Hawaii | Page 2 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

November 4, 2026 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Broken Bones

The Chiefs’ Children’s School (The Royal School) was founded in 1839. The cornerstone of the original school was laid on June 28, 1839 in the area of the old barracks of ʻIolani Palace (at about the site of the present State Capitol of Hawaiʻi.)

The school was created by King Kamehameha III; the main goal of this school was to groom the next generation of the highest ranking chief’s children of the realm and secure their positions for Hawaii’s Kingdom.

Seven families were eligible under succession laws stated in the 1840 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i; Kamehameha III called on seven boys and seven girls of his family to board in the Chief’s Children’s School.

The Chiefs’ Children’s School was unique because for the first time Aliʻi children would be brought together in a group to be taught, ostensibly, about the ways of governance.

Amos Starr Cooke (1810–1871) and Juliette Montague Cooke (1812-1896), missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, were selected to teach the 16 royal children and run the school.

In this school were educated the Hawai‘i sovereigns who reigned over the Hawaiian people from 1855, namely, Alexander Liholiho (King Kamehameha IV,) Queen Emma, Lot Kamehameha (King Kamehameha V,) King William Lunalilo, King David Kalākaua and Queen Lydia Lili‘uokalani.

In addition, the following royal family members were taught there: Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, Princess Elizabeth Kekaaniau Pratt, Prince Moses Kekuaiwa, Princess Jane Loeau Jasper, Princess Victoria Kamāmalu, Prince Peter Young Kaeo, Prince William Pitt Kīnaʻu, Princess Abigail Maheha, Prince James Kaliokalani and Princess Mary Polly Paʻaʻāina.

In a letter requesting the Cookes to teach and Judd to care for the children, King Kamehameha III wrote, “Greetings to you all, Teachers – Where are you, all you teachers? We ask Mr. Cooke to be teacher for our royal children. He is the teacher of our royal children and Dr. Judd is the one to take care of the royal children because we two hold Dr Judd as necessary for the children and also in certain difficulties between us and you all.”

But all were not always well. “On Saturday afternoon, when we returned from bathing David fell off his horse and broke his arm so I ran after his father and the Gov and Abigail’s mother came to see him and Dr Judd set it.” (Monday, July 29, 1844 entry in Prince Lot Kapuāiwa’s diary while at the Chiefs’ Children’s School)

Amos Cooke’s journal entry on the day of the accident explains what happened, “About 3 o’clock we went to bathe & all the boys went & I took special pains to wash them very clean.”

“We returned in very good spirits & most of us had reached home, but (David, written in different ink) came on behind & just as he was turning the last corner his horse jumped one side & threw him off, & broke his right shoulder bone near the elbow.”

“Dr Judd came in immediately & set it. His head was bruised some & so was one of his ankles. He now lies in the room occupied by Mr Sturges when he was here. The king & suite have not come to day as was expected.” (Amos Cooke Journal, July 27, 1844)

Cooke later noted, “… though the youngest boy, David, fell from his horse in July last and broke his right shoulder bone. During the setting of it, and also a resetting, he neither flinched nor shed a tear. (Letter Amos Cooke to Rev D Gree, March 22, 1845)

By the entries in Prince Lot’s journal, it appears the students of the Chief’s Childrens’ School (Royal School) regularly rode horses – typically before breakfast. And, Kalākaua was not the only one to fall and break a bone.

A month before Kalākaua’s fall, Prince Lot noted the third anniversary that Moses Kekūāiwa also “fell off from his horse and broke his arm”. (Prince lot, June 20, 1844 Journal entry)

The Cooke’s also experienced bone breaks; their daughter “Juliette has been so unfortunate as to break her arm 10 days since. She is still under some restraint – gets hurt frequently. Bears it very well.”

“It is no small affair to have a broken bone in the family, but I am so thankful that it is only her arm, her head and back being all safe that I have not felt like complaining. I feel more than common cheerfulness and gratitude.” (Amos Cooke Letter to his mother, August 27, 1847)

Another unidentified bone break happened later, “Juliette and our children are enjoying usual health. Our little scholar with a broken leg has nearly recovered. He hobbles about.” (Amos Cooke Letter to his mother, July 20, 1848)

There were some other close calls, “This afternoon, at recess, Jane & Abigail were swinging Emma & swung her so forcibly that she hit against the post & injured her hip & knee.”

