Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Edward LaVaun Clissold

Edward LaVaun Clissold was born in Salt Lake City April 11, 1898.  He grew up in Salt Lake City and attended East High School. After high school he received at least some education from the University of Utah. World War I apparently cut short his education.

Clissold served in the Navy along with his brother Albert aboard the battleship USS Arkansas in the Atlantic. Returning from the Navy at age 22, he married Irene Picknell.

While still barely a newlywed, he made a monumental decision that would affect the rest of his life. At age 23, a war veteran, a husband and soon to be father, he chose to serve a Mormon mission in a time when only a few served missions.

As a brand new missionary, he sailed for Hawaii on the S.S. Manoa alone. When he arrived in Honolulu a week later on July 27, 1921, there was no one to meet him.

He sat alone with his trunk on the dock not knowing what he should do next. A baggage man approached him, asking if he were a Mormon Missionary. He replied yes and asked how he knew.

The man replied “Well, we have a forlorn-looking group come in here every once in awhile. I take their baggage up to the mission home.” And so the baggage man took Elder Clissold to the mission home.

Elder Clissold was assigned to the Oahu Conference (zone) and two months later to Laie where he would serve from August to November of 1921. The Temple in Laie, which was less than two years old.

He left on November 15, 1921 for Kona (Big Island) where he would spend the next 13 months.   It was there that he learned to speak Hawaiian.

Elder Clissold spent the remainder of his mission in the Honolulu area, serving in leadership positions for the Sunday Schools, as was often the practice for missionaries in those days.

Clissold returned to Salt Lake City in 1924 following his mission. When he returned home to his wife, he met a two-and-a-half year old daughter he had never seen before.

Clissold started working for American Savings in Salt Lake City; they wanted to open a branch in Honolulu and Clissold was offered the job of running the Honolulu Branch.

Clissold arrived in Hawaii in January 1925, with Irene following a few months later. In August of 1926 he moved to State Savings and remained there until 1970.

During the 1920s and 30s, he was involved with the Lions Club; in addition to his other responsibilities, becoming the president at age 33 and District President at age 42.

Associated with his business activities at the time was his desire to learn to speak Japanese. He had observed that approximately half of Hawai‘i’s population at the time was first and second generation Japanese.

He thought it made good business sense to learn their language and hired a tutor to teach him the language from 1926-34. His Japanese apparently was not as good as his Hawaiian.

However, the fact that a haole businessman could speak both Hawaiian and Japanese was most unusual, and earned him respect from the speakers of these languages. Additionally, the Clissold children attended the Makiki Japanese School from 1934 to 1936.

Ten years after he moved to Honolulu, the Oahu Stake was created, and Clissold was called as 1st counselor to Stake President and served as such for 9-years.  In 1936, Clissold became the Hawai‘i Temple President; he served as the president until 1938.

Clissold resumed his association with Navy in 1936 by joining the Navy reserve as a Lieutenant. He soon went on a shakedown cruise to the South Pacific on the destroyer USS Maori, DD-401.  Then came war.

1942 found him serving as the Hawai‘i Temple President again due to the departure of the former president and the lack of replacements to serve because of the war.

At the same time, he became the acting president of the Japanese Mission. It was during this time that the mission name was changed to the Central Pacific Mission.

In 1943 the war finally carried him away from Hawai‘i as he was sent to the Mainland, first to Charlottesville, Virginia and then to the University of Chicago, to teach the US occupational forces who were preparing for post-war Japan.

His military service overseas saw him participating in the military government in Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. While in Japan, he surveyed the situation in anticipation for reopening missionary work there. He finally returned home to Hawai‘i in 1946.

He became the Oahu Stake President, from 1951 until 1963; his responsibilities included forming a school, the Church College of Hawai‘i (now known as Brigham Young University – Hawaii), which opened in 1955. 

In addition, Clissold became the manager and then chairman of Zions Securities (now known as of Hawai‘i Reserves) during the years 1953 to 1970.  He also served on the Hawaiian Homes Commission from 1954 to 1958.

Simultaneous with these activities, he was also laying out the foundation of what would become the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC).  (It opened on October 12, 1963.)  He served a third term as Hawai‘i Temple President from 1962 to 1965.

