking a room in a high rise for the Club site. I think he was the only one who voted against it. My impression was it was almost unanimous.
KP: Was he a member of the Board?
ET: No. This was at the membership meeting.
KP: Well, it seems to me that Lorrin Thurston was very strong about staying.
ET: It would kill the Outrigger Canoe Club that was his statement to one of the Board members who told me about it. It would just kill the Outrigger Canoe Club by moving up here. Anyway, Val’s er….
KP: Did Val present it at the big meeting of the Club members, too?
ET: Well, I don’t believe he did.
KP: He wasn’t there….?
ET: Well, I don’t believe he did, I don’t recall that, but we had all the pictures. You know when you see something that’s almost like a work of art of somebody like him, to give you the concept now, let me give you an example. Do you want me to tell you some of the things he said?
KP: I’d be happy to hear it.
ET: He described first that there were not going to be walls in the dining room really, well, first, I’ll put it this way, the view, he had a design which could aim the Club’s view down toward Waikiki, toward that direction, rather than say out toward the sun, so that the view would be down that way. He was going to have three levels so that people at every level could see the view.
KP: I see.
ET: He was going to have a ground level which was the Hau Terrace you see that’s ground level; then he was going to have a level which was two or three step up which would have people look over their heads which would be the bar area. Then higher than that so people could look in any direction would be the dining room, and so you see the three levels and some people probably are not conscious of that today.
KP: I really had not thought of it myself.
ET: Now the second was, there weren’t going to be any walls along there because he didn’t want to block the view but, he was going to put large concrete posts with natural material from the reef chopped up in there, but they were going to be large to give the illusion of a wall. You see, you don’t need that much strength to support just a roof but with these big posts… when you look at that you feel there is a wall, but you can see. So I think that’s ….
KP: That is interesting.
ET: Yeah. He had a lot of other things about the dining room, room around the perimeter, people like to sit around perimeters of things they don’t like to sit in the middle of things, and as I say, it was thrilling to me. I can remember the feeling I had listening to that, I was just awed. I was like a work of art.
KP: And it remained the same with few changes.
ET: Yes, in fact our Board was very afraid that in the future there would be changes and we tried to pin it down that any changes would be with his approval.
KP: I see. Now, in 1963 you were still on the Board and ….
ET: Oh, I went off … Yes, ’63, it was that year I was Secretary.
KP: Yeah, Yeah. And I’ll bet you were a busy man, because you moved to the new location just a year after in 1964.
ET: Yeah. What I tried to do as Secretary, what had to be done, we had to reissue new house rules and that sort of thing because of a different set of circumstances up there, and as I recall I believe we may have revised the Bylaws at the same time. I am not sure I was chairman of that committee but I know I remember when I had to present the findings to the Board and get various things… and I had been … these things happen to you, you know… In 1962, I was Coordinating Director for the Entertainment Committee…
KP: Ah, yes.
ET: I continued to do that also in 1963, when I was the Club Secretary because nobody else wanted to do it. Also, I couldn’t really get a chairman because here we were the Club was falling apart, nobody wanted to spend a nickel on it, so I ended up as chairman of the Entertainment Committee as well as Coordinating Director, and so we just aimed for about four parties, and we had some good parties down there. I think inadvertently we almost caused a disaster we called one the ‘Last Blast’ [Laughter] and there was some fear that maybe somebody would! [Laughter]
KP: Tommy, I may be incorrect on this, but it seems to me that during 1963 prior to the opening of the Club here at the new location, we used to have parties, small parties. Lefty Goldbold had my wife and me out to a steak roast out somewhere, the building wasn’t even up yet. It was near the beach, and we had a ball we had fun. There were lots of those parties out there.