“This evening sent for Dr Judd who says no bones are broken. This afternoon Dr Rooke sailed for Maui in the Kahaelaia & we hesitated about letting Emma go home until her mother came, & took her home.” (Cooke Journal, October 13, 1842)

While Cooke noted the student injuries, he was not immune to injury himself. “After dinner at 2 o’clock I started alone for Waialua. … I went several miles inland …. In going down a pale (pali) & getting back to the road I lost Wm’s poncho, & left word with an old woman if she found it to send it to Mr Bishop’s.”

“I rode on pleasantly until within 2 ½ or 3 miles of Waialua, & while descending a little, my horse galloping & my reins down & holding a parasol with both hands, the horse stumbled & rolled over throwing me off on the near side. It was all done in an instant & when I started up & found my left arm lame & fearing some accident I began to feel to see if any bones were broken.”

“None were broken but my left shoulder was dislocated. At first, I felt faint, but I soon slung my arm in a handkerchief got up on my horse & started for Mr Wilcox’s with a hope that he might be able to set it.” (Cooke Journal, August 12, 1845)

Photograph_of_the_Royal_School,_probably_after_1848

November 3, 2026 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Piece of Pahoehoe

Richard and Clarissa Armstrong were with the Fifth Company of American Protestant missionaries to the Islands (which included the Alexanders, Emersons, Forbes, Hitchcocks, Lymans, Lyons, Stockton and others). They arrived on May 17, 1832.

The Armstrongs had ten children. Son William N Armstrong (King Kalākaua’s Attorney General) accompanied Kalākaua on his tour of the world, one of three white men who accompanied the King as advisers and counsellors (Armstrong, Charles H Judd and a personal attendant/valet.)

Armstrong and Judd were Kalākaua’s schoolmates at the Chiefs’ Children’s School in 1849. (Marumoto) “Thirty years afterward, and after three of our schoolmates had become kings and had died (Kamehameha IV & V and Lunalio) and two of them had become queens (Emma and Liliʻuokalani,) it so happened that Kalākaua ascended the throne, and with his two old schoolmates began his royal tour.” (Armstrong)

Another Armstrong son was Samuel Chapman Armstrong. “More than 100 people from Hawai‘i fought on both sides of the Civil War. Arguably the most famous was the Union general Samuel C Armstrong.” (NY Times)

Armstrong, the son of missionaries, was born January 30, 1839 in Maui, the sixth of ten children. In 1860 his father suddenly died, and Armstrong, at age 21, left Hawai‘i for the United States and attended Williams College in Massachusetts, graduating in 1862.

After graduation, Armstrong volunteered to serve in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and recruited a company near Troy, New York.

Armstrong was among the 12,000-men captured in September 1862 with the surrender of the garrison at Harpers Ferry. After being paroled, he returned to the front lines in Virginia in December; he fought at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, defending Cemetery Ridge against Pickett’s Charge.

Armstrong subsequently rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, being assigned to the 9th Regiment, United States Colored Troops (USCT) in late 1863, then the 8th US Colored Troops when its previous commander was disabled from wounds. Armstrong’s experiences with these regiments aroused his interest in the welfare of black Americans.

When Armstrong was assigned to command the USCT, training was conducted at Camp Stanton near Benedict, Maryland. While stationed at Stanton, he established a school to educate the black soldiers, most of whom had no education as slaves.

At the end of the war, Armstrong joined the Freedmen’s Bureau. With the help of the American Missionary Association, he established the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute – now known as Hampton University – in Hampton, Virginia in 1868.

The Institute was meant to be a place where black students could receive post-secondary education to become teachers, as well as training in useful job skills while paying for their education through manual labor.

Among the school’s famous alumni is Dr Booker T Washington, who became an educator and later founded Tuskegee Institute. President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was read to local freedmen under the historic “Emancipation Tree,” which is still located on the campus today.

“As an acknowledgment of the origin of Hampton from work done in Hawaii at the entrance of the great assembly hall there is built into the wall a piece of lava rock. This is a token that the foundation of Hampton lay in Hawaii.” (Ford, Pan Pacific Union)

“To anyone going to Hampton that piece of pahoehoe at the entrance to the great hall tells silently to those who can read the inestimable value of the Hawaiian Mission in its world-wide influence.” (Centennial Book)

“‘Education for Life,’ which was the constant theme of Armstrong’s teaching, essential though it be to secure to thousands of young men and women their self-support, is not an end in itself, but a means.” (Peabody) He incorporated the Head, Heart and Hand approach used by the missionaries.

