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
An Interview by J. Ward Russell
April 28, 1988
JWR: This is Thursday, April 28, 1988. I am Ward Russell, past President of the Outrigger Canoe Club and currently a member of the Historical Committee, which for a number of years now has been involved in the project of interviewing some of our long-time Club members. It is my pleasure today to interview William C. Kea. Bill has been a member of the Club for 49 years and recently was honored by being designated an Honorary Life Member. This afternoon we are sitting in Bill’s residence on Beretania Street, and I am going to begin our interview by asking, where were you born?
WCK: Ward, first of all I want to thank you for this opportunity to talk, especially to you since we’ve been such good friends for so long, beginning with our Hawaiian Telephone Company days way back when. Ward, I was born on this island, Honolulu, Oahu, on April 22, 1906.
JWR: April 22, 1906, that makes you 82 years old.
WCK: 82 and six days.
JWR: That’s right. April 22, a few days ago, was your birthday. As I recall you were planning on going out to Kuilima but you had a little problem and had a change of plans.
WCK: Irene had it all figured out and all arranged so that we would go to Kuilima for the weekend, but then I had a little health problem and we had to postpone that; instead we celebrated with a nice dinner at the Outrigger Canoe Club where we go frequently, and just enjoy it – the entertainment and the food. As a matter of fact the Hawaiian musical group that circulates around the Club came up to my table and unknowingly to me sang Hauoli La Hanau. Irene is an Associate Member of the Club.
JWR: Happy Birthday!
WCK: Happy Birthday in Hawaiian, and it was just very touching. I enjoyed it very much. I just enjoy the Club so much, particularly the people and all the activities and the location and everything that goes along with it. It is just an excellent place.
JWR: Getting back to your early childhood. You said you were born on this island.
WCK: Yes.
JWR: Where abouts?
WCK: Ward, as a youngster, I lived with my Mom and Dad in Manoa Valley, way up in what we called the “kuahiwi”, up in the valley just at the bottom of the mountains. We had a little two-bedroom home. As a matter of fact we didn’t have any running water; we had to get water off the roof into a big tank, and we didn’t have any electricity or telephone service, and no indoor plumbing. My Dad was a great guy and I enjoyed being with him, particularly when he was off in the evenings and we’d go looking for frogs out in the taro patch. As a matter of fact three sides of our place where we lived was nothing but taro patches. I’d say about sixty percent of the floor of the valley was made up of taro patches cultivated by Chinese.
JWR: Would this be where Paradise Park is?
WCK: No, it was just on the other side of Paradise Park that was what we called the Woodlawn side. We were on the other side. We were, as a matter of fact, at the foothills where the Chinese graveyard is now.
JWR: Oh, yes.
WCK: As a matter of fact, to get to our place we had to walk, cars – anything we rode in – had to stop at the graveyard then we had to walk to our home which, I would say, was about a quarter of a mile away. There was no access for any vehicles of any kind. The Chinese would come up there when they had their funeral services – even they used to stop outside. As a matter of fact, they didn’t have any automobiles, it was all horse-drawn carts and little hacks and so on. They used to come quite frequently and I used to attend some of those ceremonies. It was a great beginning. I went to a little school down in Manoa which was about a mile from where we lived.
JWR: Let me interrupt you just a minute, you mentioned going out hunting for frogs with your father. What did he do?
WCK: He worked for one of the ranches up there – they had a ranch down, oh, down where the big shopping center is now. He worked for the ranch and later on got a job with the Rapid Transit Company as a conductor. He had that for many years, and then he finally went to work for the Board of Water Supply as one of the meter readers as I recall. That was his last job before he passed away.
JWR: And your mother?
WCK: Well, my Mother, actually was born in San Francisco. She was Scotch-Danish……
JWR: That’s where you get the William Christian……?
WCK: …That’s where I get the William Christian – being part Danish – Scotch-Danish, as a matter of fact. She came here when she was a youngster about 15 years old. Her father was a captain of one of the sailing vessels, and she and her sister and two brothers came over and made their home here. She met my Dad after she was, I guess, about 25 or 26 or so, and they got married and we all lived up in Manoa Valley. We had relatives living there too, my Dad’s parents and his sisters and brothers who I enjoyed very much.
But getting back to this little school down in the lower part of the valley, which is across from where the church was – it’s now a playhouse. There’s a graveyard and a playhouse…
JWR: The Manoa Valley Theater?
WCK: Manoa Valley Theater, that’s correct. That used to be the church and it was a favorite gathering place especially on Sundays, and most of the people who came were Hawaiians. There were a few Orientals, very few haoles, they were further down the valley, down by where the University is. There was a nice lady, a Mrs. Steere, Mrs. Frederick Steere, who used to come up there, she had a lot of interest in……
JWR: That Mrs. Steere, was she the mother of Fred Steere?
WCK: The mother of Fred Steere……
JWR: ……who was a former President of our Club?
WCK: That’s correct…and she used to spend some time with us especially on Sundays at the church and finally she made arrangements to get me into Kamehameha. That was about 1914 and I was seven or eight years old, and I really didn’t know what was going on. One day she came up and picked me up – rather met me at my home and we walked down and got the street car which was across the valley, which was quite a walk, I’d say about two miles from where we lived. I frankly didn’t know where I was going and my Mother didn’t tell me either. So we got on the street car and she had a little bag she was carrying, and it looked to me that the bag contained some of my things which I wore at that time. Then we had to transfer to get another street car that went out to Kalihi – again I didn’t know where we were going. Finally, we got out to this place which I soon found out was Kamehameha Schools – the preparatory department where Farrington High School is located now on King Street. We went in and she introduced me to the principal and others there and then they said they’d take me on a tour which I was pleased to do, of course. We walked around, it was a two-level place which had dormitories upstairs; and we went up and looked at the dormitories – there were two dormitories, one for first grade to about third, and the other was third to sixth grade. I was impressed with what I saw. When we got back to the principal’s office I said, “Well, thank you very much, I guess I’ll leave.” They said, “No, you are going to stay here.” And I said, “Well wait now, where is Mrs. Steere?” they said, “She’s already gone.” And I said, “She didn’t tell me I was to stay, and furthermore, I didn’t even say goodbye to my Mother.”
JWR: You were shanghaied!
WCK: I was shanghaied! As a matter of fact I broke out in tears. Oh, yeah, it was a big surprise to me, I didn’t know what to expect, but then I decided, well, I guess I had better make the most of it. So I became a fulltime student – that is a fulltime boarder student – which in those days, they were very strict about.
JWR: What grade was that?
