Prominent People | Page 163 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

May 20, 2015 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Squirmin’ Herman

“Squirmin’ Herman Wedemeyer, the hula-hipped hurricane from Hawaiʻi, contributed a remarkable chapter to the lore of West Coast football in 1945 when he sparked St. Mary’s undernourished teenagers to a successful season and a trip to the Sugar Bowl.” (McCarty)

Wedemeyer (Wedey,) born May 20, 1924 in Hilo, “led St Louis College (now St Louis School) to Interscholastic League of Honolulu football titles in 1941 and 1942. He turned down scholarship offers from Notre Dame and Ohio State to attend St. Mary’s.” (Masuoka)

Located in rural Moraga, California, St Mary’s College is a small Catholic liberal arts college. When World War II broke out, St Mary’s (an all-male school) lost almost all of their students to military duty.

In the 1943 season, only 20 students showed up to play on the team, and of those, only 3 weren’t going to be in the military by the fall. So the coach decided to put together a team of players who were all freshmen, as they would be 17, and too young to be drafted into the military.

Although they lost their first game (that they were expected to lose,) seventeen-year-old Wedemeyer was “the most sensational discovery to come over the horizon since the Santa Maria… California won the ball game but Herman Wedemeyer won the hearts of every man, woman, and child present.”

Grantland Rice, sportswriting’s dean, said that Wedemeyer was “the only back I’ve seen in many years who could handle (running, passing, blocking, tackling and kicking) with poise and grace thrown in….His reflexes are far quicker than anything I’ve seen on a football team in many, many years.”

His speed and turn-on-a-dime agility on the field earned him the nicknames “Squirmin’ Herman,” “The Flyin’ Hawaiian,” “The Hawaiian Centipede” and “The Waikiki Wonder.” (Barracuda Magazine)

In 1944, St. Mary’s had to do without Wedemeyer, as he enlisted in the Merchant Marines. The Gaels only scheduled five games that season, and minus Wedemeyer, they lost every one of them.

Wedemeyer, at only 5’ 10” and 164-pounds, returned to the team for the 1945 season (which began shortly after the end of WWII), but St Mary’s enrollment was still under 100 students. The team once again showed promise, even though they were the youngest college team ever put together. (Barracuda Magazine)

The highlight of the season was the 26-0 trouncing of USC. Little St Mary’s went on to capture the Pacific Coast title – and played in the Sugar Bowl against the undefeated Oklahoma A&M. (St Mary’s lost that game.)

Wedemeyer was the first from Hawaiʻi player to be named to the All-American first team. He was also selected to play for the West in the annual Shrine game, the first freshman ever so honored. Sportswriter Rice noted, “Herman Wedemeyer is the greatest athlete in the country.”

Wedemeyer was a first-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) in 1947 (and played with fellow Hawaiian, free agent Johnny Naumu.)

The AAFC was an upstart challenger to the then-25-year-old NFL; the Dons were supported-by-the-stars, Don Ameche was president and minority owners included Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Pat O’Brien and others.

The Dons were the first professional football team to play a regular season game in Los Angeles, beating the rival Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League by two weeks. (LA Times)

Wedemeyer played one year with the Dons and later played for the Baltimore Colts, but an injury cut short his career. He had a short stint in professional minor league baseball.

Returning to Hawaiʻi, Wedemeyer became a businessman. He was elected to the Honolulu City Council in 1968. In 1970, he was elected/reelected to the Hawaiʻi House of Representatives.

From 1971 to 1980, Wedemeyer appeared in “Hawaii Five-O,” playing Edward D “Duke” Lukela. (Masuoka) Wedemeyer died January 25, 1999 in Honolulu (aged 74.)

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19991001 – Herman Wedemeyer. 1947. Star-Bulletin photo.

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May 18, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Thomas Charles Byde Rooke

Thomas Charles Byde Rooke was born to Thomas and Sarah Rooke on May 18, 1806, in Bengeo, Hertford, England. He studied to be a Doctor at a branch of Christ’s College Hospital in Hertford and had studied in London where he graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in 1826.

He first landed in the Islands at Lahaina in 1829. After another season’s cruise his ship put in at Honolulu. Here Dr. Rooke was asked to remain and practice medicine, and, with the consent of his Captain, he agreed.

That year, Rooke married Grace Kamaikui, the second daughter of John Young, Kamehameha’s advisor (and “in his most perfect confidence”.) Grace was widow of Keʻeaumoku (Queen Regent Kaʻahumanu’s younger brother.)

The Rookes were apparently unable to have children of their own; when Grace’s sister, Fanny, had a child, Emma, she was hanai (a traditional custom of adoption) to the Rookes.