“(Armstrong’s) parting message has become, not alone a precious legacy to Hampton, but a source of strength to great numbers of lives which are trying to go the same way of happy sacrifice.” Portions of his ‘Memoranda’, found after his death, follows …

“A work that requires no sacrifice does not count for much in fulfilling God’s plans. But what is commonly called sacrifice is the best, happiest use of one’s self and one’s resources …”

“…the best investment of time, strength, and means. He who makes no such sacrifice is most to be pitied. He is a heathen because he knows nothing of God.”

“In the school the great thing is not to quarrel; to pull all together; to refrain from hasty, unwise words and actions; to unselfishly and wisely seek the best good of all …”

“… and to get rid of workers whose temperaments are unfortunate – whose heads are not level; no matter how much knowledge or culture they may have. Cantankerousness is worse than heterodoxy.”

“I am most thankful for my parents, my Hawaiian home, for war experiences, and college days at Williams, and for life and work at Hampton.”

“Hampton has blessed me in so many ways; along with it have come the choicest people of the country for my friends and helpers, and then such a grand chance to do something directly for those set free by the war, and indirectly for those who were conquered; and Indian work has been another great privilege.”

“Few men have had the chance that I have had. I never gave up or sacrificed anything in my life – have been, seemingly, guided in everything.”

“Prayer is the greatest power in the world. It keeps us near to God—my own prayer has been most weak, wavering, inconstant; yet has been the best thing I have ever done. I think this is a universal truth—what comfort is there in any but the broadest truths?”

“”Hampton must not go down. See to it, you who are true to the black and red children of the land, and to just ideas of education. The loyalty of my old soldiers and of my students has been an unspeakable comfort.”

“It pays to follow one’s best light—to put God and country first; ourselves afterwards.” (Armstrong; Peabody)

The Islands were at the grave of Armstrong … “At its head was set a huge fragment of volcanic rock, laboriously brought from his island-home in the Pacific, and at its foot a quartz boulder hewn from the Berkshire Hills, where he had been trained.”

“The monument is a witness of the character it commemorates, volcanic in temperament, granitic in persistency; a life of self-destructive energy, like a mountain on fire, but with the steadiness and strength of one who had lifted up his eyes to the hills and found help.”

Samuel Chapman Armstrong died May 11, 1893. “Such was the end of an era in the history of Education for Life.” (Peabody)

November 2, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Haleakalā Trail and Highway

On the morning of November 26, 1778, Captain James Cook awoke to the sight of the northern coast of Maui. “Next morning there lay the land, the island of Maui, with its ‘elevated saddle hill’ – the extinct 10,000 foot volcano Haleakala …”

“… rising to its summit above the clouds, and descending gently towards the deep ravines and falling waters of that steep rocky coast, where the trade wind hurled other waters into perpetual surf.” This was the first documented sighting of the island. (Fredericksen)

“[T]he chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala”. (Mark Twain, Roughing It, 1866) “The object which usually attracts strangers to Maui is the great dead volcano of Haleakala, ‘The house of the sun’. (Isabella Bird, 1873)

“This mountain … is the largest extinct volcano in the world, its terminal crater being nineteen miles in circumference at a height of more than ten thousand feet. It, and its spurs, slopes, and clusters of small craters form East Maui.” (Isabella Bird, 1873)

Haleakalā was thought to have been known to the ancient Hawaiians by any one of five names: “Haleakalā,” “Haleokalā,” “Heleakalā,” “Aheleakalā” and “Halekalā.” (Hawaiʻi National Park Superintendent Monthly Report, December 1939)

“According of Abraham Fornander, the name Haleakala is a “misnomer”. He explains the ancient name of is Ahelekala. “The ancient name of Maui’s famous crater which means ‘rays of the sun’ …”

“… and it was these which the demigod Maui snared and broke off to retard the sun in its daily course so that his mother might be able to dry her kapas.” … He goes on to say that the word `alehe is a variant form of `ahele—both of which literally mean “to snare”. (Fredericksen)

The first visit to Haleakalā by non-Hawaiians occurred in August 1828 when missionaries Lorrin Andrews and Jonathan Green, along with Dr. Gerrit P. Judd, physician, visited the crater.