WCK: First grade. See, the little school I went to up in Manoa was kind of preliminary, it had grades, but wasn’t full time, as a matter of fact when I went to Kamehameha and I took the test I had problems even getting into the first grade. But I did get into first grade which at that time, and for a long time thereafter consisted of about 17 students, just boys. Then there was also a girls’ school which was across from where Farrington is located now. There was about 75 students there also, just girls, all borders. Then above where the Museum now is was what we called the manual department and that’s where the grades began at six and went on up to the ninth grade at the time I entered Kamehameha. Well, I finally moved up after five years – I moved up to the manual department and entered the sixth grade, and there we had to wear uniforms. As a matter of fact there was great emphasis on military and vocational training, and still it was strictly boarders and we were only allowed out once a month. My conduct was usually OK, but I tell you it was awfully strict. If you got to go once a month – it was always the first Saturday of the month – provided your conduct was A–1, but not many of us got out. I managed to get out a few times. (Laugh)
JWR: You were a bit of a rascal.
WCK: Well, I tell you it was awfully strict. It was quite military and the officers were members of the student body, of course. They tried to exercise their authority as much as they could. Well I progressed and finally I became an officer. I was leader of one of the companies, a captain, and later on I became an adjutant to the major and we used to have a regular roster where the officers, the sergeant of the guard, the corporal of the guard, and the bugler would serve 24 hours and we were responsible for the conduct and everything that the students were involved in except, of course, going to class. It was really left up to the officers for the disciplinary action that took place on campus. I was at Kamehameha until 1927 when I graduated.
But, I’d like to go back and tell you how I got involved with the Mutual Telephone Company. In 1924 Kamehameha started up in the manual department what they called a work-study or part-time system. When you became a junior you’d have to repeat the junior class two years in order to become a senior. You went through what were known as ‘low junior’ and ‘high junior’ years. So, when I was in the class of 1924, I became eligible for this part-time system…
JWR: You were a ‘low junior’?
WCK: A ‘low junior’, yes. I talked to the coordinator and asked him where previous ‘low junior’ students had been going and he said mostly to the sugar plantations, so I said, “What are they earning?” and he said, “Oh, they are just being subsidized. They get their food, they get their place to sleep – living quarters.”
JWR: Was this an ‘on your own’ program? School year?
WCK: School year.
JWR: Oh, yes.
WCK: You’d have a partner, and you’d go two weeks out, then two weeks at school.
JWR: Oh, I see.
WCK: A part-time system. And you’d have an alternate. I said, “I don’t want to go out there, just not making any money, I want to make some money.” He said, “Let me get back to you.” So he came back in about a couple of weeks and he said, “How about this place downtown called Mutual Telephone Company?” I said, “That sounds all right – how much?” Well, he said, “You get $2.50 a day.” Well I said, “That’s great, that’s exactly what I want to do, get paid.” So I was paired off with another student and we’d alternate every two weeks. It really was a beginning. (Laugh) When I look back on it, there were things I used to do in those days…we used to just get the old wooden telephones and strip them down, and clean them out and repair them, put them back together again. And would you believe that sitting across from me at my work desk was Doug Guild. He had just graduated from Punahou and was working on his first job for Mutual Telephone.
JWR: Really – Doug Guild who later became President of Mutual, and then Hawaiian Telephone Company?
WCK: From the time of the very first meeting we became very, very close friends. Doug and I were just a close as anyone could possibly be – just a great, great guy. So I graduated from Kamehameha in 1927, should I say I graduated with honors, top of the class so to speak. I usually don’t tell people, but since we are such close friends, I feel I can reveal that little bit to you.
JWR: It’s a matter of record, so don’t be so modest. (Laughter)
WCK: Well, anyway, I just wanted to let you know where I stood at that time. So anyway, I went on to the University of Hawaii and it was quite a change because …
JWR: What year was that when you went to the University?
WCK: 1927.
JWR: You were the Class of ’26 at Kamehameha?
WCK: No, ’27. I went in the Fall. Again Mrs. Steere was very involved in getting me situated at the University. As a matter of fact I was later offered a scholarship to go on to Ann Arbor to the University of Michigan, which I didn’t accept – I’ll tell you why later. So the University was an entire change……
JWR: May I interrupt just a minute because this is very interesting to me, I think it would be interesting for the records of the Club. Why was Mrs. Steere so interested in you and your family?
WCK: I think it began, as I said earlier, up in Manoa Valley where she used to come to attend church with us and as I said, 80-85% of those who attended church were Hawaiians. My Dad was pure Hawaiian, of course, but my mother was haole. So she became acquainted with my Dad and my mother and for some reason or other she just found them to be interesting people and the kind she would want to……
JWR: She took a liking to…
WCK: …took a liking to…
JWR: ……and wanted to help…
WCK: Yeah. So again, when I graduated from Kamehameha she was very instrumental in trying to arrange for me to get a scholarship to Ann Arbor, University of Michigan. Anyway, I decided to stay on with the Telephone Company on a full time basis, although I was still at the University. I used to work at night, as you may remember Ward, at the Punahou Exchange on Young Street which, as I recall, came into service in 1928. I began working night shifts there while I was still a student at the University. So after three years……
JWR: Didn’t you have a kind of bedroom in the basement there where the students could sleep?
WCK: Well, actually it was up on the first floor……
JWR: That’s right. Just as you came in the door……
WCK: Yeah. We used to have students, primarily from the University – it used to be two students. Because of insurance requirements, the Telephone Company had to have somebody in the building 24 hours a day, and having these students there qualified it for the insurance it had. The shifts that I used to work were 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. and it was mostly janitorial work – very little technical work, and I didn’t know much that was going on anyway, but at least I was getting $2.50 a day, even though I was still going to school. Well, as I started to say, after three years I decided to stay on with the Telephone Company, and that’s when I began as a full time employee – as a helper in the switch room at the Punahou Exchange.
JWR: Did you get a degree from the University?
WCK: No, I didn’t because I think more for economic reasons…because there was so much being offered at Hawaiian Tel. and I thought I could do well there……
JWR: for the Hawaiian Telephone Company it was a very fortunate decision.
WCK: It was a very fortunate decision for me to make also because as you know, getting to know you as I did in itself was a wonderful experience. Well anyway, when I became a full time employee I was given credit for my part-time service. So when I retired in 1971 I had 45 years of active service – 1925-1971.
JWR: I remember that very well because I had the privilege and honor of being asked to chair your retirement party. It was a tremendously successful affair.
