Prominent People | Page 162 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

February 3, 2016 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Joseph Atherton Richards

“’Who is this A. Richards?’”

“The players themselves, as well as others who usually know tennis players and tennis form as intimately as the average small boy knows the record of Babe Ruth, were asking each other the question at the clubhouse during the progress of this astonishing match.”

Richards, an unknown, beat favorite Watson Washburn in two straight sets and won the championship at the New York Tennis Club Tournament. (HMCS)

“Atherton Richards was the youth who thus confounded the prophets and tore the dope and the traditions into things of shreds and patches.” (NY Times, June 22, 1921)

He was called AR or Atherton Richards; however his full name was Joseph Atherton Richards. (Giles)

Richards was born in the Islands on September 29, 1894 (he died in 1974.) His father, Theodore Richards, came to Hawaiʻi in 1888 to become teacher of the first class to graduate at the Kamehameha Schools and, in 1894, principal of the Kamehameha Schools for five years. Atherton’s paternal grandfather was Joseph H Richards.

Theodore Richards founded Kokokahi on the windward side of Oʻahu (now a YWCA facility,) which means “of one blood”, which he meant as a place for people of different races to live together as people of one blood. (Star-Advertiser)

Theodore Richards married Mary Cushing Atherton, daughter of Juliette Cooke Atherton and Joseph Ballard Atherton. Joseph Atherton’ Richards maternal great grandparents were missionaries Amos Starr and Juliette Montague Cooke (Amos Starr Cooke and Samuel Northrup Castle formed Castle and Cooke.)

After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1915 (where he was captain of the tennis team,) Atherton served as a First Lieutenant in the US Army in 1917 and as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1942. (HICattle)

During WWII, Richards was one of the top officials serving under General William J “Wild Bill” Donovan, then-chief of the CIA’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS.)

Richards was tasked in the “Economics Branch” and was authorized to conduct research bearing on “the economic problems of the United States during and following the termination of the war emergency”. They also discussed “the possibilities of economic warfare organization.” (CIA)

In his business career, Richards served as an officer or director of Castle and Cooke Co, Hawaiian Pineapple Company, Bank of Hawaii, Ewa Plantation Co, Hawaiian Electric Co, and was a Kamehameha Schools, Bishop Estate (KSBE) trustee (1952-1974.)

In 1931, Hawaiian Pineapple accounted for about 38% of the Islands’ production (measured by cases of pineapples produced.) However, the Great Depression was on and Hawaiian Pineapple was facing bankruptcy.

In October 1932, Hawaiian Pineapple (what we call Dole) was reorganized to avoid catastrophe and founder James Dole was removed from management and Atherton Richards replaced him as general manager. (Cooper & Daws)

In late-1939, Richards tried to establish a new pineapple plantation on Molokai, in order to reduce their dependency on Waialua Agricultural Co, but the Molokai plantation plan was rejected by the board the next year. Richards left in 1941. (Hawkins)

As Bishop Estate trustee, Richards planted the idea of development of KSBE’s East Oʻahu property with Henry J Kaiser. They took a drive out to Kuapa Pond where Richards challenged Kaiser to make the development a success.

Kaiser accepted and proposed a $350-million dream city of 11,000 single family homes. Initially dubbed ‘Kaiser’s Folly,’ Hawaiʻi Kai became a success for Kaiser and Bishop Estate. (Hawaii Business)

Another lasting legacy of Richards is Kahua Ranch in Kohala, Hawaii Island, which he formed with Ronald Von Holt in 1928. The pair pooled their money and bought the property from Frank Woods.

Richards’ nephew, Herbert Montague “Monty” Richards, Jr, carries on his legacy today as Manager of Kahua Ranch. (Pono Von Holt runs the adjoining Ponoholo Ranch that had been split off from the original holdings.)

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Joseph Atherton Richards-HICattle

January 22, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Henry Alpheus Peirce Carter

Henry Alpheus Peirce Carter (also known as Henry Augustus Peirce Carter) was born in Honolulu August 7, 1837.

His father came from one of the old Massachusetts families, and had gone to Honolulu to engage in business, one of the first traders between the East Indies, Chinese ports and the Pacific Coast.