They were followed by a US Navy expedition led by Commander Charles Wilkes in 1841, and later, others. Significant public interest was generated by written accounts of these visits that determined that Haleakalā would eventually become a destination for tourism. (NPS, CCC Oral Histories)

Until 1935, the primary means of getting to Haleakalā was walking or on horseback, and this continued to be the case for the first three decades of the twentieth century. As late as 1932, the Inter-Island Steamship Company and the Maui Chamber arranged trips on horseback to Haleakalā Crater. (NPS, CCC Oral Histories)

Thomas Vint (NPS Chief Landscape Architect) described the trip by horseback that he made in 1930: “The trip is now made from the town of Wailuk[u] which contains the principle [sic] hotel on the island of Maui that caters to tourist travel …The combined auto and horse back trip to the 10,000-foot summit may be made from noon to noon from Wailuku, spending the night at the top.”

“Trips into the crater are made from the rim rest house as a base.” Vint concluded that “another rest house at the far end of the crater is needed. To see the crater properly, one should camp overnight, making a two-day trip from the present rest house.” (NPS, CCC Oral Histories)

“Without a paved road to the summit, however, Haleakalā remained distant and inaccessible for the vast majority of the Maui public, except for adjacent property owners, tourists of means, and hunters who lived in the upcountry or Kula region of the island.”

“The need for a road to Haleakalā had been the subject of interest by the local press as well as Maui politicians since 1912, when the Hawaiian Promotion Committee had to use ‘fourteen pack and saddle animals’ to reach the summit from Olinda.” (NPS, CCC Oral Histories)

AH Ford of Mid-Pacific Magazine was quoted in the local press as stating: “In a little while [the] Haleakalā trips are going to adjust themselves to the purses of the tourist and there will be sufficient traffic to encourage regular excursions to Haleakalā [and] through the crater…a wonder trip, unsurpassed by any three or four [hour] outing to be had in any other portion of the globe.” (Maui News, August 9, 1913)

“After a failed attempt by motorcar in 1917, the first vehicle, a tractor driven by Joaquin Souza, finally reached the summit of Haleakalā on July 4, 1931. The stunt, which took two hours and thirty minutes to complete, was part of the local U.S. Independence Day festivities”.

It “was reported by the newspaper beneath the headline, “First Vehicle [to] Ever Reach Top” (Maui News, July 8, 1931). (NPS, CCC Oral Histories)

Haleakalā Road (now known as Haleakalā Highway) was finally completed in 1935; it opened with great fanfare. “All Maui was up in the air today, 10,032 feet up! … Whole Mainland Hears Road Opening by Radio … The story came over radio station KGU … The ceremony was caught up in Honolulu and taken to San Francisco, then distributed over the vast NBC hook-up.” (Maui News Feb 24, 1935)”

“On November 30, 1929, work began. On February 21, 1935, the last surfacing was laid.” “An official checker clocked 304 automobiles into the world’s highest parking spaces and those autos are estimated to have carried 1500 excursionists and local residents to the two-hour program.” (Maui News Feb 24, 1935)

The number of visitors to Haleakalā increased substantially, reaching 16,300 within a year. In 1938, the numbers decreased slightly to 14,156 because of a maritime and shipping strike, but continued to rise in the following years until reaching 29,935 in 1940. (NPS) (National Park Records show approximately 853,700 recreation visits in 2025,)

The increase in visitors was “greatly in excess of expectations…compared with the few hundreds who visited the crater before construction of the Haleakalā [R]oad. (Hawaii National Park Superintendent Annual Report 1935, NPS)

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) began in 1937, succeeding the Emergency Conservation Work agency (which started in 1933). In 1939, the CCC became part of the Federal Security Agency. It was eliminated in 1943. (UH Mānoa)

From April 1934 until May 13, 1941, the CCC operated a “side camp” in the Haleakalā Section of the Hawaiʻi National Park; CCC participants were housed in tents and moved to where the work areas were. (NPS)

Major park improvements through the CCC program on Haleakalā included the construction of the approximately 11-mile Haleakalā Road, Haleakalā Observation Station, two Comfort Stations (public toilets) and the Checking Station and Office at the park entrance. Several trail projects were completed within the Park. (NPS)

November 1, 2026 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Koa House

In 1840, John Joseph Halstead sailed to Hawai‘i on a whaling ship bringing with him from New York carpentry and cabinet-makings skills. He set up a shop in Lāhainā. (Martin) He was said to be the first man to put up a frame house in Lāhainā.