Clissold’s personality has been described by himself and numerous others as quiet, humble, private, self-effacing, with a tendency to detail. He held an unprecedented number of callings and responsibilities, simultaneously.

Because of his multiple responsibilities, he has been referred to as ‘Mr. Everything,’ or in the words of one Hawaiian man,  ‘the second most powerful man in the Church’ (Church President David O. McKay being the single most powerful). (All here is from a summary by Brian O’Brien)

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by Peter T Young 4 Comments

Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility

American and English heritage found those members of society who either cannot care for themselves or who do not fit societal expectations have been the subject of ‘parens patriae’ (parent of the nation,) whereby the state acts as the parent of any child or individual who is in need of protection (i.e., destitute widows, orphans, abused and neglected children and law violators of minority age.)

In 1850, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi passed its first legislation towards the care and training of Hawaiʻi’s delinquent youth.

Then, the legislature, on December 30, 1864, approved “An act authorizing the board of education to establish an industrial and reformatory school for the care and education of helpless and neglected children, as also for the reformation of juvenile offenders”.

“The only object of the said industrial and reformatory schools shall be the detention, management, education, employment, reformation, and maintenance of such children as shall be committed thereto as orphans, vagrants, truants, living an idle or dissolute life, who shall be duly convicted of any crime or misdemeanor”.  (Hawaiian Commission, Annexation Report, 1898)

In 1864, Kamehameha V created, and placed administratively under the Kingdom’s Board of Education, the Keoneʻula Reformatory School, an industrial and reformatory school for boys and girls in Kapālama.  The first juvenile facility of its kind in the Islands. (The site is now home to the Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani Elementary School on King Street.)

The Board had authority to establish other industrial schools across the Islands. (Jurisdiction shifted from the Board of Education to the Board of Industrial Schools in 1915, then to the Territorial Department of Institutions in 1939.)

The Industrial School model was in response to the belief that segregation in an institutional setting was the most effective way to address the needs of neglected and delinquent youth. Major characteristics of this congregate-care facility included strict regimentation, harsh punishment, unequal treatment for boys and girls, a poor education system and an emphasis on work.

Initially, the board leased nine-acres in Kapālama, initially for 15-boys and 2-girls, and had them grow taro, vegetables and bananas.  In 1903, with the growing population, 75-boys were relocated from Keoneʻula to farmland in Waialeʻe on the North Shore, where wards could learn “habits of industry.”

Farming activities were intended as much to make this facility self-supporting as to provide therapy and training for the wards. Reports about the Waialeʻe institution refer to conditions as always overcrowded.

Meanwhile, female wards moved from Kapālama to Mōʻiliʻili, then in the 1920s to the Maunawili Training School on the mauka side of Kalanianaʻole Highway in Kailua, Koʻolaupoko.

The girls’ Maunawili complex included five major buildings sited on approximately 430-acres on the slopes of Olomana.  All the buildings (primarily designed by CW Dickey) were constructed between 1927 and the opening of the school in February 1929, with the exception of the gymnasium which was built in 1938.

According to an early Honolulu Star-Bulletin report, “the buildings are scattered about over the hillside, each different from the other in architectural detail. The effect is pleasing; there is no air of the reform school about the place.”  (NPS)

In 1931, the boys’ facility underwent a name change from Waialeʻe Industrial School to the Waialeʻe Training School for Boys; that year, the girls’ Maunawili complex became known as the Kawailoa Training School.

These were Territorial institutions, in rural Oʻahu, formerly under the Department of Public Instruction but from 1915 were under a Board of Industrial Schools.  (Report of Governor’s Advisory Committee on Crime, 1931)

Delinquent or dependent children under 18 years of age may be committed to these schools by the juvenile courts in proceedings not to be deemed criminal in nature; no child under 14 may be confined in any jail or police station either before, during or after trial, and no child under 18 may be confined with any adult who shall be under arrest, confinement or conviction for any offense.  (Report of Governor’s Advisory Committee on Crime, 1931)

Then, in succeeding decades, various types of facilities and locales were used to house, train and educate the youths.

In 1950, three “cottages” for boys (named, Olomana, Kaʻala and Maunawili) were built on the makai side of Kalanianaʻole Highway from the girls’ Kawailoa Training School in Kailua.  Then, all operations at the Waialeʻe Training School for Boys (111-boys and 45-staff members – the entire population from Waialeʻe) transferred to the new facility and the name changed to the Koʻolau Boys Home.