WCK: I remember that very well. To reminisce further I had the good fortune of progressing and going from…I think my first promotion was from switchman to assistant plant manager. My relationship with Doug Guild got closer and closer and as he progressed I had him to go to get advice. I remember that when I’d see things, or have things happen that I felt could be done better I’d say, “Doug, I think this could be done better.” He would say, “How?” I’d say, “I’d like to find out how things are done on the Mainland,” and he’d say, “Good – go where you want to.” So, I traveled, Ward, as you know, all over the mainland and particularly to the Bell Telephone System located from the West Coast all the way to the East Coast. And I was so well treated.
I’ll always remember my first stop in Minneapolis. I got in from Canada in the morning and I looked around for the tallest building and sure enough that was it, the Bell Telephone building. So I went in, introduced myself to the young lady receptionist and explained where I was from. She was quite impressed to see somebody from Hawaii; so she took me in and introduced me to one of the managers who was also impressed. He made some calls and then took me up and introduced me to the President…that really started things. He had members of his staff come in to meet me and they were all asking me questions. I remember one fellow saying, “Are you Hawaiian?” I said, “Yes, I’m Hawaiian.” He said, “I thought Hawaiians were big strapping, tall fellows,” I responded, “I’m part-Hawaiian.”
Anyway I was invited out to lunch by the President and about five or six members of his staff and we had a very interesting luncheon. They kept asking me questions, “Where are the islands situated?” “They’re down by the Philippines, aren’t they?” I said, “No, no, no, we are above the equator, the Philippines are below the Equator, we are above the Equator at about 19° latitude.” “Is that right?” I said, “Yes, we are about 2,100 miles from the West Coast, San Francisco and so on.” So anyway, I had to leave at four o’clock as there was someone waiting for me in Chicago at the American Automatic Electric Company. This had all been planned. Well, anyway it came along about three o’clock and I said, “Excuse me, but I had to catch a train.” They said, “Oh, no, you are spending the night.” I said, “What do you mean, I’ve got a fellow to meet.” The President replied, “You have already told us who you are going to meet. We talked to him and told him you are going to spend the night here.” I said, “Well, that is not what I planned.” Well, anyway, I spent the night and the next morning we had brunch – kind of a late brunch, and in addition to the top management people by that time they had added two or three more.
There were a couple of reporters, one from the morning paper, one from the evening paper. There I was and they asked me all kinds of questions about the Islands – where were the Islands located? What was the population? The type of people, and so on and on and on? Finally as it got later in the afternoon I said I really had to leave for Chicago. They were so friendly it was difficult to leave, but I finally did. In the mall two days later I got the front page of the Minneapolis paper featuring my interview. Unfortunately I haven’t kept a copy of this Hawaiian who came to Minneapolis and told them all about the Islands.
JWR: What year was this?
WCK: That must have been, let’s see now…1938.
JWR: ’38.
WCK: 1938.
JWR: We first met a few years before that because I joined the company in ’33. You were in dial equipment at the time in Honolulu. I started at the radio telephone station at Manawahua and then went to Hilo. When I returned to Honolulu in 1938 I went to work for you as an equipment installer.
WCK: You did!
JWR: Oh, yes, you were my first boss when I came back from Hilo. (Laughter)
WCK: Who assigned you to me?
JWR: I think it was Papa Clark (Lawrence E. Clark).
WCK: Papa Clark! We were good friends!
JWR: Yeah. (Laughter)
WCK: All right, Ward, go on.
JWR: Hard to believe – I went to work for you in mid-year 1938 exactly 50 years ago.
WCK: Fifty years ago, and we’ve been friends all that time!
JWR: Yeah, and we also got into an awful lot of mischief. (Laughter) You know, Bill, during our service with the Telephone Company we both had a wide variety of assignments. Can you give us a synopsis of the positions you held?
WCK: Yeah. Just a second, let me look at some notes I have here. As I say, I started in as a switchman, and then I became Assistant Plant Manager in charge of inside plant – all of our dial equipment offices. Louis Robello had the outside plant; and then one day as I was sitting at my desk Doug Guild, who was my boss and General Plant Manager comes in and he drops a bunch of papers on my desk, and says, “Kea, you are the Commercial Manager”. I said “Commercial Manager, what does he do? “I don’t know. He says, “but we’ll find out” so he gave me another opportunity to travel across the country and visit with telephone people who were particularly involved with commercial and marketing operations. And I got a lot of valuable material from them. As a matter of fact when I went into a Bell Company office and said I was with the Mutual Telephone Company of Hawaii and would like copies of their operating practices, they’d say, “sorry, but you are an independent company, you don’t contribute to the Bell Laboratories which prepares and publishes our practices so we can’t give you any”. Then, invariably they’d say, I’ll tell you what, I’ll leave these documents on my desk and I’ll go down the hall, and if they aren’t here when I get back I’ll just say I don’t know what happened to them”. They were most cooperative and as a result we got all sorts of practices and made many close friends throughout the industry. Then I became General Commercial Manager and later Vice President Commercial and Marking …
JWR: That’s when I went to work for you as Marketing Director.
WCK: Yeah, I remember. Particularly interesting and productive trips we had together. We had fun but we worked hard also. My last job was Vice President of Public Relations. There again I had a great deal of contact with Mainland people and enjoyed it very much. They were so generous. As a matter of fact as some of them retired we would hire them on per diem basis to work here on special assignments. Interestingly, one of them helped me establish the Civil Defense headquarters at Birkheimer Tunnel.
JWR: How did that happen?
WCK: Well, one day after Jack Burns returned to Hawaii after serving as our Delegate to Congress, he called me and said, “Bill, we have a problem here. We’d like to select a suitable place for Civil Defense headquarters, could you help us, “well, some place that is kind of remote and safe. There are a lot of tunnels that might do. There are tunnels in Punchbowl, in Aiea and a lot of other places including Pearl Harbor. Why don’t you look at these places first”. Well I mentioned to him that a friend I had recently talked to on the Mainland had set up a Civil Defense operation in Los Angeles and might be able to help us.
To make a long story short I prevailed on my Mainland friend who had just reached retirement age to retire from the Pacific Company in Los Angeles and come to work for Mutual Telephone. He came and looked at the various locations that had been mentioned. We finally came to Birkheimer Tunnel, and I’ll tell you I was amazed at what it looked like. We went through a little tunnel entrance, and emerged into a tremendous room – a big conference hall – just perfect for our purpose. We recommended it to Jack, and it became the headquarters for Civil Defense. With the help of my friend’s expertise we got the place organized and put in a PABX telephone exchange. It was one of the first one to go in that particular area. So that is the story of the Birkheimer Tunnel …..
JWR: Were there any other Mainland retirees that came to work for us?