Emma’s formal education began at age five at the Chiefs’ Children’s School. She grew up speaking both Hawaiian and English, the latter “with a perfect English accent.”

At age 13, when the school closed in 1849, Rooke hired Sarah Rhodes von Pfister, an English governess, to tutor Emma for the next four years, but he also played an active role in her education. Emma learned a great deal about the outside world from her scholarly father, who assembled the finest library in Honolulu for her benefit.

At 20, on June 19, 1856, Emma married Alexander Liholiho, who a year earlier had assumed the throne as Kamehameha IV; she became Queen Emma. The couple had known each other since childhood.

Dr Rooke was one of the pioneers in the cultivation of coffee and was the charter member of the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society when it was organized in 1850, serving on the coffee committee.

Rooke had his office and dispensary in his home (“Rooke House” on the makai/Waikiki corner of Beretania Street and Nuʻuanu Avenue.) Rooke House was “like an old-fashioned New England house externally, but with two deep verandahs, and the entrance is on the upper one.”

“The lower floor seemed given up to attendants and offices, and a native woman was ironing clothes under a tree. Upstairs, the house is like a tasteful, English country-house, with a pleasant English look … the most English-looking house I have seen since I left home, except Bishopscourt at Melbourne.” (Bird)

He was also physician to the Court, friend and advisor to the royal family, and became a naturalized citizen. In 1844 he is listed as Port Physician, and in December, 1850, he was appointed to the first Board of Health and served as its chairman. Rooke served twice as a member of the House of Representatives, representing the Honolulu district.

He was “elegantly dressed, rubicund, affable, and redolent of delicious odors that I afterwards learned to recognize as indicative of acquaintance with the choicest brands of rare old wine. The cordiality of his manners placed me at ease”. (Lyman)

Dr Rooke was one of the ten Honolulu physicians who were signers of the charter of incorporation of the Hawaiian Medical Society on May 19, 1856.

Rooke also taught Emma by example. Not only did he provide medical care to the poor, he also served as physician at the Hospital for British Seamen, which was established in Pauoa Valley in 1846

Rooke foreshadowed the establishment of The Queen’s Hospital with his pleas in The Polynesian for the establishment of such an institution.

After living in the Islands for nearly 30-years, Dr Rooke died in November 28, 1858, at Kailua-Kona, Hawaiʻi, at the age of 52. He was buried in the Wyllie tomb, or Wyllie crypt, at Mauna Ala, along with other members of Emma’s family.

Although he did not live to see the opening of the Queen’s Hospital in 1860, it was he who kindled the spark which brought it into being.

“(W)e have lost not only the Senior Member of our Profession here, whose labors among this people and community during his long residence on these islands, have secured for him an enduring place in the memory of the Hawaiian Nation;”

“(B)ut, also, a brother, whose strict sense of professional propriety in his relations to as, as well as to those entrusted to his care, not less than his uniform kindness and urbanity of manners, have won for him our lasting esteem and respect.” (Hawaiian Medical Society; Polynesian, December 16, 1858) (Lots of information here is from Queen’s Medical Center and Kelley)

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May 14, 2015 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Seacole and the Queen

Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish soldier and her mother was Jamaican. Mary learned nursing skills from her mother, who kept a boarding house for invalid soldiers.

“When I was about twelve years old I was more frequently at my mother’s house, and used to assist her in her duties; very often sharing with her the task of attending upon invalid officers or their wives, who came to her house from the adjacent camp at Up-Park, or the military station at Newcastle.” (Seacole)

Although technically ‘free,’ being of mixed race, Mary and her family had few civil rights – they could not vote, hold public office or enter the professions. (BBC)

“I nursed my old indulgent patroness in her last long illness. After she died, in my arms, I went to my mother’s house, where I stayed, making myself useful in a variety of ways, and learning a great deal of Creole medicinal art”. (Seacole)

In 1836, “until (she) couldn’t find courage to say ‘no’ to a certain arrangement timidly proposed,” Mary married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole (the godson of Admiral Horatio Nelson;) but the marriage was short-lived as he died in 1844. (BBC)

“In the year 1850, the cholera swept over the island of Jamaica with terrible force. … they sent some clothes on shore to be washed, and poor Dolly Johnson, the washerwoman, whom we all knew, sickened and died of the terrible disease.”

“While the cholera raged, I had but too many opportunities of watching its nature, and from a Dr. B—, who was then lodging in my house, received many hints as to its treatment which I afterwards found invaluable.” (Seacole)

She travelled to Cruses, Panama to see her brother. A family friend developed cholera; there, she diagnosed it and gave medicine from her medicine chest (“I never travel anywhere without it.”)