In 1961, all operations came under a combined administrative unit (including housing both male and female youths) with a new name, the Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility (HYCF,) a branch of the Corrections Division of the reorganized Department of Social Services and Housing.

HYCF is the state’s sole juvenile facility. It’s comprised of two separate facilities with three housing units: two boys’ housing units and a girls’ housing unit (with certain exceptions, HYCF houses boys confined for long terms at the main secure custody facility (“SCF.”)

The SCF is comprised of a central courtyard surrounded by three housing modules, with ten cells and a common area in each module, a school, a gymnasium, kitchen facilities, offices for administrative and medical staff, and two isolation cells.

The Olomana School, Olomana Hale Hoʻomalu and Olomana Youth Center were established since 1985 and provide support services to alienated students throughout the State of Hawaiʻi.

Olomana School (operated by the DOE) offers three main educational programs:  incarcerated youth are served at HYCF; the Olomana Hale Hoʻomalu program is to provide educational and support services to students who are temporarily confined to the juvenile detention facility; and The Olomana Youth Center serves at-risk students from Windward Oahu’s secondary schools and also HYCF students who are in transit.

Due to the pending litigation in 1991 against the State regarding conditions of confinement for women, the temporary Women’s Community Correctional Center (in what was the Koʻolau Boys Home on the makai side of the highway) was remodeled and completed in 1994 as the State’s primary women’s all-custody facility.

Women’s Community Correctional Center (WCCC) is the only women’s prison in Hawaii. It also serves the needs of pre-trial and sentenced female offenders. The facility houses female offenders who are of maximum, medium and minimum custody levels.

The facility is comprised of four (4) structures; Olomana, Kaala, Maunawili and Ahiki Cottages. Every cottage operates in accordance with specific programs and classification levels.  WCCC also offers a 50-bed gender responsive, substance abuse therapeutic community called Ke Alaula.  (Lots of information here from reports from the Auditor, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Office of Youth Services and NPS.)

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by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Daniel Dole

Daniel Dole was born in Bloomfield (now Skowhegan,) Maine, September 9, 1808. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1836 and Bangor Theological Seminary in 1839, and then married Emily Hoyt Ballard (1807-1844,) October 2, 1840 in Gardiner, Maine.

The education of their children was a concern of missionaries. There were two major dilemmas, (1) there were a limited number of missionary children and (2) existing schools (which the missionaries taught) served adult Hawaiians (who were taught from a limited curriculum in the Hawaiian language.)

During the first 21-years of the missionary period (1820-1863,) no fewer than 33 children were either taken back to the continent by their parents. (Seven-year-old Sophia Bingham, the first Caucasian girl born on Oʻahu, daughter of Hiram and Sybil, was sent to the continent in 1828. She is my great-great-grandmother.)

On July 11, 1842, fifteen children met for the first time in Punahou’s original E-shaped building. The first Board of Trustees (1841) included Rev. Daniel Dole, Rev. Richard Armstrong, Levi Chamberlain, Rev. John S Emerson and Gerrit P Judd. (Hawaiian Gazette, June 17, 1916)

By the end of that first year, 34-children from Sandwich Islands and Oregon missions were enrolled, only one over 12-years old. Tuition was $12 per term, and the school year covered three terms. (Punahou)

By 1851, Punahou officially opened its doors to all races and religions. (Students from Oregon, California and Tahiti were welcomed from 1841 – 1849.)

December 15 of that year, Old School Hall, “the new spacious school house,” opened officially to receive its first students. The building is still there and in use by the school.

“The founding of Punahou as a school for missionary children not only provided means of instruction for the children, of the Mission, but also gave a trend to the education and history of the Islands.”

“In 1841, at Punahou the Mission established this school and built for it simple halls of adobe. From this unpretentious beginning, the school has grown to its present prosperous condition.” (Report of the Superintendent of Public Education, 1900)

The curriculum at Punahou under Dole combined the elements of a classical education with a strong emphasis on manual labor in the school’s fields for the boys, and in domestic matters for the girls. The school raised much of its own food. (Burlin)

Some of Punahou’s early buildings include, Old School Hall (1852,) music studios; Bingham Hall (1882,) Bishop Hall of Science (1884,) Pauahi Hall (1894,) Charles R. Bishop Hall (1902,) recitation halls; Dole Hall and Rice Hall (1906,) dormitories; Cooke Library (1908) and Castle Hall (1913,) dormitory.

