LIHU‘E — The amount of aloha flowing following the death of Ethan Bradford Shell, 21, has left his father, David Shell, nearly speechless, he said.
“It’s been an amazing outpouring of love,” said David Shell, back at the family’s Kalaheo home after the Feb. 6 memorial service in Ethan Shell’s birthplace of Silverton, Ore.
Ethan Shell died in New York City on Jan. 30.
A Kaua‘i memorial service is planned from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. March 4 at the Kaua‘i Community College Performing Arts Center, the place on this island the young thespian last performed.
The Ethan Shell Memorial Scholarship has been established by Debra Blachowiak and others through the Hawai‘i Children’s Theatre, and a fundraising whale-watch tour with a portion of the proceeds to the scholarship is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday from Port Allen Small Boat Harbor.
Captain Andy’s Sailing Adventures’ new boat is the venue for the whale-watch and snorkel sail, and the cost is $75 per person. Contact Blachowiak, 639-2437 or debra@sleepinggiant.com for tickets and more information.
The new scholarship is for first- and second-year college students involved in any of the performing arts, including off-stage pursuits, Blachowiak said.
David Shell said his family started up another fund to help young friends of Ethan Shell get to his Silverton, Ore. memorial service Feb. 6, and 13 young people, including many from Kaua‘i, were assisted through donations to the fund, David Shell said.
Around 30 people from Kaua‘i attended the Oregon service. The Shell family assisted with an airline ticket for another youngster who had been preparing to board a bus in Virginia for the multi-day trip to Oregon, he said.
In Silverton, a for-sale house was rented for the visiting youngsters, and vehicles were rented or borrowed, David Shell said.
A live stream of the Oregon memorial service was sent via the Web to Ethan Shell’s New York City friends, who held their own memorial for the off-Broadway actor, David Shell said.
“Everywhere he went he made friends,” and fellow alumni from his performing-arts school in New York City were part of an off-Broadway show featuring Ethan Shell that they produced and choreographed, David Shell said.
“Ironically, he played the dead guy,” and in one dream-sequence scene Ethan Shell, in tuxedo, wheelchair and sunglasses, gets up and does a tap dance in the play with a plot similar to “Weekend at Bernie’s” where people need to make a deceased person seem alive in order to continue collecting monetary benefits and use his property, David Shell said.
“Ethan affected his class and those younger than him who went to Kaua‘i High School,” David Shell said. Many Kaua‘i Performing Arts Center students past and present donated funds to the cause, and made it to the Oregon service, he said.
“There’s a big hole. Everybody liked him.”
In “Once on this Island,” Ethan Shell played the shy demon of death, a sort of grim reaper role whose job was death, said David Shell, who built sets and otherwise worked behind the scenes on many of his son’s endeavors.
A line from that play keeps haunting the father, he said: “I am the road leading to no return, the secret of life nobody wants to learn. It brings strength. It’s the secret of life.”
Blachowiak, one of the HCT founders, said Ethan Shell was an HCT student for 12 years and an intern after that. “He’s basically been with us since the beginning, and an integral part of it.”
Poppy Shell, Ethan Shell’s mother, is on the scholarship selection committee, said Blachowiak.
In addition to the whale watch, the KCC PAC gathering will be a venue for participants to donate to the scholarship fund.
Both the service and Saturday’s whale-watch event are open to all interested, and the KCC PAC gathering will include live performances by many of Ethan Shell’s best friends on Kaua‘i, as well as video of some of Ethan Shell’s works, said Blachowiak.
“It’ll be fun.”
For more information on HCT, visit www.hawaiichildrenstheatre.com.
• Paul C. Curtis, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@kauaipubco.com.
