Prominent People | Page 163 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

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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December 12, 2015 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

John Kendrick

Sea Captain John Kendrick fought in the French and Indian Wars in 1762, threw tea overboard in the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and was in charge of the Fanny, one of the United States’ first ships, during the Revolutionary War.

He survived all that, and was later killed on December 12, 1794 in a 13-canon saluting round in Fair Haven (now known as Honolulu Harbor.) (Lytle)

Let’s look back …

Kendrick was born in 1740 on a small hilly farm in East Harwich, Cape Cod, the third of seven children of Solomon Kendrick and Elizabeth Atkins.

Kendrick’s grandfather, Edward Kendrick, had arrived in Harwich around 1700 and married Elizabeth Snow, the granddaughter of Nicholas Snow, a holder of extensive lands and one of the ‘old-comers’ from Plymouth who first settled the Cape.

Kendrick’s father, Solomon, born sometime during the winter of 1705, was master of a whaling vessel who was famous in local lore. He followed his father and went to sea by the time he was fourteen. By his late-teens, he was crewing on local sailing vessels.

“John Kendrick came of age in the defiant atmosphere of the coffeehouses and taverns of Boston. Here, he was in the midst of the firestorm of opposition to the Parliament’s Stamp Act of 1765 and the hated Townshend Acts, which usurped local authority and levied an array of onerous taxes.”

“As strife increased on the waterfront, he may have been involved in the widespread boycott of British goods and the burning of Boston’s customs house, or riots over seizure and impressment of American sailors for British ships.”

“(O)n the rainy night of December 16, 1773, John Kendrick was part of the legendary band that boarded two East India Company ships at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. Thumbing his nose at the British shortly after, he is said to have been master of the brig Undutied Tea.”

He fought in the American Revolutionary War and at its outbreak, he smuggled powder and arms from the Caribbean with the sloop Fanny, whose owners were under contract with a secret committee of the Continental Congress and later captured a couple ships, which helped to precipitate the entry of France into the war.

“Shortly before the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, Kendrick came ashore. In his sporadic visits home he had managed to father six children, and now he buckled down to making his way in the new nation.”

“After the victorious Revolution and the euphoria of the Peace Treaty of 1783, an economic depression had settled over villages and farms. Port cities and their harbors were left reeling from the war. Inflation was rampant.”

“There was no common currency, state governments were weak, and representatives to the Congress of the Confederation bickered over fundamental issues, threatening to secede.”

“Heavy debts owed to Britain for damages in the war were due, and the prospects for international trade and revenue were bleak. In a punching move, the king had closed all British ports from Canada and the British Isles to the Caribbean to the remaining American ships.”

Without trade, without customs revenue, without taxes, it would be impossible to support a new central government and succeed in securing independence.

Shipping was the soul of early commerce; the Pacific voyages of James Cook revealed the high prices sea otter furs from the Northwest Coast would bring in China.

That took Kendrick and his crew to the Pacific, where they traded with the local population and explored the northwest of the American continent. They eventually (January 1790) went to China to trade the Northwest furs and eventually made it to Japan, arriving on May 6, 1791, probably becoming the first official Americans to meet the Japanese.

On December 3, 1794, Kendrick arrived in Fair Haven (Honolulu) Hawaiʻi aboard the Lady Washington; a war was waging between Kalanikupule and his half-brother Kaʻeokulani (Kaʻeo.)

Also in Honolulu were Captain William Brown (the first credited with entering Honolulu Harbor) in general command of the Jackall and the Prince Lee Boo, Captain Gordon.

At the death of Kahekili in 1793, Kaʻeo became ruling chief of Maui, Molokai and Lānaʻi. Kalanikupule was ruler of Oʻahu. Homesick for his friends, Kaʻeo set out to return to Kauai by way of Waialua and then to Waimea. He learned of a conspiracy to kill him. (Kamakau)

Captain Brown of the Jackall helped Kalanikupule. While Kaʻeo was successful after some initial skirmishes. A great battle was fought in the area between Kalauao and ‘Aiea in ‘Ewa. Kalanikupule’s forces surrounded Kaʻeo. (Cultural Surveys) The ship’s men successfully aided in the defense and Kaʻeo was defeated.

To celebrate the victory, on December 12, 1794, Kendrick’s brig fired a thirteen-gun salute in celebration the British ship of Captain Brown.

The tradition of rendering a salute by cannon originated in the 14th century as firearms and cannons came into use. Since these early devices contained only one projectile, discharging them rendered them harmless.

Initially, the tradition began as a custom among ships, whose captains had volleys fired upon entering a friendly port to release its arsenal, which demonstrated their peaceful intentions (by placing their weapons in a position that rendered them ineffective.)

Following Kendrick’s salute, Brown answered with a round of fire.