At about ten years old, young Carter was sent to the continent to be educated; for three or four years he attended school in Boston (all the formal education he ever had.)

When he was thirteen years old he went to San Francisco, and shortly afterward back to the Islands. He was office boy at C Brewer (he later became president of the firm.)

It was young Henry Carter who recognized that the commerce of Honolulu could not prosper until the Islands produced some commodity that could be used in exchange for merchandise which was imported and consumed here.

Hence, he persisted in accepting sugar agencies, believing that the sugar industry could but offer some permanent relief to the trying situation that then existed. (Nellist)

In 1862, Carter married Sybil Augusta Judd, a daughter of Dr. Gerrit P Judd of Honolulu (who came to the Islands in 1828 as a physician for the Missionaries and who later served the Kingdom.)

(The Carters had five children; one of them, George Robert Carter was appointed the 2nd Territorial Governor in the Islands.)

Carter brought Peter Cushman Jones into the business in 1871 as a junior partner, to eventually take over the operations while the sugar industry was growing.

For some years during his business life Carter had devoted considerable time to study of foreign affairs; with the expectation of someday becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs; when he gave up his business life, he was appointed.

Though born in the Islands and intensely loyal to his American parentage, he did not approve of the policy of annexation. At a public meeting in 1873, held at the old Hawaiian Hotel, this young merchant boldly challenged the wisdom of annexation but debated in a most winning manner in favor of reciprocity with the US.

He pointed out the past unsuccessful efforts in this direction and the reasons thereof, and urged the wisdom of slower but more certain growth of American sentiment in these Islands.

In 1876 he travelled to the US as one or the foreign legation; that year the first Reciprocity Treaty was negotiated. Immediately upon the establishment of the Reciprocity Treaty and the reduction of duties on certain commodities between the US and the Kingdom of Hawaii, a cry was raised over the advantage in trade that this new treaty gave to the Americans.

He then travelled to England, France and Germany to explain the treaty. (NY Times) Carter pointed out the treaty did not violate ‘favored nation’ clause of other treaties and that he negotiated similar treaties with others.

With a commodity for world markets and a treaty to benefit local growers, the development of the sugar industry caused the labor question to become acute, and in 1882 Carter was sent on a diplomatic mission to Portugal where he was successful in securing a new treaty regulating the Portuguese immigration to Hawaii.

On January 1, 1883, the Hawaiian Minister Resident at Washington, Judge Allen, died suddenly in the midst of a reception at the White House. In February, Carter was sent to Washington as his successor.

Carter’s efforts were successful in protecting the Reciprocity Treaty from various attacks, and finally in securing its definite renewal.

This renewal, which went into effect in 1887, carried for the first time the Pearl Harbor clause, by which the US was granted the use of a naval station at Pearl Harbor. This clause was the subject of much official correspondence between Mr. Carter and the secretary of State. (Nellist)

Carter served his country as Minister to the US for about 10-years. He was one of King Kalākaua’s closest advisers” and in all affairs of great moment to the kingdom his advice was carefully considered”. (Hawaiian Gazette, November 24, 1891)

“Henry Alpheus Peirce Carter was probably the ablest diplomat ever to serve the Hawaiian kingdom. … He was a man of great energy, of positive views and facility in the expression of them, with a self-confident and forceful manner that sometimes antagonized those who disagreed with him.”

“From 1875 until his death he spent most of his time abroad, as a diplomatic representative of the Hawaiian kingdom in the United States and Europe, where he became a familiar and much respected figure.” (Kuykendall) Carter died November 1, 1891, in New York.

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January 18, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Edwin Lani Hanchett

On September 26, 1967, the telephone rang with the news the Rev. Edwin Lani Hanchett, the first priest of the Episcopal Church of Hawaiian ancestry, rector of St. Peter’s, Honolulu, had been elected Hawaii’s first suffragan Bishop by the House of Bishops meeting in Seattle; he later (January 18, 1970) became the first Bishop of Hawaiian ancestry of the Episcopal Church.

The eldest child of six (five boys and one girl,) Hanchett was born at Hoolehua, Molokai, on November 2, 1919 to Dr Alsoberry Kaumualiʻi Hanchett and Mary Hazel (McGuire) Hanchett.