“I went hastily to the patient, and at once adopted the remedies I considered fit. It was a very obstinate case, but by dint of mustard emetics, warm fomentations, mustard plasters on the stomach and the back, and calomel, at first in large then in gradually smaller doses, I succeeded in saving my first cholera patient in Cruces.”

War had been declared against Russia and following her trip to Panama, Mary had a pressing desire to go to Crimea to nurse the British soldiers whom she had grown both accustomed to and fond of when she had nursed them in Jamaica.

She tried to offer her services in London in the autumn of 1854; following several rejections, she traveled to the Crimea (on the northern coast of the Black Sea in the Ukraine) and opened the British Hotel and store at Balaclava and worked tirelessly during the year she spent there.

During an outbreak of cholera, Mary’s services were again in great demand. This time, she succumbed to the illness herself but made a full recovery. (Gabriel) She also saved others.

“I have seen her go down, under fire, with her little store of creature comforts for our wounded men; and a more tender or skilful hand about a wound or broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons.”

“I saw her at the assault on the Redan, at the Tchernay, at the fall of Sebastopol, laden, not with plunder, good old soul! but with wine, bandages, and food for the wounded or the prisoners.” (Russell, 1857; British Journal of Healthcare Assistants)

“She not only, from the knowledge she acquired in the West Indies, was enabled to administer appropriate remedies for their ailments, but, what was of as much or more importance, she charitably furnished them with proper nourishment …”

“… which they had no means of obtaining except in hospital, and most of that class had an objection to go into hospital.” (Sir John Hall, Inspector-General of Hospitals, 1856; British Journal)

“I trust that England will not forget one who nursed the sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succor them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.” (Sir William Howard Russell, 1857)

Following the war in Crimea, Mary Seacole returned to England destitute and in poor health; however, her reputation after the Crimean War rivalled Florence Nightingale’s. She lived in London, as well as in Jamaica.

Then, on June 24th 1865, Mary Seacole made a Hawaiʻi connection. It turns out Queen Emma made a brief stopover in Kingston on her way to London.

Queen Emma was welcomed with a royal gun salute and was met by an honor guard of the 1st West India Regiment. As she landed, she graciously acknowledged the cheers of the many citizens of Kingston who had gathered to greet her. One of the citizens of Kingston who greeted the Queen was Mary Seacole.

In the words of the reporter of the Colonial Standard, “A carriage was in attendance at the wharf to receive Her Majesty, as soon as she entered the carriage Mrs Seacole requested the honour of placing around Her Majesty a magnificent cloak that had been presented to her by the Sultan, which she accepted, thanked Mrs Seacole and shook hands with her”. (Lumsden)

The two women shared a dedication to health care, Mary Seacole in the battles in the Crimea and Queen Emma through the practice of her father (an English physician) that eventually led to the formation of the Queen’s Hospital (named in her honor.)

Queen Emma decided to visit England and the British Government provided the ships to transport her and her party. It was on this voyage that she stopped at Kingston. In England she stayed at Windsor with Queen Victoria, and visited hospitals and educational establishments. (Lumsden)

The last 25 years of Mary Seacole’s life were spent in relative obscurity; she died in London on May 14, 1881 and is buried in St Mary’s Roman Catholic cemetery, Kensal Green, London. Queen Emma died four years later and is buried at Mauna Ala, Honolulu.

(Seacole was voted Greatest Black Briton in 2004. “As a black Jamaican woman in the 19th century, Mary Seacole stood up against the discrimination and prejudices she encountered. Against all odds, Mary had an unshakeable belief in the power of nursing to make a difference.” (BBC))

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Mary_Jane_Seacole

Mary Seacole

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Sculpture of Mary Seacole

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Sketch of Mary Seacole by Crimean war artist William Simpson (1823–1899), c. 1855

Mother Seacole`s bust at Getty museum

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Sketch of Mary Seacole’s British Hotel in Crimea, by Lady Alicia Blackwood (1818–1913)

Map illustrating Mary Seacole’s involvement in the Crimean War

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Artist rendition of proposed Mary Seacole Statue

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May 8, 2015 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Pualani Mossman

“They say she is the most photographed girl in the Islands …”

“(I)f you are really lucky … If you are one of those of whom refreshing and enchanting things sometimes happen. You will have wandered into the Hawaiian Room at the Lexington and seen her dance those ancient native hulas of Hawaii.”