ET: Yes, quite a few. Right. And of course, the people who deserve the real credit were Cline Mann’s committee, the Building Committee. They were as busy as heck, they would come to the Board with recommendations of this and that and the other thing, like I remember one, should we have two saunas; one for the women, and one for men, and it ended up, we got two saunas… it started out that the men were going to have the big thing and the women what was left [Laugh]
There were a lot of little details that the Board had to approve in ’63, maybe ’62, too. Some were little, I remember the beach hadn’t really been settled, you know, what we were going to do about the beach and of course again, Cline’s committee, God, they were fabulous, they were able to get … they did all the legal documents and everything, they got the approval of the State to build the beach, the Harbors Division. They got approval of the U.S. Engineers to build the beach, and by building a beach I mean dredge the beach. You couldn’t do it in a million years today; the environmentalists would be all over your neck. They get approval of where to put a groin, they were trying to get it a little further down, but it ended up by the property line of the Colony Surf. Now the Colony Surf was here already, it had gone up in ’61, so it was easy to see … I remember on the Board making the decision, we could put the groin to hold the sand, we could put it down past the property line of the Colony Surf and the sand would be in front of the Colony Surf to their benefit, but it’s also to our benefit because our members would be able to use it. It belongs to the State as soon we built it, it doesn’t belong to a private property. This was all part of the thing, the beach that was constructed belongs to the State clear up to where the property line was before we built the beach. So it wasn’t anything that were giving anybody something except; of course, it did improve the Colony Surf and the Colony Surf did chip in $10,000. For which I paid my share to pay for building the beach.
KP: I see.
ET: But I remember their decision on where to put the groin.
KP: Now, wasn’t there another groin that was we had to build by the Elks Club that was later on?
ET: That was quite some time later.
KP: I see.
ET: It was to try to maintain a given minimum amount to sand no matter what the weather.
KP: Uh-uh.
ET: It hasn’t worked, because one big storm took all of the sand from all of the south beaches on all of the islands one year, and it has never really come back yet. But up to that point it was working like a charm, it was like valve regulating the flow of sand back and forth.
KP: Now, Tommy, a lot of spots along the beach, Waikiki, have had to ship sand in from Molokai or from Waimanalo, how did you fellows do it?
ET: Well, most of the sand that was put out there came from the excavation for the building. You see, this is all about down eight feet or so, clear across Kapiolani Park is all sand when you get down a little bit. But that was another decision that was brought to the Board, they could have just excavated around the foundations of the buildings and leave the rest unexcavated, but the Building Committee, Cline, wanted to excavate the whole site and use that sand and then use the dredged coral as fill back where the sand was.
KP: I see, get the sand out and put the coral in …
ET: Yes, right, and the beauty of it was you wouldn’t have to haul the coral away and you wouldn’t have to buy so much sand. I think as ended up buying dressing sand for the beach …
KP: I see.
ET: … at that time, and later we have … two or three times, we have had sand brought in. but that was a decision I remember the Board making, to excavate the whole site.
KP: I see. That is very interesting.
ET: You got a lot more sand that way and had a place to put the stone. Here’s something interesting, I think, along that line, the U.S. Engineer, Palmer, I believe his name is the head civilian, you know, the guy with the U.S. Engineers and Cline and the committee stood in my apartment with the windows open looking down at the reef area with a chart showing it and this engineer drew the line of the reef on the map of the reef how far we could excavate to make the swimming area.
KP: Isn’t that interesting.
ET: Yeah. Four and-a-half to five feet deep, and they just actually dredged it with a back hoe type of thing, so that’s how it got there, that was how it was decided. You wanted to keep enough reef so that you didn’t have waves washing in, obviously, and you wanted a big enough swimming area to be useful, so it was a decision, where do you stop. I think we had Hawaiian Dredging to do the dredging and they just sent their crews in there… I can see some marks where it dug out there.
KP: Great. I know what you guy went through personally. I have a little beach place out past Haleiwa and it took me two years through the Board of Natural Resources to get approval from them, and I went down there, I was retired then, it must have been in ’72 or ’73, I was retired and I used to bother them about three or four times a month.
ET: That’s why I give Cline and his committee so much credit because they got it through rather quickly – relatively speaking you know you’d think this would go on for ten years. They got it within, maybe, months the whole thing it’s astounding.
KP: Well, I think one of the things the Club was extremely fortunate is that Cline Mann is an engineer and his Dad was an engineer before him, and he knows the land ownerships way back he knows… I believe he was the one who had tests made for the Club prior to the excavation showing the sand and all.
KP: Now, somewhere along the line, Tommy, there was a restriction in the area on putting up high rises. Had that been in effect ….?
ET: It wasn’t in effect then, but it is now, we can only go 25 feet above ground level for any structure unless you would get a variance.
KP: This is a continuation of the Ernest H. Thomas oral history, and it is being conducted at the Outrigger Canoe Club on February 26, 1986. Now Tommy, just at the end of the last session we were talking about a 25-foot restriction at the Club, could you elaboration a little bit about it?