His father was the first person of Hawaiian ancestry to graduate from Harvard Medical College; the first doctor of Hawaiian descent to practice in the Islands; first City-County physician in Honolulu and first doctor at the Shingle Memorial Hospital, Molokai.

His grandfather, Salem Hanchett of Massachusetts, went to sea as a teenager aboard a Pacific whaler, and settled on Kauai during the reign of King Kaumualiʻi; he married Aluhua Aka, a descendent of Kaumualiʻi.

In 1848, he was granted citizenship in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, and seven years afterward, he obtained a license to operate a Wailua River ferry at a time when no bridges spanned the river. (Soboleski)

Hanchett was baptized in the Holy Cross Chapel and confirmed at St Alban’s Chapel, Iolani School (from which he graduated – Class of 1937.)

He attended the University of Hawaii (1937-1939) and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley (1958.)

Originally a pre-med student, Hanchett worked at the City-County Emergency Hospital (1938-1941) at the corner of Miller and Punchbowl, only a block from St. Peter’s.

On June 21, 1941, Hanchett married Puanani Akana (the fourth of nine children born to John and Julia Spencer Akana (she graduated from the Priory in 1937) of Kalihiwai, Kauai; they had four children: Carolyn, Suzanne, Stuart and Tiare.

During the war, Hanchett took a position in the Navy Yard at Pearl Harbor, supervising for the duration that section of the Supply Department servicing and supplying naval aircraft; he later worked in the Territorial Tax Office in Lihue.

He was a full-time youth worker for Kauai in 1950, becoming a lay-reader, and reading for orders. On July 20, 1952, he was ordained deacon at Christ Church, Kilauea, parish church of his wife’s family.

The ordination to the Diaconate was the fulfillment of a cherished dream ever since his days in ʻIolani School for boys; he had hoped that someday he might study for Holy Orders.

The next day, Hanchett left with his family for Holy Innocents’, Lahaina, Maui. As Archdeacon of Maui, Hanchett assisted the churchpeople of Molokai to establish Grace Church, Hoolehua and was instrumental in helping establish Camp Pecusa at Olowalu, Maui.

“Camp Pecusa” (PECUSA was an acronym for “Protestant Episcopal Church United States of America”) began as a church-sponsored camp for children in 1950 at Fleming’s Beach at Kapalua.

Campers stayed in big Army tents left over from World War II. Five years later, as the popularity of the camp continued to grow, Pioneer Mill leased the site Olowalu to the Church. The church held the lease on the campground until 2005, when the land was bought by a private company (now Camp Olowalu.)

Hanchett was ordained priest by Bishop Kennedy on September 19, 1953 (Ember Saturday). He later presided as vicar of St. George’s, Pearl Harbor during 1960-1961, and as rector of St. Peter’s, Honolulu, beginning in 1961.

Then, on January 18, 1970, he became diocesan Bishop at Saint Andrew’s Cathedral.

When cancer claimed his life in 1975, Rev. James Long, canon of the diocese noted, “We all loved him so and we loved him for what he was — a great friend, a great priest and great bishop and, above all, a man of great spirituality.”

Roman Catholic Bishop John Scanlan said, “The entire Hawaiian community has lost a valiant and gentle Christian man in the passing of Bishop Lani Hanchett.”

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January 11, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Flying for Fun

“(Flying) may not be all plain sailing … But the fun of it is worth the price.” (Putnam, The Fun Of It)

Five hundred enjoyed Mrs Putnam’s free lecture through the University Extension Service, University of Hawaiʻi – titled, ‘Flying for Fun.”

It was an interesting subject back then, only a few short years after Charles Lindberg first flew solo over the Atlantic. (She repeated the feat on the fifth anniversary of Lindbergh’s solo flight.)

‘Flying for fun’ (sport aviation) is basically flying for some purpose other than transportation or business (relaxation, hobby, competition, racing or thrill.) (CAP)

“I attempted to fly across the Atlantic ocean for my own person satisfaction. My flight added nothing to aviation. Literally hundreds of persons have crossed the Atlantic by aircraft, and one flight adds little to the starting sum total.”