WCK: Oh, yes. Another fellow that I became very close acquainted with, in commercial, was up in Seattle. One day, after he had been with us for a while he said to me, “Bill, when I pass away, I want to pass away in Hawaii”. And would you believe it, I was on one of my trips to the Mainland when I got a call notifying me he had passed away. So I cut my trip short and came back and made arrangements to get his body transferred back to Seattle. That’s how close some of these acquaintances were. Another man I have a great deal of respect for was Mr. Art Grenell. He was one of the engineers that put in the first terminal for the first overseas radio telephone communications between Hawaii and the Mainland; we used radio facilities from RCA; the transmitter was at Kahuku, receivers were at Koko Head. Art Grenell and I worked closely together on this pioneer project.
JWR: That’s interesting, Bill, you certainly were part and parcel of the rapid development of the telephone industry in Hawaii. You have seen drastic changes in communications, including the latest technological developments – lasers, fibre optics, satellites the works!
WCK: That’s right.
JWR: I know it was a tremendous experience for you, and that you have friends all over the United States. I can attest to that because I worked closely with you so many years. However, Bill, one of the things we are supposed to be doing today is to talk about the Outrigger Canoe Club. [Laughter] Listening to you reminisce I got carried away, so let’s return to the task at hand. When did you first become associated with the Outrigger Canoe Club?
WCK: That was back in 1939 when Macfarlane, Walter Mac called me up one day and said, “Hey, Kea…..”
JWR: How did you know Walter Mac?
WCK: Well, I knew his mother. As a matter of fact, my mother was a guardian on a trip for his mother and two of her sisters, the Campbell girls, they went to Europe and my mother went along. She was in her late teens and she went along as governess, so to speak, to these girls.
JWR: What year would you say that was?
WCK: Oh, golly, that goes back prior to 1906 when I was born.
JWR: Oh, I see.
WCK: My mother was just a teenager.
JWR: This was before she was married ….
WCK: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
JWR: … when she got to know the Campbell family…
WCK: Mrs. Macfarlane was one of the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. James
JWR: So then as you grew up you knew the Campbell family …
WCK: … and I got to know Walter Macfarlane … so anyway, he called me one day and said, “Hey, Kea, we need some more members. We are having some financial problems and we need some more people to support the Club”. He said, “Will you go out and see if you can get some more members”? So, I said, “How many” He said, “oh, about ten”. So I said O.K. so I went out and I don’t recall who all they were but I didn’t have much trouble getting ten people to sign up. So I went down and gave him this list and the admission fee at that time was $25. That was a lot of money in those days, you know. Of course, today it’s $5,000, but anyway I gave him the list and he looks, and he says’ “Hey, Kea, how about you joining”? , so I said, O.K. all right, I’ll join too”. So he put me down. That’s when I became a member of the Club in …..
JWR: 1939?
WCK: 1939. I’m just checking to be sure, yeah that’s correct, 1939.
JWR: Were you active in the Club at that time? This was just before the War?
WCK: Yes, yes. That’s right Ward. Fairly active, I did some volleyball playing, some surfing and canoeing and so on, and by the way Yabo Taylor, past President of the club, is a cousin of mine.
JWR: Explain the connection ….
WCK: His mother and my mother were sisters.
JWR: Really?
WCK: Yeah, As a matter of fact I saw Yabo today at lunch, and he still looks young. We had a lot of fun as youngsters growing up.
JWR: Well, just let me ask you a question. Your mother had two sisters and two brothers, were they here?
WCK: Yes.
JWR: Are they, or you, related to any other Club members?
WCK: No. Just Yabo.
JWR: Just Yabo
WCK: Of course, they are all gone now, and as cousins I just have Yabo and another lady, Eleanor Miller. She’s married, she was here recently. She lives in Denver. Then on my Father’s side, I have a few relatives, most of whom now live at Nanakuli.
JWR: What about yourself, do you have any brothers and sisters?
WCK: My brothers and sisters? I have two sisters, no brothers.
JWR: You are the only boy?
WCK: I have two sisters, Myra and Alice. Alice also attended the Kamehameha Schools. I am older than Alice, I am in between.
JWR: Alice was with the Telephone Company for years.
WCK: Well, she had to follow her brother, of course. She went to Kamehameha and from Kamehameha she went to Hawaiian Telephone.
JWR: So it was Walter Mac who got you interested in joining?
WCK: Yes, that’s right. I wasn’t much of an athlete, but I enjoyed playing volleyball, and I mentioned Yabo Taylor because he got me started surfing, also canoeing. Yabo goes way back, he used to be a Coxswain in the days of rowing with the Myrtle Club. There was Myrtle, Healani and the Police Club, as you may recall.
JWR: I rowed for Myrtle; I was a coxswain for Myrtle, too.
WCK: And I rowed for the Police Club
JWR: Traitor! [Laugher]
WCK: Down at the harbor Pier 5, I think that’s where the old Myrtle Boat House was. We used to row out to where the breakwater was and come back in. I was just a kid. I was still a student at Kamehameha in those days. But, anyway, I enjoyed doing the things at the Outrigger Club, but then the War came along and I became so busy I had virtually no time to use the Club. I forgot to mention that when I went to university I became a reserve officer in the military, infantry, and when the War broke out I went out and took my physical and I told Mr. Scott, who was President of the Telephone Company at that time, that I was going to go off to active service. He said, “No way”. And I said, “Wait a moment, I am an officer, I’ve got to go…” He said, “No, no. you gotta stay”. And I said, “Why”? He says, “Well we just need you”. Well, I said, “There’s a lot of other people you can have, you don’t need me that badly”. “Oh, yes we do.” So he got in touch with the Adjutant General who got in touch with somebody in Washington and got me excused from active service. So then I, of course, worked full time for Mutual Telephone Company throughout the War.
JWR: I would just like to mention that in conjunction with military service you became very close with certain of the top military men in the Signal Corps, like General Sampson….
WCK: Exactly …
JWR: ….Later he became President of COMSAT.
WCK: Exactly. You remember that?
JWR: I sure do because I was working with you at the time. [Laugh]
WCK: You remember when Pearl Harbor occurred and how the Signal Corps was unprepared as far as communications facilities were concerned, and we had to remove switchboards from Honolulu’s business firms which were considered unessential, and installed them for the Signal Corps’ operations out at Fort Shafter. I remember General Sampson, he was Captain Sampson at the time later, he became President of COMSAT, and a couple of other lieutenants who were just at a loss as to what to do. We bailed them out really, and many years later when I saw Sampson back in Washington he said, “Kea, thanks to you I am a general”. That’s true [Laughter]
JWR: No question, we certainly bailed them out of a predicament. Then as they got more organized they took my boss out to handle their equipment engineering work leaving me to handle all of the equipment engineering for the Telephone Company for the balance of the War. As a result, I too was frozen in the job all during the War.