ET: Yes, at this time there is a Historical, Cultural, Scenic Zone established around Diamond Head and the Outrigger Canoe Club is in the area and one of the requirements is that a structure can only be built 25 feet above ground level, so I think to answer the original question that you asked me, we would have a little difficulty making a highrise at this time. We could have done it in the old days because there wasn’t that particular restriction. There was a zoning restriction but it was only for apartment zoning areas so it was possible then, but not now.
KP: Of course, I imagine having that restriction aids us in our dickering with the Elks Club about the increase in the lease hold. Right?
ET: Well our lease with the Elks provides that our area will be used for club purposes and not for ….
KP: So it’s covered already.
ET: It’s covered already.
KP: Now Tommy in 1965 you had a very important job, Club Treasurer, was this a good year financially?
ET: Well, yes and no. it was good from the standpoint that we set up a new budgetary control system. I don’t believe the Club had a budget as such before that time. Maybe some kind of budget in the office but we set up a real budget that year and also retained Harris Kerr Forster as our accountants and that gave us an input of practically all of the clubs in the United States that’s their main purpose, so we could check our operations as compared to their operations. But financially, we were running a little bit short on cash flow and if you look back at it, it was basically because our dues structure was just a little too low for the type of operation we had. But we got through all right, we didn’t go bankrupt! [Laughter]
KP: That’s good. Now Tommy, in ’66 you were still busy with Club affairs what did you do that year?
ET: Well, I wasn’t a Club officer that year but I served on a number of committees and of course the original Long Range Planning Committee was set up that year and I was a member of it, not the chairman, but a member. It was called then the Long Range Financial Planning Committee and I believe that title really fits what we have done in the past better than leaving the ‘Financial’ part of it out. It was also that year that the Board did a very nice thing, it was about 1966, in the year ’66 or ’67 decided that the initiation fees of the Club were really not income and they should be put aside in a building fund.
KP: I see.
ET: We had a mortgage, however, and it was appropriate that the principal on the mortgage could be taken out of that income, and so we did that as long as we had the mortgage. This was a very desirable type of thing to do and unfortunately it was not carried forward to the present day, if it did we would have sizeable building fund.
KP: When did they discontinue it?
ET: I don’t know when the Board discontinued it; it was after I got off the Board because I would have been fighting yet if they’d tried to stop it when I was on the Board. But a little later it was reinstated.
KP: Ah, very good, very good.
ET: There was another interesting committee, I was made chairman of the Water Safety Committee,that is now called the Beach and Water Safety Committee, I think we change the name because it includes the operation of the beach attendants and things involving the beach. At that time we had Wally Young who was a member and Dennis O’Connor, because we were writing up by-laws and house rules, and Dennis was a marvelous guys to have on you committee when you are writing legal house rules. It was also in that year that we hired a marine architect, Ernest Simmerer I believe his name was, and got him to design an anchorage for our hobie cats and small boats, because what developed here, everybody brought a boat down, threw an anchor out, and the whole swimming area the whole lagoon was covered with boats and people couldn’t swim. It was a bad deal, I have pictures of it, incidentally.
So what we decided we would do was we would put in cables on the bottom of the lagoon in the right locations, we could anchor the boats to the cable so we could hold them in line and everybody would have a good place to anchor and people could still have a piece to swim.
KP: Now, would they have individual spots that they’d go to each time?
ET: Yes. Yes. In fact, we want right ahead and did it, you see, and this you might say was our mistake. We thought we could do it so we put stainless steel cables well; Simmerer made a design, and this was kind of lapping over into the next year after I was President, but he made the design. We were able to get some surplus stainless steel cable somewhere. I think Wally Young and Tom Reiner were very active in that and we laid the cable where he said, all with Board approval of course, and at the same time we had the design of this groin that you see out there between us and the Elks Club which was designed to hold a minimum amount of sand both during summer and winter movements of the sand, so both clubs were supposed to retain a beach that way, and it worked for some years. But anyway, we also, this Beach and Water Safety Committee, helped the manager in hiring a proper beach captain who was the head of the beach operations out there and also set up some rules as to how he was to operate. Rabbit Kekai was one of our first beach captains.
KP: I believe that the Historical Committee was set up at your suggestion, was it not? About that time, or I guess a little later 1969?