“If my flight interested women to learn to fly as pilots or to fly as passengers on air lines, or to let their husbands and children fly as passengers, or to let their children embark on careers aeronautical engineers, then I think that my flight was worth while.” (Mrs Putnam, Rockford Morning Star, 02-15-1935; Genealogy Trails)

“A charming personality combined with a graciousness and ability in speaking to an audience as well as to the individual are paradoxically the qualities that the pioneering American woman flyer … possesses. In addition to these, her love for beauty is so real that she believes the lure of flying is the lure of beauty.”

She “described vividly and picturesquely her flight over the Pacific ocean, adding to her gift for pantomime a power of description and a true sense of humor that struck an immediate response in her audience.”

She insists “that the only reason for the flights was her own wish to fly. In this connection she said, ‘Women must often do for themselves what men have already done, and I look for the day to come when individual aptitude instead of sex will be the criterion for holding any job.’” (Daily Illini, March 22, 1935)

“I have long been interested in the comparative skills between the sexes. I have watched the flawless coordination of women champion drivers and I have watched the control and precision of women factory hands as they do work no man does (whether this should be ‘can do’ or not, I do not know)…”

“… and I wonder why the creatures who can with training perform these diverse tasks, and a hundred others, so excellently, should be balked by a contraption with an engine and four wheels or one with an engine and a couple of wings.” (Putnam to Wiggam, 1932)

She was rarely out of public view. In the many images of her after 1928, she appears as the epitome of grace and poise. During the years that America was in the grip of the Great Depression, she provided the nation with a sense of hope and optimism about its future.

After discovering the joy of flying, she came to see the airplane as her one true home. There she could escape, challenge herself, break records, and inspire others who longed to lead independent lives.

Although she was a vocal advocate for women’s rights and the future of aviation, she preferred being in the cockpit of a plane to anywhere else. She seemed to be happiest when flying an airplane. (Smithsonian)

At 4:44 pm, January 11, 1935, Putnam took off from Wheeler Field on Oʻahu for Oakland, California on a trans-Pacific flight never made solo before.

It was just one year prior that Commander M. Ginnis led his flight of six seaplanes from the West Coast to Hawaii. Now a woman was doing it in reverse, flying in one airplane, with one engine, and no other person aboard. (hawaii-gov)

A crowd of less than 1,000 was on hand to see the take-off. “Mr. Putnam was worried and perspiring as the plane got into the air. ‘I would rather have a baby,’ he said.”

“Despite the bad weather in the Schofield Barracks area, which included a drizzling rain and a muddy field, (Putnam) decided that conditions for her 2,400-mile cruise which she had planned ever since her arrival here two weeks ago, were right.”

“Everything fine; weather fair,” she radioed to Honolulu. (NYTimes, January 11, 1935)

The scene at Oakland Airport was a contrast to the Wheeler point of departure, as 5,000 people lined the field to offer a tumultuous reception for the first human to fly solo and non-stop over one ocean and 2,000 miles over another.

The West Coast appeared to the pilot twice in error, each time turning out to be cloud shadows on the water’s surface. The third time, however, was land.

Then she sighted the landing field and the hundreds of honking cars. The time was 12:50 pm, January 12, 1935. Some 2,090 nautical miles from Wheeler Field – 18 hours and 15 minutes later – she settled into a perfect landing in the California airport.

A brilliant success, the flight was accomplished by a flyer whose only motivation was the love of flying, and a desire to contribute trail-blazing marks to the world. (hawaii-gov)

Oh … we generally refer to Mrs George Palmer Putnam as Amelia Earhart. Today is the anniversary of her historic solo flight from Hawaiʻi to the continent, the first person, man or woman, to do so.

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Amelia Earhart poses in front of her airplane in Wheeler Field, Hawaii, on January 4, 1935-NatlGeographic

Amelia Earhart arrives in Hawaii on the Lurline, sailing past Aloha Tower on 12-27-1934

Amelia Earhart’s plans to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. shipped her plane from Los Angeles on December 23, 1934-NatlGeographic

George Palmer Putnam and Amelia Earhart Putnam

Flower leis drape Amelia Earhart in Honolulu on January 3, 1935-NatlGeographic

Eating pineapple with Duke Kahanamoku-January 11, 1935-NatlGeographic

Amelia Earhart & husband George Putnam are serenaded by Royal Hawaiian Hotel musicians 1-2-1935

Amelia Earhart 1935

Amelia Earhart delivers a lecture at University of Hawaii 1-2-1935.