WCK: Well, now, back to the Outrigger Canoe Club. As I say, during the War I was too busy to use the Club very much, but after the War things settled down and I became more active. I particularly remember the activities associated with the move over to our present site. When did we move? Wasn’t it ’64?
JWR: Right. We moved in ’64, January of ’64.
WCK: And I happened to be on the Board of the Queen’s Medical Center, a Trustee.
JWR: That’s right. You mention of the fact that you were and as I understand, still are a Trustee of Queen’s reminds me of your community activities. Can you give me a list of some of these?
WCK: Do you want to be patient for several minutes here?
JWR: All right.
WCK: OK. Here are some of my past and present community activities. While I was still employed by the Telephone Company I became Board Chairman of Kapiolani Maternity Home, now known as the Kapolani Medical Center for Women and Children. Then it was strictly a maternity facility. Then I became President of the Rotary Club of West Honolulu; President of Aloha Week; and Chairman of the Hawaiian Homes Commission. You know how I got involved in that? In the Legislature, one J. Ward Russell got me involved.
JWR: You came to me one day and said you wanted to be Chairman of the Hawaiian Homes Commission…..
WCK: I did not. I did not. You got me into Aloha Week no, no, you got me into Hawaiian Homes, and then I got you into Aloha Week.
JWR: That’s right. You wanted to get on to the Hawaiian Home Commission and I said you were nuts. [Laugher] Anyway, I asked the Governor to appoint you to the commission which he did. You reciprocated by making me first Vice President of Aloha Week, and then I ended up being President of Aloha Week. I got back at you by getting you elected to the Board of Directors of the Outrigger Canoe Club.
WCK: That’s right. The Hawaiian Homes Commission was quite a job! Well, anyway, as I said I was Board Chairman of the Kapiolani Hospital. I was also President of the West Honolulu Rotary Club, and the Honolulu Hawaiian Civic Club.
JWR: Bill, didn’t you amalgamate all the Hawaiian Civic Clubs ….?
WCK: Yes. That was one of my final and most satisfactory contributions. I don’t have the exact date, but what happened was, after I had served two years as the President of the Honolulu Hawaiian Civic Club there were, as I recall, twelve different Hawaiian Civic Clubs; there were seven on this island, and five on the Neighbor Islands one on Kauai, three on Hawaii and one on Maui. I approached each of the presidents of the various clubs and suggested the idea of a State Council of Hawaiian Civic Clubs, and they said, “Yeah, great idea”. So I went around talking to the various clubs and finally got them to agree, I think it was 1959, to set up the first State Council of Hawaiian Civil Clubs. They elected me as the first President of the Council. I am happy to report there are now about 43 civic clubs that belong to the State Council.
JWR: Really
WCK: Forty-three Clubs in the State Council of Hawaiian Civic Clubs throughout the State.
JWR: You can certainly be proud of ….
WCK: Well, I’m glad it has developed the way it has. There is a lot more spirit and enthusiasm… as a matter of fact there are Hawaiian Civic clubs now on the Mainland, too, you know. There are about three or four of them there now and they had a conference recently in Las Vegas, clubs from here as well as clubs from the Mainland. They’ve grown in number and grown in importance and grown in their influence throughout the community. I’ve served also as Chairman of the March of Dimes; PR Committee Chairman of the Hawaii Heart Association; Chairman of the Hawaii State Commission on Full Employment; and Hawaiian Home Commission Chairman. I served also — is it all right if I go on and on?
JWR: Sure, sure.
WCK: I just don’t want to get out of hand here. I was a member of the Council of Boy Scouts of America; Board member of the Nuuanu YMCA and the Men and Women of Hawaii 1966 and ’72 I was one of the men referred to as Men and Women of Hawaii. Now, I’d like to get closer to my activities as the Outrigger.
JWR: I’m afraid I got you started on this particular tack when you mentioned that you were on the Board of Trustee of Queen’s Hospital when the Outrigger Club lease expired.
WCK: I was appointed to the Board of Trustee of the Queen’s Medical Center in 1957.
JWR: ’57. Thirty-one years.
WCK: Thirty – one year’s …..
JWR: You are still on …..
WCK: I am still on. I’ve been Chairman of the PR Committee and I also got appointed to the Hospital Association of Hawaii. As a result of that I travelled a lot to various hospitals throughout the Mainland and have learned a great deal about health care problems, health care things that are being done at various hospitals which have enriched my knowledge and helped us to do things here that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.
I was also involved with the Nation Council of Hospital Governing Boards, Advisory Council of State Department of Labor and Industrial Relations; Executive Committee of the Project Waiaha, that is something that Kenny Brown is very much involved in and which headed by George Kanahele. And, just a year ago I was made a deacon at Central Union Church. Oh, when I was reappointed to Hawaiian Telephone Company as the retiree liaison in 1986, I rejoined Rotary. I had been with the West Honolulu Rotary Club for several years, and I left in 1983 I think it was, and I rejoined what they call the Metropolitan Club of Honolulu which meets every Thursday morning at the Plaza Club on Fort Street. This morning, as a matter of fact, we had a meeting and Governor Waihee was the principal speaker very interesting.
He did a great job in explaining some of the controversial things that happened during the recent session of our Legislature. It was very interesting. In fact it is a very interesting club. It is only about two years in existence and it is growing at a rapid rate. It started off with less than 100 members and now they have 154, I think. Getting back to the assignment I had as Retiree Liaison, I found that interesting, to get back to find out how things have changed at Hawaiian Tel. and then develop this linkage between the company and its retirees which was the basic concept of the plan itself. And, after a year, you know it was a job where I was supposed to put in 16 hours a week. Well …
JWR: You put in sixteen hours a day … [Laugher] … can I get you back to the Outrigger Canoe Club?
WCK: All right [Laughter]
JWR: I was very much interested in the fact that you were on the Queen’s Board of Trustees during the period after Truesdale and Murchison had acquired the lease of the International Market Place and were involved in proposals of sub-let the lease of the Outrigger site.
WCK: Yes I was. However, as I recall, Truesdale and Murchison had already acquired the master lease just before I became a trustee. I was very much interested in the various offers that were being made to the Outrigger and hopeful that something could be worked out which would have permitted the Outrigger to remain at its old location. Unfortunately, there was nothing I or the trustees could do as Queen’s had already signed over the master lease to Truesdale/Murchison.
JWR: Well, what I wanted to bring up was that we had a member of the Outrigger Canoe Club who was on the Board of Trustee of the Queen Emma Estate when we were in the throes of trying to continue occupying our old site in Waikiki, and during the period when we had to move to the new Club……..