Dole Street, laid out in 1880 and part of the development of the lower Punahou pasture was named after Daniel Dole (other nearby streets were named after other Punahou presidents.)

Emily died on April 27, 1844 in Honolulu; Daniel Dole married Charlotte Close Knapp (1813-1874) June 22, 1846 in Honolulu, Oʻahu.

Daniel Dole resigned from Punahou in 1855 to become the pastor and teacher at Kōloa, Kauai. There, he started the Dole School that later became Kōloa School, the first public school on Kauai. Like Punahou, it filled the need to educate mission children.

The first Kōloa school house was a single room, a clapboard building with bare timbers inside and a thatched roof. Both missionary children as well as part-Hawaiian children attended the school. (Joesting)

Due to growing demand, the school was enlarged and boarding students were admitted. Reverend Elias Bond in Kohala sent his three oldest children to the Kōloa School, as did others from across the islands. (Joesting)

Charlotte died on Kauai in 1874 and Daniel Dole died August 26, 1878 in Kapaʻa, Kauai. Dole’s sons include Sanford Ballard Dole (President of the Republic of Hawaiʻi and 1st Territorial Governor of Hawaiʻi.) Daniel Dole was great uncle to James Dole, the ‘Pineapple King.’

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by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy

Marines and Sailors trained for what has been referred to as the toughest marine offensive of WWII. 1,300 miles northeast of Guadalcanal, the Japanese had constructed a centralized stronghold force in a 20-island group called Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands.

The Marines would reconstitute at Camp Tarawa at Waimea, on the Island of Hawaiʻi.  Originally an Army camp named Camp Waimea, when the population in town was about 400, it became the largest Marine training facility in the Pacific following the battle of Tarawa.

Huge tent cities were built on Parker Ranch land; the public school and the hotel across the road from it were turned into a 400-bed hospital. At first the school children attended classes in garages and on lanais, but by fall of 1944, Waimea School was housed in new buildings built by Seabees on the property behind St. James’ church.

Over 50,000-servicemen trained there between 1942 and 1945; it closed in November 1945. The new roads, reservoirs and buildings were left to the town. The public school children returned to Waimea School, and the buildings behind St. James’ stood empty … but not for long.

At the end of World War II, the Right Reverend Harry S Kennedy arrived. He was a builder of congregations and of schools, and when he saw the empty buildings at St. James’, he immediately saw possibilities.

March 12, 1949, Bishop Kennedy and a group of local businessmen turned the buildings into a church-sponsored boarding school for boys, Hawaiʻi Episcopal Academy.  The Episcopal priest was both headmaster of the school and vicar of St. James’ Mission.

The early school struggled with facilities and financing. A turning point came in 1954, when James Monroe Taylor left Choate School in Connecticut to become HPA headmaster.

Three years later, substantial financial pledges came in and the church surrendered its direction to a new governing board. The school was then independently incorporated and the name changed to Hawai‘i Preparatory Academy.

In January 1958, the board of governors purchased 55-acres of land in the foothills mauka of the Kawaihae-Kohala junction and announced plans to build a campus there. Within a year, two dorms opened on the new campus and another was cut and moved from the town campus.

Old Air Force buses driven by faculty members made daily runs between the new campus, where boarders ate and slept, and the old campus, where classes were held. The last class to graduate on the town campus was the Class of 1959.

Honolulu architect Vladimir N Ossipoff was retained to design the campus buildings – five classroom buildings, two residence halls, a chapel, a library, an administration building and a dining commons.

In 1976, HPA acquired the buildings of the former Waimea Village Inn in town. Growing out of the “Little School” founded in 1958 by Mrs T to accommodate children of HPA faculty in the lower grades, the Village Campus today houses HPA’s Lower and Middle Schools, encompassing kindergarten through eighth grade.

In the 1980s, 30-acres of Parker Ranch land were added to the Upper Campus. Besides the Village Campus, the school added the Institute for English Studies and a campus in Kailua-Kona for grades K-5. (The Kona campus became the independent Hualālai Academy, but it closed effective May 30, 2014.)