Pilot Amelia Earhart readies her plane at Wheeler Field, Hawaii, for a flight across some Pacific islands-NatlGeographic

Amelia Earhart is showered with flowers-the first person to successfully fly from Hawaii to California-NatlGeographic

Amelia Earhart Memorial-plaque

January 6, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

“the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean”

In 1866, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) was retained by The Sacramento Union newspaper to write a series of articles on Hawaiʻi. Here are some of his words about Hawaiʻi (from that series, as well as his other writing.)

“I was there for four or five months, and returned to find myself about the best known man on the Pacific Coast.” (Twain) Popular pieces, some credit the series with turning Twain into a journalistic star.

Like they get to a lot of people, the Islands struck a chord with Clemens.

“On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond Head”.

“So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich Islands – those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had been longing all those years to see again. Not any other thing in the world could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did.”

“The town of Honolulu (said to contain between 12,000 and 15,000 in habitants) is spread over a dead level; has streets from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them straight as a line … houses one and two stories high, … there are great yards, (that) are ornamented by a hundred species of beautiful flowers and blossoming shrubs, and shaded”.

“A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall cocoanut trees, with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up sixty or seventy feet and topped with a spray of green foliage sheltering clusters of cocoa‐nuts”.

“… not more picturesque than a forest of colossal ragged parasols, with bunches of magnified grapes under them, would be. … It is the village of Waikiki once the Capital of the kingdom and the abode of the great Kamehameha I.”

“What a picture is here slumbering in the solemn glory of the moon! How strong the rugged outlines of the dead volcano stand out against the clear sky! What a snowy fringe marks the bursting of the surf over the long, curved reef!”

“I tried surf-bathing (surfing) once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. – The board struck the shore in three quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me.”

“It has been six weeks since I touched a pen. In explanation and excuse I offer the fact that I spent that time (with the exception of one week) on the island of Maui. … I never spent so pleasant a month before.”

“I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away any of it writing letters under any consideration whatever. … I sail for the island of Hawaiʻi tomorrow.”

“We landed at Kailua (Kona,) a little collection of native grass houses reposing under tall cocoanut trees ‐ the sleepiest, quietest, Sundayest looking place you can imagine.”

“Ye weary ones that are sick of the labor and care, and the bewildering turmoil of the great world, and sigh for a land where ye may fold your tired hands and slumber your lives peacefully away, pack up your carpet sacks and go to Kailua!”

“I suppose no man ever saw Niagara for the first time without feeling disappointed. I suppose no man ever saw it the fifth time without wondering how he could ever have been so blind and stupid as to find any excuse for disappointment in the first place.”

“I was disappointed when I saw the great volcano of Kilauea to‐day for the first time. It is a comfort to me to know that I fully expected to be disappointed, however, and so, in one sense at least, I was not disappointed.”

“I said to myself ‘Only a considerable hole in the ground ‐ nothing to Haleakala ‐ a wide, level, black plain in the bottom of it, and a few little sputtering jets of fire occupying a place about as large as an ordinary potato‐patch, up in one corner ‐ no smoke to amount to anything.’”

“I reflected that night was the proper time to view a volcano … I turned my eyes upon the volcano again (now, at night.)”

“… the floor of the abyss was magnificently illuminated; beyond these limits the mists hung down their gauzy curtains and cast a deceptive gloom over all … Here was room for the imagination to work! … it was the idea, of eternity made tangible ‐ and the longest end of it made visible to the naked eye!”

“We hear all our lives about the ‘gentle, stormless Pacific,’ and about the ‘smooth and delightful route to the Sandwich Islands,’ and about the ‘steady blowing trades’ that never vary, never change, never ‘chop around’”.

“No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one; no other land could so longingly and beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done.”

“Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf beat is in my ear”.

“I can see its garlanded craigs, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore; its remote summits floating like islands above the cloudrack”.

“I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes; I can hear the plash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.”

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