WCK: That’s right and, as I recall, I was the only one on the Board at Queens who was also a member of the Outrigger at that time. While at that time, I hated to see the Club move, we enjoyed the beach so much .. I’ll have to admit that we could never have created at the old site what we have now at our present location.
JWR: You know, as it has developed, I think we are extremely fortunate we moved. I hope that someday we can actually own the place. As you know, it’s the properly of our next door neighbors, the Elks Club, but I hope that we can purchase it someday. Now, let’s talk about some of the activities that you did for the Outrigger Canoe Club.
WCK: OK Well, as you know, you got me to run and I was elected to the Board in 1968. That lasted until 1973. One of my assignments during the period I served on the Board was director of the Historical Committee as matter of fact; I actually started the Historical Committee.
JWR: That’s right.
WCK: I remember I was sitting at a Board meeting one day and I said, “You know” why don’t we have an Historical Committee”, and they said, “Hey, that’s good idea,” so I contacted Mariechen Weheslau Jackson and she became the first chairperson of the Historical Committee.
JWR: You contacted me also and got me to be a member of the Committee.
WCK: Well, whenever I had any problems there was one guy down at the Telephone Company, J. Ward Russell, who I could always count on to help out. Then I became Coordinating director of Public Relations in 1969…
JWR: Before we go into that, I think we ought to cover something else in respect to the Historical Committee that you were responsible for how about the Club history?
JWR: Before we go into that, I think we ought to cover something else in respect to the Historical Committee that you were responsible for how about the Club history?
WCK: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I did …. I got involved in that with Harold Yost.
JWR: That’s right. You were responsible for that, the history of the Club.
WCK: Well, I had a lot of contacts with him. He was living at The Arcadia, and I used to go up there and spend a lot of time with him. Going over the whole history, finally …. I don’t think I should take credit for having done it, I helped him out, we worked on it …..
JWR: It was your idea of doing the Club history.
WCK: I don’t want to take too much credit for the history all I did was suggest the idea.
JWR: You are the conservative type, the bashful type! [Laugher]
WCK: Well, let’s see Public Relations, Oh…. Press Relations…
JWR: Press Relations.
WCK: I was also involved with Press Relations according to the notes I’ve got here … oh … display. Incidentally I am on the PR Committee, and I’ve just been appointed as Chairman of the Display function ……
JWR: Oh, really?
WCK: Yes. And let me tell you not to take credit for everything that happens, I am responsible for that case they call it the Display case there in the lobby. As I remember, there was a small display area, and I went in and talked to whoever was the manager at the time and said, “Why don’t we make it a nice big one”? And he agreed to do it which he did. As a result we now have a good display facility.
JWR: Can we get back to one of your assignments which I think made a great contribution to the Club and that was your chairmanship of the Admission Committee.
WCK: Incidentally, looking over my records here, I have served on 18 committees.
JWR: Eighteen Committee!
WCK: Eighteen Committee.
JWR: Could there be that many?
WCK: Well, some of them are repeats, but there are 18 different dates where I was involved on committees.
JWR: Bill, I’m sure that is one of the reasons you were awarded an Honorary Life Membership. You certainly deserved it for all the work you did for the Club. Now, as Chairman of the Admission Committee
WCK: Well, there again, I enjoyed that, the first year I, or as a matter of fact, I suddenly found out after I was appointed Chairman that the membership of the committee had already been selected. I was told so-and so, and so – and so and so. I said, “Oh, fine”. At our first meeting I felt kind of strange because I only knew some of them, but not very well. We had, I’d say, a pretty good year, but I felt uneasy because there were a couple I was not well acquainted with.
JWR: When the last tape ended you were in the process of relating what you did on the second term on the Membership Committee.
WCK: Right.
JWR: You said you made a point of selecting your own committee.
WCK: Yes, and as things progressed I think I made some excellent selections I can’t off-hand recall the names, but they were a very responsive group, and we made several changes. One of the outstanding changes we made was a more specific response to anybody who objected to a prospective member. Prior to that people would call in, or they’d write a little note, “I don’t like this guy, I don’t think he should become a member”. They wouldn’t even say why, or what happened, or why they didn’t like him. So we designed with the help of the committee we designed a form where you have to be specific; when did you know this person? How long have you known, social and business? If you object, please state your objections in details. Well, that brought forth, I think, very helpful controls, because prior to that people were getting denied who actually, I think, did not deserve to be denied. I can relate one instance which could have been an unfortunate situation this fellow, his wife had passed away several years ago, was a nonresident member and had remarried a Japanese lady, and they lived I think in Australia. Then, when he passed away, she wanted to assume his membership, and I got letters saying that she had broken up his home, et cetera, et cetera. I was very concerned. But anyway we had her come in for an interview. In the meantime I had found out that this was a very nice well-educated lady. It was an excellent interview which disclosed that the person who had objected to her was misinformed and really knew very little about her. As a result, she was accepted as an Associate Member.
JWR: I can attest to the effectiveness of the change you instigated because recently, you were no longer on the committee, we had a member who had applied for membership several years ago and who was on the waiting list for quite a period, whose name came up for consideration and was posted. I was one of his sponsors and was advised that there had been a number of objections to his application. The Chairman of the Committee informed me an investigation would be made and I would be informed as to the final outcome. The committee made a thorough investigation, and found out that those who had objected had objected to the name without even knowing who the person actually was. It was a surname which they had associated with someone entirely different. When this came to light they withdrew their objections. This points out the effectiveness of the job the committee is now doing.
WCK: I agree, Ward. It is unfortunate the way some of the objections were accepted in the past without thorough investigation. One instance I will always remember, this one person was turned down, and being chairman I was approached by the sponsor wanting to know how come. I said, “The application by the sponsor was thoroughly considered and the committee recommended to the Board of Directors that it be denied. If you want to complain because maybe you think the committee made a mistake, talk to the Board”. He said, “I have, and the Board has accepted your recommendations”. I said. “Well, I am sorry”. Well, he said, “I am going to take you to court”. I said “Be my guest “. [Laugh]
JWR: Make my day!
WCK: Make my day! “If you are going to take me to court, you’ll have to take the President of the Club.”
JWR: …and members of the Board.
WCK: Yeah and members of the Board. But nothing happened after that. But, of course, it was all confidential, we don’t reveal what transpired.
JWR: I was going to say, when I had this little situation recently, the Chairman of the Committee would deal with nothing other than that there had been some objections, and they were investigating. And then he did reveal that the objections had no substance, which was perfectly legitimate. He never said who even disclosed names or anything like that.
JWR: You know, you have had so many different assignments in the course of your activities with the Club, I imagine you have some interesting anecdotes that you can recall ….
WCK: I’d like to go back to one experience I had which you may have known about or heard about. This was back at the old Club, if I may.