ET: I really think it was my suggestion, I do believe that, although I can’t find it specifically stated in the minutes of the Board meeting. But it was set up in 1967. I was Vice President of Activities in ’67 and all the committee involving activities I was supposed to be concerned with, and I remember definitely suggesting that we set up a Historical Committee and we put it under the jurisdiction of the Public Relations committee at that time for budget reasons more than anything else because it was a new committee, and Mariechen Jackson was the Chairman.
KP: That’s Mariechen Wehselau Jackson.
ET: Yes, and Cline Mann was a member, Ward Russell was a member. Joe Stickney was a very valuable member of that committee. He was a surfer at the old site in 1904, as a kid.
KP: Is that right? That’s when they used to change clothes at Judge Stainer’s …
ET: Probably, yes.
KP: … the property there right near the Moana Hotel.
ET: Anyway, that was an interesting year when I was Vice President of Activities. I was busy that year. My God, there were a lot of things going on. I tried to keep track of all the committees but we were having the problem in those days of having our members objecting to too many guest memberships during the summer months, and this had nothing to do with finances, the people just didn’t like to be crowded ….
KP: In other words, it was getting jam-packed.
ET: … but we were losing money while we were doing it because I made a study going back in the years that we had been doing that and we were definitely losing money but the membership wanted it that way, and so money loss or not we went ahead and did it. Another thing that went on that year was Senior Memberships.
KP: That was when you made the drop in the cost to senior members.
ET: Right. There was an ad hoc committee formed, “Howdy” (Howard) Goss was President he was a marvelous president, he was really a good executive type of person so he would form an ad hoc committee to do something, so he served on the committee and George Cook was Treasurer I think that year, and he served on the committee and I served as Chairman… oh, I am sorry, that was a different committee [Laugh] that was a Minimum Charge Plan Committee. We were hearing the clubs around town were making minimum charges for members. If they didn’t use up a certain amount of money in the dining room or the bar then they would be charged much. Well, we didn’t want to do that really because there were many reasons, but what we did we formed this committee we got the manager, who was a member of the National Club Managers Association, got him to write to headquarters of the Club Managers Association and find out what they thought about it based on their knowledge of all the clubs. They came back with a very strong recommendation that it should not be done. Clubs do not make money by doing that because they have to staff up the day before the thing expires and so they lose money that way, and they strongly said, ‘if you need money, raise the dues’.
KP: I see. That sound like a smart solution.
ET: But, back to the senior memberships, we came up with a recommendation “Howdy” was a member of that committee. Don Avery was a member, Cline was member, and I was chairman of that ad hoc committee and we came back with a recommendation that a senior status regular membership — they’d still be regular members but with senior status. We thought it would be better that way and it still operates that way, but they changed the name to Senior Members.
KP: You have to be a member so long, it wasn’t age only …
ET: That’s right age 65 with 25 years…
KP: 25 years, I see.
ET: Later we added, 60 years if you had 40 years membership. A lot of people started as a kid you know. In reviewing the minutes of the Board meetings while preparing for this, I think those are the main things that happened during those years. Although a million other things happened.
KP: I think you have covered it very well. Now, Tommy, over the years you have had some very important jobs, but in 1969-70 you had the biggie, you became Club President could you give us a rundown on this busy year.
ET: Well, Ken, you know that was one of the high points of my life to be made president of this Club, and I think I expressed that in my report to the membership at the end of the year. But the things about that year was not so much what I did but I had a Board of Directors that was just Fabulous. It was a team operation and I have never been involved in a group action that I can say was as good as this one, because I would appoint a job to an individual if it was appropriate, co-ordinating director to get something done, or form and ad hoc committee to do some internal job for the Board and I never had anybody fail. They would come to the next meeting and I could expect to have an answer. That was just fabulous.
Several of the things we did that year I would like to mention; one of the things that seemed strange, but we outlined the duties of the Vice Presidents. “Howdy” had been the father of the idea of having vice presidents to ease the load of the President, but we didn’t really outline their duties.
KP: There are two vice presidents?
ET: There were two of them, right. So one of the first things we did we got organized was to outline the duties and give them authority to do things that they hadn’t had before. Then, during the course of the year Don Avery, who was vice president of operations, was very instrumental in getting a change made in the menu policy of the Club. Now, this sound very simple but we had a menu that, you might say, was based on the old Matson ship days.
KP: Is that right?
ET: The menu was … you could almost get anything at any time, and of course, it was very expensive to do this…
KP: I see.