Building projects expanding the HPA facilities included Atherton House, the headmaster’s residence, Gates Performing Arts Center, Dowsett Pool, Gerry Clark Art Center, Davenport Music Center, Kō Kākou Student Union, faculty housing and the Energy Lab.

Starting with five boarding students in a World War II building, today, there are 600 students (approximate annual enrollment) – 200 in Lower and Middle Schools (100% day students) – 400 in Upper School (50% day, 50% boarding) ; Boarding students: 60% U.S., 40% international.

HPA is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and is a member of 12 educational organizations including the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, College Entrance Examination Board, Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education, Cum Laude Society, National Association of College Admission Counselors, Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, and National Association of Independent Schools.  (Information here from HPA and St James.)

I am one of the fortunate boys-turned-to-young-men under the leadership and guidance of headmaster Jim Taylor.

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by Peter T Young 1 Comment

“Build me a house like that”

Princess Ruth wrote to Lot Kamehameha and asked that he “fence the lot at Kaakopua with boards and to put up a gate large enough for carriages to enter”, as well as “furnish lumber for a house”.  (Zambucka)

“The two storied wooden frame residence of Emma St. of Princess Ruth was destroyed by fire during the absence in Hawaiʻi.  A valuable wardrobe, mementos of chief families, jewelry etc. was lost.”  (Honolulu Advertiser, October 18, 1873; Zambucka)

Having lost her house, Princess Ruth Luka Keanolani Kauanahoahoa Keʻelikōlani sought to rebuild.  The area where the home was located was known as Kaʻakopua.

“It is said … that in looking over various plans for the construction of a mansion on Emma Street, she was particularly struck with those of a normal school building in the States.”  (Hawaiian Gazette, October 1, 1895)

“Drawing those plans from among many others she said in her imperious manner to the architect standing nearby, ‘Build me a house like that.’”    (Hawaiian Gazette, October 1, 1895)  Thus began the construction of a home; she named it Keōua Hale.

The main architect behind new structure was Charles J. Hardy, an American from Chicago, employed at the Enterprise Planing Mill in Honolulu. The gaslit interior of the mansion was celebrated for its ornate plaster work and frescoes.  It was the most expansive residence of the time; it was larger than ʻIolani Palace.

The house was completed in 1883; however, Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani never lived in the palace. She became ill immediately after the house warming and birthday luau.

She returned to Huliheʻe, her Kailua-Kona residence, where they believed she would more quickly regain her health.  On May 24, 1883, Keʻelikōlani died at the age of fifty-seven, in her traditional grass home in Kailua-Kona.

At her death, Keʻelikōlani’s will stated that she “give and bequeath forever to my beloved younger sister (cousin), Bernice Pauahi Bishop, all of my property, the real property and personal property from Hawaiʻi to Kauaʻi, all of said property to be hers.” (about 353,000 acres, which established the land-base endowment for Pauahi’s subsequent formation of Kamehameha Schools.)

The palace was inherited by Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop; she and her husband, Charles Reed Bishop lived in house.  Pauahi passed away in the house a year later (October 16, 1884.) “(F)rom the hour of her death until the morning of her funeral, it rained continuously, until, at the appointed time the heavens cleared, and the sun shone brightly”.  (KSBE)

In her will, Pauahi initially intended to devise Kaʻakopua to Queen Emma.  However, in her later codicils (amendments,) Pauahi devised “the Ili of “Kaʻakopua”, extending from Emma to Fort Street and also all kuleanas in the same, and everything appurtenant to said premises” to her husband, “to hold for his life, remainder to my trustees.”  (KSBE)

On April 9 1885, the first meeting of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Trust Board of Trustees was held at Keōua Hale 21 Emma Street with Bishop chosen chairman for the evening.  (KSBE)

But the house was not destined to be the home for Kamehameha Schools.  Rather, it had the honor of serving as the campus of the first public high school in Honolulu.

“The Board of Education used every means in its power to obtain the building” (Hawaiian Gazette, October 1, 1895)  “(D)uring talks to make the house into a school, there soon were people approving and praise this conversion into a high school. The Board of Education immediately sought to obtain the house, and were fortunate to get it at a fair price ($600,000.)”  (Kuokoa, October 12, 1895)

However, the idea of the purchase was not without its detractors.