JWR: Oh, absolutely.
WCK: Do you remember Harrison Chandler?
JWR: Yes, the President of the Los Angeles Times Mirror oh, yes very well.
WCK: Let me tell you what happened. This is back before we moved it was in the fifties because they were then, as you know, doing the printing of our (phone) directory at the Times Mirror Press; well Harrison was visiting Honolulu and one day he, Doug Guild, Jack Reid, Ernie Halford, Bob Fischer and I went to lunch at the Outrigger. Well, after a number of rounds of cocktails and then lunch, Doug says, “Let’s go canoeing”. Bob Fischer looked out and there wasn’t a canoe in sight. There were surfers but no canoes. The waves were running at least eight feet. “Well,” Bob says, “I don’t think we’d better go Doug”. Doug said, “Oh, come on, let’s go,” and I said. “No! No! No!” Doug insisted it was OK so we all agreed to go. We changed into our trunks, some at the Royal where Harris was staying and others of us who were members at the Club. So we got this canoe and the guys on the beach were all looking at us wondering what we were planning to do. So off we went, Bob was the steersman …..
JWR: Bob Fischer was the steersman, one of the best.
WCK: …I was number five, Harrison was number one. We put him way out in front. So we went out, you know how a series of waves come, three or four or five, and the first ones maybe a couple of feet, then they get higher and higher, so Bob … as soon as that first wave came, caught it and we went right into shore and had a nice ride. Doug said, “Come on, let’s get one of the big ones”. So we went back out. [Laugh] the first one went by, the second went by and on the third [Laugh], Doug said “Let’s go!” it was a monster wave, the canoe broached, the ama broke off and the canoe just turned, hulied! Paddles were all over the place. Doug, Reid and Halford, they just took off, they just swam into shore, but Chandler hung onto the canoe. I kept saying … I was trying to gather up the paddles, so I kept saying, “Harrison, get away from that canoe”. He was petrified, he was hanging on to that canoe, and just wouldn’t let go. Finally the canoe drifted in where it was shallow enough so he could touch bottom. So he left the canoe and went in. Bob Fischer and I went and got the canoe and we were trying to put the ama back on. By that time we were down in front of the Halekulani Hotel. [Laugher]
You know, the guys on the beach were standing there just laughing at us, just laughing at us. Well, finally we put the canoe together sufficiently to get it back to the Club. When we got there practically everybody had left. We decided to go over to the Royal to check on Harrison and pick up some clothes we had left there. We knocked on the door and he wouldn’t let us in, he wouldn’t respond. Finally he came to the door and yelled, “WHAT DO YOU WANT”? We said, “Harrison you remember we left some things here, can we ….? “Yes, you can” (angrily). We said, “Harrison we are sorry”. He said, “Don’t you know I don’t know how to swim”.
JWR: Oh, no! [Laugher]
WCK: We said “Oh, no, Harrison, we are sorry”. He said, “You should have asked if I knew how to swim.” So there we were … we were just fortunate that Harrison was still alive.
JWR: You almost drowned the poor guy!
WCK: That would have been a tragic thing… [Laughter] … the President of the Time Mirror ….
JWR: Imagine a multi-millionaire ….
WCK: I’ll always remember that incident … when I looked back the canoe was going one way and Bob was up in the air headed in the opposite direction!
JWR: Really!
WCK: Oh! …and the way those guys took off, Doug and Ernie Halford, I’ll always remember that …
Oh, incidentally, we didn’t talk about the first oral history.
JWR: The first oral history, you were responsible for that.
WCK: Why, of course!
JWR: For gosh sake. Forgive me, I forgot to mention it. Of course I remember that.
WCK: You should remember, you were one of the participants.
JWR: Yes, that’s right. That’s another thing you can take credit for, the beginning of our oral history program.
WCK: After I suggested the Historical Committee and the Board agreed, I went to Mariechen Weheslau one day and I said, “How about oral histories”? And she said, “What’s that”? I said, you get a group of people together with a tape recorder and you ask them questions. Or you can have it on a one-to-one basis. She said, “Well, that’s terrific.” Anyway, I called up Tucker Chase. Jack Mackenzie, Knute Cottrell, Judge Steiner, Joe Stickney, Ronald Smith and Mariechen Wehselau Jackson, and let’s see who that other one was? Oh, yeah, I remember, J. Ward Russell! That was back on July 8 1968.
JWR: 1968.
WCK: We met in the Board Room, and as you know it was as a group. It was not on a one-to-one basis, and I always remember how much fun it was after we got started. At first it was difficult to get responses, but after a while there was so much going on it was difficult to turn people off. [Laughter] Well, anyway, it was fascinating and we have a copy of what they all said. I have a story to tell about that, too.
I think it was in 1986, two years ago, I was sitting in the office when I was on the Admission Committee, and in walked this lady and she said, “you know some time ago I got something in the mail about an oral history, and there was some Hawaiian man who had conducted the interview”. I was sitting there and I said, “When was that”? “Oh, she said, it was back in 1968, and my husband was involved”. I said, “Who was this Hawaiian man”? she said, “Well you are looking at him, it’s Bill Kea”.
JWR: Who was that?
WCK: Mrs. Stickney.
JWR: Oh, for goodness sake, Joe’s wife?
WCK: Joe’s wife. So, I said, “Would you like a copy of the tape”? She said, “I’d love it”. So I said, well, I’ll get a copy and I’ll leave it at the Front Desk and the next time you come in you can pick it up”. Well a week went by, another week went by I checked and the tape was still there, so I called her and said, “Mrs. Stickney, would you like me to deliver the tape”?
She explained that she lived up on St. Louis Heights with quite a long walk up a pathway from the street to her house and recently as she was going up the pathway, she had fallen and broken her arm. She said she lived alone, just couldn’t get down to get the tape, so I said I’d be happy to bring it up to her. So the next day I went up there and I thought I’d just deliver the tape, take five or ten minutes and then I’d be off. Well, I was there over an hour. She was such an interesting person. She told me all about her husband, Joe, who used to be a car salesman for Von Hamm Young, and then was manager of Universal Motors. She showed me some pictures of him and reminisced about how great an athlete he was and how much he loved the Club. Finally, after about an hour, I said, “Well, Mrs. Stickney, I think I’d better leave, and she said, “Just a minute, just a minute”. So she goes inside, get a little box, opens it up and there are four or five feather lei pheasant lei…….
JWR: Really?
WCK: Blue ones, brown ones ….
JWR: Feather lei?
WCK: Pheasant lei.
JWR: Oh, my.