ET: … and we were losing great money in the dining room and going back to Harris Kerr Forster, again clubs have a tendency to do this and then hope they make it up in the bar area, and we were to some extent doing that. However, the Board strongly felt that we should try at least to come nearer to breaking even in the dining room, so we had a House Committee with a chairman, who was Richard Park, and Richard Park was the Vice President of the Snack Shops and the Yum Yum Tree Restaurant and all of those chains …
KP: Fast food chains …
ET: Well, it was more nice …
KP: The Yum Yum shops have real nice ….
ET: … and the one over there now, I can’t remember what its name is, but there was a number of shops anyway, but he was, of course a professional food man and he was the chairman of the House Committee we made him chairman, Don worked with him, and we had several meetings with me, Don and he and, with the manager Peter Van Dorn, agreed to simplify the menu from a standpoint of a number of things, but stress quality. High quality smaller menu. Well, we began to see that working toward the end of the year by some added income in the dining room. Then remember in the years, in the sixties, these were the years of the drug scene…
KP: Oh, yes …
ET: You remember …
KP: Hippies and the drugs ….
ET: Down at the International Market Place there were drugs being sold hand to hand, and right next door to us on the other side of the Colony Surf there were two old ramshackle houses that were filled with ‘flower children’ you might say, they were saying on a daily basis a guy who subleased the area and there were a hundred people staying in those things. But anyway, the idea was that we were concerned and I think there may have been a few members that had been publicized in the drug problem, so we set up a policy and rather than going out to publicize it, you know, there are bound to be some bad repercussions, we publicized it through committees. The idea was that if any of our members were caught, or known to be in drugs, they were out of the Club I mean you just couldn’t have them.
KP: You had to be tough.
ET: Yes that’s right. Then the other thing we did finish the boat moorings that year. You might say all hell broke loose. [Laugh]
KP: Is that right?
ET: As I said before, we really thought by cleaning up the area and providing a place for boats to anchor we were doing everybody a favor, you see, including our own members to have a place to swim, plus the fact we were tidying up the area. Well, we got a letter from the Harbors Division ‘we notice you have installed an anchorage — take it out’.
KP: Not on your property, take it out! [Laughter]
ET: Yes. Well anyway we got together with the Harbors Division and they were marvelous people, and very quickly they saw how we had solved the problem and they went to bat for us. We had to get permission, not only from them, but from the Corps of Engineers, and the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Health Department and we got everybody’s permission expect the Department of Land and Natural Resource who, strangely enough, kind of dropped the matter at that time. But the Harbors Division was so sold on our solution that they wanted to use the same principle in some other areas where they were having problems with crowded boaters.
KP: That’s great.
ET: So, now skipping forward about ten years, not ten, maybe eight the Department of Land and Natural Resources came back to the Club and said, “You never did get approval for that anchorage. So, I had been off the Board for years and I had no way that I could fight it and Peter Baldwin was President I went down to listen to him, and he was successful, and the Harbors Division came in with final showing that we had gotten approval from them, from the Corps of Engineers and, in other words they came to bat for us again, and it ended up that the Harbors Division agreed to take responsibility for this area from the Department of Land and Resources, therefore it dropped again.
KP: I see.
ET: But, anyway, we got caught … [Laughter]
KP: Let’s hope it doesn’t come up again.
ET: If it does, the Harbor Division agreed they would take the responsibility for it. That was interesting though they were really nice people and they really came through. Oh, let’s see … we had some dealings with the Elks concerning our lease at that time. Frankly, I had forgotten about it but recalled when I read the minutes, but they wanted us to subordinate our rights under our lessee which was of course, the first right of refusal for any purchase or lessee of their area, so they could get a mortgage on their land.
KP: I see.
ET: Well, thank heaven we had Dennis O’Connor and, of course, he couldn’t handle it as a lawyer he could retain a law firm to handle it from the standpoint of writing up documents which would allow them to get their mortgage without us having any chance of jeopardizing our lessee and so we did that. I don’t know what happened after that but we did give the Elks documents which would permit them to go ahead and mortgage the area. We were in good relations with them. We had several times when we went over there to do things and so it was all right. Well, let’s see another thing; we balance the budget that year [Laugh] more than the government could do.
KP: It had not been balanced before?
ET: The Club had, but not the government. No, but it was another example I thought of what a good Board we had because it was very smoothly done and the committees came in very good.