With the news of the discovery of gold in California in 1848, came orders from San Francisco merchants for Irish potatoes and other food supplies for those heading to the gold fields.

Halstead did not join the pioneers of 1849; He moved over to Kalepolepo, along the Kihei shoreline, with his family and shortly thereafter built a new house for himself. (Wilcox)

It was a large Pennsylvania Dutch style house made entirely of koa, built next to the south wall of Koʻieʻie Loko I‘a (fishpond) (also called Kalepolepo Fishpond.)

Halstead’s three story house/store was nicknamed the ‘Koa House.’ With the mullet-filled fishpond, the Koa House became a popular retreat for Hawaiian royalty such as Kamehameha III, IV, V and Lunalilo. (Starr)

No one remembers the actual date of construction of Koa House, but the fact that King Liholiho (Kamehameha IV), visited Kalepolepo on a royal tour immediately after accession to the throne in the fall of 1854, and stayed overnight as the guest of Halstead, its owner, is proof it was built before that time. (Wilcox)

Its timbers were from saw mills in East Makawao and from Kula, partly hewn and whip-sawed by hand Into shape, for labor was cheap In the good old days. Also pine and other material brought around Cape Horn by early traders.

When finished the first floor was fitted up with koa wood counters and shelves, and used for a store. The upper floors were used for living quarters. Many of the larger pieces of furniture were made of koa wood by Halstead himself. (Wilcox)

He opened a trading station on the lower floor. Whalers came ashore to buy fresh produce that was brought in by the farmers via the Kalepolepo Road.

He promoted the Irish potato industry in Kula, which even then was a thriving industry for provisioning whale ships in their seasonal voyages after whales.

At Halstead’s Kalepolepo Store a cartload of potatoes – thirty to forty bags – could readily be exchanged for a bolt of silk or other provisions.

During the Irish potato boom of those days any native farmer with an acre or two of potatoes would sell his crop, and as soon as he received payment in fifty-dollar gold pieces he would hurry off to the nearest store to buy a silk dress for his wife or a broadcloth suit for himself.

Halstead held his share of the Irish potato trade against more promising cash offers made by his business rivals. So lively was the competition that LL Torbert of ʻUlupalakua conceived the idea of an Irish potato corner.

He sent out his men and bought up all the Irish potatoes in sight, paying as high as five dollars for a bag of potatoes, a fabulous price for those days when native labor was plentiful at twenty-five cents a day.

Having cornered all the potatoes to be had, he shipped about $20,000 worth by the bark Josephine for San Francisco. The bark proved leaky, water got into the potato-filled holds and rotted them so that on arrival at San Francisco not enough good potatoes were left in the cargo to pay the freight bill.

At that time Kalepolepo was a thriving village, with two churches, a Mormon church where George Cannon or Walter Murray Gibson expounded the Christian doctrines of Joseph Smith against Christian Calvinism as preached by the Reverend Green and David Malo.

Reportedly, Halstead’s old house at Kalepolepo was Rev Green’s granary during the wheat boom of the 1850s and early-1860s, when the upper Makawao country from Maliko to Waiohuli was cropped to wheat.

Possibly some wheat may have been shipped from Kalepolepo in those days, for from early times to the late-1860s it was a shipping port for Wailuku and Kula. Halstead had one or two big warehouses standing makai of his residence.

In the late sixties the Irish potato trade had become unimportant and later ceased altogether. In 1876, Halstead closed his store and moved to ʻUlupalakua, where he died eleven years later, May 3, 1887. (Wilcox)

The koa house remained standing until it was burned down in 1946 by the Kihei Yacht Club. (NPS) (Lots of information here is from NPS and Wilcox.)

John Joseph Halstead-Koa House-Paradise of the Pacific-1921

October 31, 2026 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

The Clinic

He was born Georg Franz Straub on March 14, 1879 to Georg and Margaretha Straub in Edenkoben, Germany. He was a pre-med graduate from University of Wurzburg and in 1903, earned a Medical Degree, summa cum laude, from University of Heidelberg.

In 1903, he immigrated from Germany to London to America. (Apparently, at a family party that year, he struck a drunk relative (an officer in the German army;) the penalty was either to face a court-martial or leave the country.) He left. (Magaoay)

He met and later married Adele Germains on November 20, 1907 in Manhattan, New York. That year, they moved to Honolulu and he started his medical practice. (He ‘Americanized’ the spelling of his name to George Francis Straub.)