WCK: Beautiful blues browns and so on, and she said, “I want you to have one of these”. I said “Oh, no, Mrs. Stickney. Those were Joe’s”.
JWR: Valuable!
WCK: I said, “Those were Joe’s, don’t you have relatives”? “No” she said, “I’ve already taken care of all the relatives, I want you to have one”. She picks up a blue one and she hand it to me and says, “Take this”. Well, I tell you I was shocked it was such a beautiful thing.
JWR: Oh, my.
WCK: I’ve had it for years since then. Just recently, about six months ago, I decided to give my daughter, Kehau … incidentally, I haven’t told you about my daughter, Kehaulani, who is a member of the Outrigger, but anyway, I bought her a nice big white Panama hat and put the blue lei around it, and gave it to her on her birthday, and she was just thrilled …….
JWR: Terrific.
WCK: …But this Mrs. Stickney, I tell you, I’ll always remember her and she.. Oh… then she called me and she said, “You know, I sit here almost every evening and listen to that tape and listen to Joe”.
JWR: That’s a real testimony to this program.
WCK: Yeah.
JWR: That’s great… Any other little recollections that you have that would be of interests?
WCK: Well, getting to know one Ward Russell so well has meant a great deal to me. I have enjoyed very much being his friend. As a matter of fact, I feel even closer than being his friend; I feel that we are related. Ward, I thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to relate these many things about my life. I am trying to repay by serving others and helping wherever I can, for all the privileges I have enjoyed and the opportunity of going to Kamehameha Schools, and then on to the University. Incidentally, when I worked for the Telephone Company I attended the Harvard advance management course which was on the Punahou campus, we stayed up there. There were twenty students from the Mainland and twenty from Australia and twenty from here. It was another wonderful experience. You know, Ward, I have just been so fortunate throughout my life to have these experiences with these great people who have meant so much to me. It is something I’ll always remember and treasure and as I get older and older I’ll treasure it even more.
JWR: Well, Bill, it’s been a pleasure. You mentioned the long association that we’ve had together, and I’d like to comment on that association. As I stated earlier, you were my boss on a number of occasions at the Telephone Company, and for the record I want to say this, I never worked for you, I always worked with you, and that’s intended as a compliment. You are one of the few bosses I ever had that I can really say that about. We’ve had a wonderful friendship for over fifty years. After all you are my next of kin! (a reference to data on JWR’s hospital records).
WCK: That’s right. [Laughter] I neglected to mention the fact that I am so proud of my daughter, Kehaulani, who was born in 1940. She went to Punahou where she was a good athlete. While she was attending Punahou she used to go to the Outrigger regularly with her classmates. One day when she was about ten years old, she came home and said she couldn’t get a locker, and I said it was because she was not a member. I said, “Oh, well. I’ll get you in as a member”. That was 1950, so I got her in as a member and she’s been active since, as you know, in surfing, in canoeing. I remember the first canoe race she was in, she was only about 11 or 12, I guess, maybe less than that. Just after she had been admitted. It was at Honolulu Harbor, that was where the races used to be. She was steering the canoe that went backwards and sideways and when she came to me at the end she was crying. But after that she became an outstanding paddler and surfer. She was the first surf queen of the International Surf Championships at Makaha.
JWR: How old was she then?
WCK: Fifteen. She was the first surf queen
JWR: How about her brother, Bill, Jr.?
WCK: Now, Bill, “Bunny” as he was called because he was born so close to Easter- March 31. Bill, after graduating from Punahou, went on to Stanford and remained on the Mainland where he became occupied with various activities. In recent years he has become quite an entrepreneur.
JWR: He’s doing very well?
WCK: He’s doing very well, yes. He has a beautiful home just north of Los Angeles, a nice wife and three girls. Incidentally, Kehau has two boys. They’re on the Mainland, one is in the Marine Corps now ….
JWR: Really?
WCK: Yeah …. And the other is in college. The one in the Marine Corps is getting out in a few months and he is going to go back to college, they are all doing well. I am just real proud of the things Kehaulani has done in her life.
JWR: I believe you told me Kehau is now in her mid-forties ….
WCK: Yeah.
JWR: My, how time has flown! Bill, this has been a lot fun.
WCK: Well, it’s been my pleasure, Ward, like it’s always been to be with you. You’ve done so much to enhance my life.
JWR: Thank you very much, the feeling is mutual! [Laughter]
Honolulu Advertiser
Sunday, November 24, 2002
OUR HONOLULU
By Bob Krauss
Bill Kea? Oh, he was one real kolohe kid. “Kolohe” means rascal in Hawaiian. That’s Bill Kea who was at the Kamehameha Schools. But it wasn’t he who blew up the school’s new chemistry laboratory. The last ROTC court-martial at Kamehameha wasn’t his fault either. The point is, stories like that shouldn’t be buried with him because they contain so much history that goodie two-shoes student forget to tell.
He was 96 when he died this month, the last of his class of 1927. To see his affable smile as vice president of public relations at Hawaiian Telephone over the years you’d never guess he had been a terror on the old Kamehameha campus.
Kea enrolled at Kamehameha in the first grade. In those days, Kea said, the school supervised everything such as when students should have their tonsils out and when they should be circumcised. As a boarding student in primary school, he had no idea why they were taking him to the hospital. A nurse, who told him to undress, put a chloroform mask over his face. He passed out. On the way back to the campus, he felt a pain and it wasn’t in the area of his tonsils. Then he knew what had happened to him. Kea looked on the bright side. He still got to eat ice cream.
Kamehameha was run along military lines and Kea said he participated in the last court-martial held at the school. One of the teachers had a habit of sneaking up on students to catch them in “flagrante delicto”, in the act. Because of her stealth they nicknamed her Popoki after the Hawaiian word for cat. One day Kea had brought his laundry bag down to the steps of the dormitory to be picked up. A stray cat crawled out from under the steps. Kea tempted it with the string of his laundry bag, calling, “Here puss, puss, puss”. The sneaky teacher happened to be walking by with two others. She assumed the worst, that Kea was tormenting her, and went to the adjutant general of the ROTC who called a court-martial to hear the evidence. Student attorneys appeared for Kea and the teacher and he was acquitted. One of the teachers printed the church bulletin with handset type. Kea worked as his assistant. This was during World War I when students grew victory gardens. The teacher caught Kea helping a friend make his bed instead of tending to his victory garden. The teacher took a stick to punish Kea. Kea got a stick and fought back like Errol Flynn in the movies. Then he went on strike. That week there was no church bulletin. After he was ordered to turn on the gas in the new chemistry lab, three explosions blew out the windows and doors. Kea said he already had his bags packed when everyone learned that in building the lab careless carpenters hadn’t capped the gas jets before boarding them over.