In early August 1962, gutsy Eugene Ressencourt (1911-74), Bill Joy and Henry Kam made a treacherous descent from Kokee into Kalalau Valley.
Ressencourt said, “It was excruciatingly body-wracking and not a little terrifying with what seemed like narrow escapes. It took us 10 hours of terribly hard going.”
After reaching the valley’s floor, the hikers met Dr. Bernard Wheatley, “The Hermit of Kalalau,” at Wheatley’s cave by the sea, and Ressencourt greeted Wheatley with the words, “Dr.Wheatley, I presume?”
Ressencourt arrived in Hawaii in 1931 at the age of 20 as a stowaway aboard ship and went on to earn his livelihood as a “vagabond journalist.”
He was also a wannabe politician known as the “Honorary Governor of Waikiki,” since he made five futile attempts at public office, and for many years resided in a little cottage and was a familiar, albeit eccentric, figure in Waikiki.
Ressencourt claimed that his real name was Eugene Gustave de Ressencourt. “French nobility, you know. I’m a descendant of the minister of war of Louis XV.”
And, according to Ressencourt, he visited 100 countries, ridden elephants in Thailand and camels in Timbuktu, spied for the federal government in Brazil, was jailed in Angola, was charged with spying and given a free trip across Siberia by the Russian government, dined with a Polish princess and studied Buddhism in Japan.
Of himself, he said, “Basically, I’m a journalist-linguist. I’ve written articles for 300 publications all over the globe. I’m conversant in 11 languages and fluent in six.”
His first attempt at political office occurred in 1959, when he ran for the U.S. Senate as the Commonwealth Party nominee and got 1,052 votes, and lastly, in 1973, when he announced he would run for lieutenant governor as a Democrat.
Tom Buchanan of the Honolulu Advertiser wrote, “On any given day in his gloomy rooms on Koa Avenue, he would ‘counsel’ Waikiki’s rejects. The alcoholic, the aging prostitute, the drug addict, the young petty criminal on the lam could find a night’s flop and a meal at Eugene’s place.”
He was survived by his daughter, Mrs. Antonia Cruz, of New York.