KP: That’s great. Wasn’t there a dress code of some sort?
ET: Yeah. We had been discussing for a couple of years dress codes, mainly getting back toward these undesirables who lived next door. There were occasions when, er,… I remember members were bringing some of those people in as guests. You know it was a funny era, the sixties, Vietnam and everything and protests and so on, and people were trying to copy those guys you know, they’d come in with really… they really were undesirable. So the Board made a policy, it really went back to the spring of “Howdy” Goss’ administration that the manager had the right to turn anybody away from the door, if they came in and were undesirable …
KP: If they appeared undesirable, long hair and…
ET: Yeah. Anyway that was an unwritten policy and it was all right except in a few instance there were a few members who took exception to it. Anyway, it was under discussion practically the whole year that I was president.
KP: Tommy, after that you served as a member of the Judges of Election Committee for several years. Could you tell us something about this job?
ET: Yeah, well you know, from the time I was … [Laugh] … I was on the Judges of Election Committee in 1948, I believe 1948-49.
KP: Oh, I see, this goes over a long period.
ET: It goes way back. We’d count the ballots down in the manager’s office at the old Club, you know. I think Joe Stickney was the chairman of that committee then. Joe was a great old guy, you know. So when I got off the Board and was able to serve on that committee he had me back on the committee so I think I was on there every year and then Joe died, and then I was still on for several years and then I was made chairman of it for several years. So I ran it for several years and then I got off it, I think, in 1984. I quit being chairman of that. But we had a smooth operation I can tell you that [Laugh], the only problem was we’d get through counting about 3:30 in the afternoon and we had to wait until after the close at six, but anyway it was just too smooth.
KP: Did you have any problem with people not following directions properly?
ET: No. very few actually who didn’t, but when they didn’t follow directions they were not counted, that’s all. You had to sign the outer envelope otherwise you don’t know if they were somebody who was delinquent or really authorized to sign. It’s quite a complex little job. Have you ever served on that committee?
KP: No.
ET: It’s a complex thing. All the envelopes have to be alphabetized to start with to find out if anybody is on the delinquent list or not authorized to vote by reading the outer envelopes. Then you have to open all those envelopes and then a lot of different things… I had people whose only job was to see that we didn’t leave anything in the envelopes, you know, we had to double check all envelopes to be sure we got ‘em all. Anyway, the counting part, then you divide up into groups and count them, total the count, and get the results. It’s very interesting. I had a lot of fun doing it.
But, what had happened was, in 1982 I was asked to be Chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee and I did and I took over a committee that had already been formed and mainly it was made up of past Presidents of the Club, which is desirable, and we were able to accomplish something there. We found, it was the first time to my knowledge, I hadn’t even bothered to look, but some Board had quit putting our initiation fees into a Building Fund, that’s when we found that out and so we put a strong recommendation to the Board that it be re-established. We even went further than that, we even recommended that some of the profits be put into a Building Fund so we could build it up much faster, I shouldn’t say ‘profit’, some of the dues.
KP: What year was this again?
ET: 1982. So I was chairman that year and that was probably one of the main things we did, but we did another thing there had been an awful lot of misinformation among our members about our lease. Our lease is the most unusual… Wilford Godbold is the one who did it was able to get it done. It’s the most remarkable lease the world had ever seen because it was a fixed lease rent for 49 years ….
KP: That’s the term, in other words.
ET: Yeah. Forty-nine fixed at $30,000 a year. It still is $30,000. It is only re-openable one more time, and that’s at the end of the 49-year period for another 50 years. The reopening feature of it at the end of our first forty-nine-year period there are limitations on the amount we could be charged. As a matter of fact it is done by appraisal. Our appraisal for Club use and their appraisal for Club use not for commercial use, club use and then if there is any different, then we have a third appraiser to set it. So it is not anything that is wide open for anything they want to ask.
KP: They can’t ask some phenomenal figure.
ET: No, it has to be justified. But anyway, there is a lot of misinformation about it, and there still is because people don’t read things, you know. But what we did, we dug out the lease, reviewed it … this committee was a good committee like most committees are but we reviewed it and we published, I don’t know how in the Outrigger magazine, our annual report which I presented at the annual meeting, we outlined the benefits of our lease but we pointed out that our committee strongly felt that our members would buy the place if it could be bought at a price that was reasonable. We know we couldn’t buy it at the price that it is worth, based on the lease because the lease is such a valuable one it makes the value of the land almost worthless, and you get down to maybe under $1, million if you consider the value of the lease. We know we can do that, but if the Elks would come to us, we put it in there and we knew that we have enough Elks members in our Club that if the word should get to the Elks as to how we feel about it, we feel strongly that they should do everything in their power to sell it to us because they are not asking anything out of the present lease. They could make many fold more income from their investment in this lend if they sold it for us.