“You will have hailed the first passing waiter and inquired her name. Let me beat the waiter to it. Let me tell you her name. It is Pualani, which in the land beyond old Diamond Head means ‘Flower of Heaven.’“ (Tucker, Man About Manhattan, June 14, 1938)

Pualani Mossman was born on April 16, 1916 in Honolulu. She began to work at the age of six in her father’s (George Paele Mossman) various Hawaiian ventures, which included ‘ukulele manufacturing and a Hawaiian language school. (Imada)

In 1932, her father opened the Lalani Village in Waikiki with demonstrations of traditional crafts, music and lūʻau as a way of preserving and teaching what he termed “Hawaiian lore that is fast vanishing.”

The family operation included every member of Mossman’s immediate family: his wife, Emma; several sons; and three daughters: Leilani, Piʻilani, and Pualani. Mossman and her sisters performed and taught hula.

Pualani was known for her “Volcano hula” dance, the highlight of the show. She would dance alone on a raised platform with another performer blowing fire and lighting a model of a volcano.

In 1934, Mossman was originally tapped by the Hawaiʻi Tourist Bureau to star in “Song of the Islands,” the first color movie made in Hawaiʻi, intended to promote tourism. After the film, she started modeling.

In 1937, Matson Navigation sent Mossman to New York City to be photographed for the company’s national advertising campaign. She became known as the “Matson Girl,” appearing in Life, Time and Fortune magazines.

“If you opened a major national magazine in those years it is very likely you would have seen Pualani in a Matson ad.” (Brown; Wilson) She was the face of Hawaiʻi in national travel advertisements.

“That photo appeared all over the country and was everywhere in New York City, even a year later. My, that was exciting, to be the Hawaiian poster girl.” (Mossman; Ryan)

For more than 50 years, Pualani Mossman epitomized the image of a Hawaiian hula dancer as the original poster girl for Matson cruises and the Hawaii Visitors Bureau. (Gee)

After the Hawaiian Room opened in the Hotel Lexington in New York City, Mossman, Meymo Ululani Holt, Mapuana Bishaw and Jennie Napua Woodd were dancers there – they were known as the “Aloha Maids.”

There, Mossman met her future husband, Randy Avon Sr, the hotel’s chief accountant; they married in 1939. The couple returned to Hawaiʻi for a few years, then relocated to Florida in 1950 where she taught hula.

Mossman was one of the most active fighters for statehood in Washington, DC, in the early-1950s. Her family later endowed the University of Hawaii with funds to perpetuate the Hawaiian language and traditions. (Ryan)

Pualani Mossman Avon’s hands symbolized the wind and the flowers when she danced and were like the song she inspired: “Graceful as birds in motion, gliding like gulls over the ocean.”

Mossman spent her last 55 years in Florida. She continued to dance hula and spread aloha well into her 80s, performing at senior-citizen centers during visits to Hawaiʻi and with Hawaiian entertainers appearing in South Florida. She died on May 8, 2006 in Palm Bay, Florida.

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Pualani Mossman Avon, Hawaii Statehood promotion-PP-33-5-034-1947

Pualani Mossman – the Matson Girl-1937

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‘Aloha Maids’–Jennie Napua Wood, Pualani Mossman, and Mapuana Bishaw-HawaiianRoom-1938

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Hula dancers-Pualani Mossman, Leilani Mossman, Piilani Mossman

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April 27, 2015 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Ralph Sheldon Hosmer

“The forests and timber growing therein, shall be considered as government property, and under the special care of the minister of the interior, who may from time to time convert the products thereof into money for the benefit of government.”

Thus, through King Kamehameha III’s Act No. 2, Chapter III, Article I, Chapter VI, Section VII of April 27, 1846, ‘forestry’ began in Hawaiʻi.

Around 1870, Henry Perrin Baldwin of Maui, “had systematically planted blocks of forests on his lands on the lower slopes of Mount Haleakalā” with several hundred thousand koa, eucalyptus, ironwood, silk oak, cedar and Java plum trees. (anderson)

On the continent, on November 30, 1900, seven foresters formed the Society of American Foresters (Mr Gifford Pinchot, Mr Overton Price, Mr William Hall, Mr Ralph Hosmer, Mr Thomas Sherrard, Mr ET Allen and Mr Henry Graves.) Today, it’s the largest professional organization for foresters in the world.

On May 13, 1903, the Territory of Hawaiʻi, with the backing of the Hawaiʻi Sugar Planters’ Association, established the Board of Commissioners of Agriculture and Forestry. (HDOA)

The next year, Ralph Sheldon Hosmer (one of the Society founders) became the first Superintendent of Forestry in the Islands.