Unfortunately, through an oversight, one of the saluting guns on the Jackall was loaded with round and grape shot, and this shot passed through the side of the Lady Washington, killing Captain Kendrick and several of his crew. (Kuykendall) (Lots of information here is from Ridley; Daughters of the American Revolution)

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Captain John Kendrick

November 25, 2015 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Vladimir Ossipoff

“An architect has to be a bit of a sociologist, lawyer and psychologist. He has to know human nature.” (Vladimir Ossipoff)

Vladimir Ossipoff was a prominent architect in the Islands, working between the 1930s and 1990s. He was recognized locally, nationally and internationally for his designs. He is best known for his contribution to the development of the Hawaiian Modern movement.

This style is characterized by the work of architects who “subscribed to the general modernity of the International Style while attempting to integrate the cultural and topographical character of the (Hawaiian) region.” (Sakamoto)

This very frequently included an attempt to integrate the interior of buildings with the outdoors, and minimizing the dividing line between the building and the site.

Ossipoff was born in Russia on November 25, 1907 and moved with his family to Japan, where his father was a military attaché in Tokyo during the post Russo-Japanese War period. The family remained in Japan during the Russian revolutionary period, and Ossipoff attended school in Tokyo and Yokohama.

In 1923, Ossipoff and his mother and siblings moved to Berkeley, California where he graduated from Berkeley High School in 1926. He continued on to the University of California at Berkeley, studying architecture. He earned a Bachelor’s in Architecture in 1931, and after losing his first job out of school due to the Great Depression, sailed for Honolulu the same year.

Within a few months of taking up residence in Honolulu, he found work with the architect Charles W Dickey working on the Immigration Station at Honolulu Harbor. He worked as in-house designer for developer Theo H. Davies, designing more than twenty-five residences between 1932 and 1935, before opening his own firm in early 1936.

His early work included mainly upscale homes with Hawaiian elements, though he sometimes included International Style or Modern influences, and still more infrequently designed strict interpretations of these styles.

The 1937 Ossipoff-designed, four-acre Boettcher Estate site on Kailua Beach was acquired by the City and County of Honolulu in 1978. It was restored and is now part of the Kalama Beach Park.

During World War II, Ossipoff worked for the government, with the Contractors, Pacific Naval Air Bases and quickly reopened his office at the end of the war.

About 1947-48, Ossipoff and several other Honolulu architects associated as Fisk, Johnson, Ossipoff and Preis, Associated Architects, combining the resources of their offices in order to obtain large commissions.

The association split up gradually, around 1952-53, as the members withdrew to work on their own projects. In 1956-57, Ossipoff expanded his office, hiring several younger architects, including Sidney Snyder, Jr., Alan Rowland and Gregory Goetz, and in 1973, the firm was incorporated as Ossipoff, Snyder, Rowland and Goetz.

Between the end of the World War II and the 1970s, Ossipoff produced most of the Hawaiian Modern design that he is known for today, and became a leading figure in the Hawaiian Modern movement.

Although he practiced at a time of rapid growth and social change in Hawai`i, Ossipoff criticized large-scale development and advocated environmentally sensitive designs, developing a distinctive form of architecture appropriate to the lush topography, light and microclimates of the Hawaiian Islands.

Ossipoff’s inspiration was Hawaiian architecture, in particular the lanai, an open-sided, freestanding and lightly-roofed structure usually buffered from the weather by foliage. His use of a shaded lanai as the primary living area, created an inviting indoor-outdoor space around an intimate garden. (NY Times)

The adaptation of Modernist building forms to Hawaiian living conditions was to become more pronounced in Ossipoff’s later buildings, and also eventually evolve into his signature style.

Ossipoff’s design employs deep overhangs, carefully oriented windows and vents to create a naturally ventilated structure that is permeable to the powerful Pacific trade winds yet protected from rain and excessive sunlight. (NY Times)

His design values were consistent with recommendations made nearly three decades earlier by the American cultural critic Lewis Mumford in his report “Whither Honolulu” (1938) which was commissioned by the city’s Parks Department.

Mumford cautioned that while much of Honolulu’s natural virtues had “… already been spoilt. More disastrous results may follow unless steps are taken at once to conserve Honolulu’s peculiar advantages such as its connections to the ocean and to create buildings which take full advantage of the balmy trade winds and exceptional foliage that are unique to Hawaiʻi.” (DAM)

His work has been featured in local, national, and international publications, and he won numerous local design awards. Ossipoff served, two times, as president of the Hawaiʻi chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and also served as the AIA’s northwest regional director in 1972 – the first architect from Hawaiʻi to do so.

He was asked to serve as a visiting critic at the Cornell University School of Architecture, and as a juror for the Sunset magazine Home Design Awards in 1959. In 1964, he chaired the jury for the Mount Olympus International Design. (Lots of information here is from Jones, NPS.)

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