“The stupidity of the Board of Education has been made clear. The Legislature has not approved the money to purchase Kaʻakopua and Keōua Hale. This is a huge sum of money, and it is better if they purchased some other land and built buildings for the high school, and not that beautiful house which will cost a lot to clean it up, as a place for a few people to live haughtily and snobbily off the money of the Government. It is true!”  (Makaʻāinana, 8/12/1895)

The DOE purchased the property from the Bishop Estate on June 27, 1895.  (DOE, Star Advertiser)  “(E)verything (moved) forward, expeditious preparations (were) made to begin school soon, when regular school starts. The nation is proud to obtain this schoolhouse to enroll and teach children in higher learning than that taught at the other schools which teach general knowledge.”  (Kuokoa, October 12, 1895)

So began Kula Kiekie o Honolulu (Honolulu High School.)

“The instructors of this school are, Prof. M. M. Scott, principal; J. Lightfoot, teacher of Mathematics and Latin; Miss Brewer and Miss Needham, grammar teachers; Miss Beckwith, art teacher; and Miss Tucker, a teacher of singing.”  (Kuokoa, October 12, 1895)

“This institution has been developing satisfactorily during the period under review. It is not accredited at any of the universities of America, and in my opinion it is not desirable that it be so accredited. The plan of leaving each of our graduates to enter college or fail to do so on his own merits, as recent experience indicates, will produce results creditable to all concerned.”

“Besides, the preparation of candidates for college entrance examinations is but a small part of the work of a high school in Honolulu. The course of study should be such as will fit for life, and the matter of fitting for college should be relegated to its own subordinate place.”

“The Honolulu High School is especially adapted to the needs of those who speak the English language as a mother tongue and to no others. It accommodates but passably a few of the exceptionally bright pupils of the much larger class who have the language to learn after entering school. Taking into account the number of English speaking persons in Honolulu, it will be observed that the high school is of very creditable size.”  (Report of the Minister of Public Instruction, 1899)

In 1907, Honolulu High School moved out of Keōua Hale to the corner of Beretania and Victoria Streets. The school’s name was then changed to President William McKinley High School, after President William McKinley, whose influence brought about the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States.

The educational needs of Honolulu exceeded the space of Princess Ruth’s palace for several reasons. In 1920, a report was published on the survey of schools conducted by the Bureau of Education of the Federal Department of the Interior.

The report noted that typical middle class families in America were sending their children to public secondary schools, but in Hawaii, public schools were so few and geographically isolated, that many had to go to private schools or were forced to drop out.

Therefore, the commission recommended the establishment of secondary or junior high schools which should offer more academic and vocational choices to feed various high schools. And Hawaii, at this time, tried very hard to be American. (NPS)

Later, at Kaʻakopua, new school buildings replaced Keōua Hale.  Upon its official opening in 1927, the Advertiser news article described the layout which has remained relatively intact:

“Entering the main portal of the new plant, the visitor finds the principal’s office at the left and teachers’ room at the right. … Four large classrooms flank the main corridor and behind them are the kitchen and the dining pavilions. …”

“There are 11 classrooms in the old wing and in the new wing there are six classrooms on the main floor and seven on the second story. … The 31 classroom building had room for 1,500 pupils.”  (NPS)

Though called Central Middle School, as you drive down South Kukui Street (between Queen Emma Street and Nuʻuanu Pali Highway) the name “Keʻelikōlani School” is noted on the building.

DOE suggests the school there was never called that.  (Unfortunately, DOE records were lost in a fire.)  However, a July 2, 1917 Star Bulletin article notes Pedro Augusta as the Keʻelikōlani School janitor (no other school was named Keʻelikōlani.)

In October of 1994 the buildings of Central Intermediate were placed on the Hawaiʻi Register of Historic Places. The school continues to honor Princess Ruth’s generosity in providing a location for their school by celebrating her birthday February 9 of each year.  (Central Middle School)

In September 2021, the Hawaiʻi State Board of Education (BOE) approved the restoration of Central Middle School to its former name honoring Princess Ruth Keanolani Kanāhoahoa Keʻelikōlani. The change was effective immediately. Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani Middle School currently serves 336 students in grades six through eight.

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