He was a consulting physician of the Honolulu Institute for Physiotherapy, that offered “All kinds of Electric Light Baths (blue, red, white and violet), Steam Baths; Turkish, Russian, Pine Needle, Nauheim. Carbonic Acid and Oxygen, or Medical Baths; Massage, X-Rays and High Frequency, etc.”

He was also a surgeon; “Yesterday afternoon there was a Caesarian operation performed in Queen’s Hospital on Mrs. Hopii Kolo by Dr George F Straub with the assistance of Doctor Hobdy.”

“The operation was in every respect a great success, mother and baby doing well. This is the second time that Doctor Straub has performed this operation successfully in these Islands and these are the only.” (Pacific Commercial Advertiser, September 14, 1910)

Then a fire destroyed “the old McGrew residence on the corner of Beretania and Richards … Dr Straub, who was consulting physician of the Honolulu Institute of Physiotherapy, which was located in the building, sustained a loss of about $4,000, and all his Instruments were destroyed.”

“… it was a very old house and burnt like a box of matches once it had caught alight. … Dr Straub resides in another cottage at the rear of the burnt building,… Dr. Straub has not decided upon what to do as regards his Institute, but he will make up his mind within a day or two, when he finds out exactly where he stands.” (Evening Bulletin, October 20, 1910)

He built a 15-room, 2-story wood-frame building at 410 South Beretania Street (at Miller Street across from Washington Place – he had his office on the first floor and his home on the second.) By 1916 his practice had grown to the point that he recruited an assistant, Dr. Guy C Milnor.

Straub began to envision a clinic providing specialized care in five major fields of medicine: Obstetrics and Gynecology; Surgery; Internal Medicine; Ear Nose & Throat; and Clinical Pathology. He and Milnor joined with Dr Arthur Jackson, a specialist in internal medicine in 1920 and the group operated for a short time as Straub, Milnor, and Jackson. (AfterCollege)

After the turn of the century, residents of Honolulu found it fashionable to have a ‘country place’ and beach houses began to spring up on Mōkapu. Straub preferred the coastal breezes and bird-shooting spots of Ft Hase and Nu‘upia Pond. (Steele)

It was first a one-room cottage; “If you could call a shipping crate a room.… Whenever I could get hold of another crate, it meant another room. It was simple construction. Just nail them together, cut a door, and there it was, an additional room bigger.” (Straub)

It could well be called the first “ranch-style” home on the island. Straub later gave the building to the military and moved to Waikiki. (His Mōkapu retreat served as an officer’s club for the growing military presence on the peninsula.) (Steele)

Straub divorced Adele in 1917 (“alleging extreme cruelty and desertion.”) (Star Bulletin, December 3, 1917) He went back to the mainland for a while.

Many of his Hawai‘i patients signed a petition asking him to return to the island, offering him passage via the Panama Canal. The cold weather of New England helped him decide on a Honolulu practice. (Windward Marine, October 25, 1962) He married Gertrude Scott and returned to the Islands.

In 1920, Straub’s medical partnership with Milnor and Jackson expanded; after leaving the Army, Dr Howard Clarke joined as a specialist in Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat, and Dr Eric A Fennel joined the group as pathologist.

On January 1, 1921, the five founding doctors formally organized themselves as a legal partnership. At Dr. Straub’s insistence the group he founded did not bear his name, and it was to be known simply as “The Clinic”. (AfterCollege)

The Clinic expanded and moved to the Strode Building on Young Street. In 1952, after years of success and growth, The Clinic was renamed ‘Straub Clinic’ in honor of Dr Straub, its principal founder. (HonoluluTown)

January 6, 1970, ground was broken for a 159-bed hospital and adjacent parking structure. Later that year, the Straub Clinic Partnership became a corporation and renamed Straub Clinic, Inc. February 4, 1973, it became Straub Clinic & Hospital, and Straub Hospital opened its doors. Straub opened its first satellite clinic on the Leeward side of O‘ahu in 1977.

Later, anchored by its four hospitals with the merger of Straub, Wilcox, Pali Momi and Kapiʻolani Hospitals (as well as its numerous satellite facilities,) Hawai‘i Pacific Health became one of the largest health care delivery systems in Hawai‘i.

Straub played cello with the Honolulu Symphony; after he retired from his medical practice (1933,) he turned his passion to hand-crafting violins. (Nakaso) Straub died May 21, 1966 in Honolulu.