KP: That’s an interesting though.
ET: Oh, definitely, definitely. So anyway, we did get that across and I think that was one of the main goals that we had was to try to get our membership to try to appreciate what we’ve got, but to consider the fact that we might buy it. You see there are some people who think, God, we ought to buy it right now you know, and some people think well, gee, it will be 70 more years before our lease runs out and I won’t be around. But we have, I think a very valuable action taken to try to get this out to the membership. Then the next years we did some further work along those lines in the area of appraisals and we also had people looking… we could buy an alternate site, you know. That wouldn’t be a bad investment to have an alternative site if we could find one that would be suitable, and so that was actually considered. What we did was I had Val Ossipoff as a member of my committee the second year and Gordon Bradley who is one of the top engineers and architects in the State, and several other people. Of course, I had Tom Haine, banker, and various others of great value to a committee like that and mainly everybody would talk about what they thought we should do, so anyway we didn’t really accomplish anything, we didn’t buy the place. We got some good data which I think some future committee could use if we come to the point of purchasing.
KP: Now, Tommy the Uluniu Swimming Club used to be located right next to us at the old location, next to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, they took the step to buy a new location in Laie, do you know how this has worked out?
ET: No I don’t, I think they probably don’t exist. The reason I say that because we had quite a bit of negotiating with them, I believe with Pat O’Connor, but this was back when we first move up here probably the first year we were at this new site. They wanted to merge the Uluniu with Outrigger and turn over their treasury to the Outrigger as a means of doing that, and we gave a lot of thought of that on the Board, but we were a little dubious about taking on a further large group over a hundred people, I think …
KP: Yes, easily.
ET: That would been a kind of a jolt to our membership at that time it would have been too many. It wasn’t all cut and dried that we should do it there was a big balance there as to whether we should or shouldn’t do it, and I think it ended up that we didn’t do it we didn’t take them on but there was also the problem of screening of members, you know.
KP: You take in a whole bunch like that …
ET: We don’t take in members that way you see. It probably would be against our Bylaws altogether, but it was interesting that they wanted to …
KP: Now Tommy, besides being on the Historical Committee you are a member of the Investment Committee, could you tell us something about this committee?
ET: It’s a new committee, I think we used to have one in the old days, but we haven’t had one for some years but it was formed this year for the purpose of making recommendations to the Board of how to handle our Building Fund and we also have, of course, operating funds and capital funds that in a normal course of events at the Club, so we haven’t actually come up with the final plan for how to do this. We’ve had several meetings and we are considering several things like hiring a fund manager we are talking about a couple of million dollars now and so it’s beginning to be worthwhile to try to maximize the income. Up until fairly recently just putting it into a CD was good enough because you didn’t really have enough to make it worthwhile to spend money to have it managed, but it’s getting to the point now that some good income could be derived if you could invest it properly with proper safeguards for safety. But anyway, it’s an interesting committee and that is the only other committee that I am on now, and I keep telling everybody that I am retired … but I enjoyed the Historical Committee too, having been on it since the very day it started and been to most of the meetings. I have some tapes of some of the old meetings that I’ll have to bring out to the Historical Committee one of these days and listen to them.
KP: Well, I think we ought to get them all on one big tape, and that would be an interesting addition to the rest of these tapes. Well Tommy, this has been great and it will make a fine addition to the archives. Many, many thanks.
ET: Thank you. I enjoyed it very much.
** As Thomas was informed some time later the Uluniu Club is still in existence at the beachside residence bought in Laie in 1971. After losing their Waikiki site in 1968 they searched around the island for another location and at one time seriously considered establishing their club on what is now the Castle Surf condominium land next door to the Elks Club.
They currently have a live-in custodian couple at Laie and the property is used often over night by reservation by their 80 or so membership which includes husbands.
When the proposed merger with the Outrigger was turned down for the group as a whole the Outrigger did suggest individual membership applications would be welcomed through the established process and a number of Uluniu members did become Outrigger members at that time.