Hosmer, son and grandson of Unitarian ministers, was born on March 4, 1874 in Deerfield Massachusetts. (The Hosmer family first came from Kent, England to Boston in 1635, then settled in Concord in 1637.) His mother’s side of the family (Julia West (Sheldon) Hosmer (of the Williams family)) went to Deerfield in the Connecticut Valley about 1650. (Maunder)

After completing his preparatory education, two years of which were at the Boston Latin School, he entered Harvard University from which he was graduated in 1894.

His first government position was with the US Department of Agriculture Division of Soils from May 1896, to November 1898. In the latter year, he became interested in Forestry and transferred his activities to the Division of Forestry.

His early work in the field was spent principally in the Adirondacks and the White Mountains. After several years, Hosmer took a leave of absence to attend the newly established Yale School of Forestry, obtaining his Master of Forestry Degree in 1902. He was a member of the first class to be graduated from this School.

Shortly after, Hosmer left for Hawaiʻi to fill the Superintendent position.

On December 30, 1913 that Ralph Hosmer of Newton Massachusetts was married to Jessie Nash Irwin; their three children were born on the continent: David Irwin, Jane Sheldon (Mrs. Robert Hall Llewellyn), and Emily Francis (Mrs. Marc Daniels)

From 1908 to 1914 he was chairman of the Territorial Conservation Committee of Hawaiʻi, and from 1907 to 1914, vice-president of the Board of Regents of the College of Hawaiʻi. (Harvard)

A lasting legacy of Hosmer is the result of his implementation of the Forest Reserve System, created by the Territorial Government of Hawai’i through Act 44 on April 25, 1903.

With Hawai‘i’s increase in population, expanding ranching industry, and extensive agricultural production of sugarcane and later pineapple, early territorial foresters recognized the need to protect mauka (upland) forests to provide the necessary water requirements for the lowland agriculture demands and surrounding communities. (DOFAW)

After more than a century of massive forest loss and destruction, the Territory of Hawai‘i acknowledged that preservation of the forest was vital to the future economic prosperity of the Islands.

Urged by sugarcane growers and government foresters concerned about the vanishing woodlands, the forest reserve system became the basis for the largest public-private partnership in the history of the Islands. (Last Stand)

Hosmer considered “nine-tenths of the forest proposition of Hawaiʻi forest protection problem,” arguing, “What is needed is simply to leave the forest alone, keeping man and animals out.”

While forest reserves were important watersheds, their boundaries were drawn “so as not to interfere with revenue-producing lands,” and such lands were not generally thought to be useful for agriculture. (hawaii-edu)

Hosmer’s second priority was to explore the opportunities for planting trees on eroding hillsides where the native forest did not regenerate and to experiment with trees of value for lumber, fuel, posts, bridge timbers and other uses. Except for the endemics koa and ʻōhiʻa, none of the native tree species were considered valuable for commercial purposes.

Hosmer believed that the forest reserves were useful for two primary purposes: water production for the Territory’s agricultural industries, and timber production to meet the growing demand for wood products. The forest reserve system, he said, should not lead to “the locking up from economic use of a certain forest area.”

Even in critical watersheds the harvesting of old trees “is a positive advantage, in that it gives the young trees a chance to grow, while at the same time producing a profit from the forests. (LRB)

A main concern was finding an alternative to importing redwood and Douglas-fir from California for construction timbers. In 1904 the government nursery was asked to grow timber tree species instead of its usual ornamental, flowering trees (pines, cypress, cedar and Douglas fir.) (Anderson)

“The diminishing supply of wood and timber on the American mainland, the consequent rise in price of all wood products, the local need for wood suitable for fence posts, railroad ties, bridge timbers and the like, not to speak of general construction timber and the necessity for a cheap fuel supply–that already in some districts is a serious problem – all point to the wisdom of tree planting.” (Hosmer; LRB)

Hosmer held the Superintendent position until 1914, when he became Professor of Forestry and head of the Department of Forestry at New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University, a position he held until his retirement in June 1942. Hosmer died July 20, 1962 in Ithaca New York.

At the time of his resignation from service in Hawaiʻi, 37-areas had been designated forest reserve and acreage had grown from zero to 800,000-acres. The territory had set aside 550,000-acres, and private lands had contributed 260,000-acres.

Another legacy is the Hosmer Grove, located just inside the main entrance to Haleakalā National Park on Maui, at about 6,800-feet in elevation. It features many of the non-native species Hosmer experimented with. It also has a campground and picnic area (with picnic tables, barbecue grills, drinking water, and toilets.)

Charles S Judd, who succeeded Hosmer, was Hawaiʻi born and descended from the early missionary, Gerrit P Judd. He took over in 1914 and followed Hosmer’s lead in designating reserve areas. By 1930, more than 1,000,000-acres had been set aside. (Robinson)

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