In his daily ritual of setting up a little corner of the beach for his family across the street from the Lawa‘i Beach Resort, Robert Rupp of Ohio would spend his mornings looking for heavy rocks to hold down the
In his daily ritual of setting up a little corner of the beach for his family across the street from the Lawa‘i Beach Resort, Robert Rupp of Ohio would spend his mornings looking for heavy rocks to hold down the beach mats.
On Easter Sunday, Rupp found a coconut that had washed ashore tucked under some rocks.
“I picked it up and put it on my daughter’s mat to hold it down,” Rupp said. “I didn’t see any writing on it until later.”
It wasn’t until Rupp’s daughter, Mindy, sat down on her mat that she noticed some words on the coconut.
Mindy turned the coconut over to reveal, in still legible writing, Jan and Peter Economy; 31 May 1988; Coco Palms.
Excited about their discovery, the Rupp family started to speculate about who the Economys are and where they are from.
In the obvious choice, Mindy speculated they might have been married at the Coco Palms in 1988 and threw a coconut into the ocean to celebrate their marriage.
Robert guessed they might have been in the military stationed in O‘ahu, took a day trip to Kaua‘i “on leave” and commemorated their visit by tossing the coconut into the ocean.
“We were married at the Coco Palms in 1988,” Peter Economy of La Jolla, Calif., said sheepishly over the phone yesterday. “But we actually threw it in the water two weeks ago.”
After reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about Larry Rivera, a former lounge singer at the Coco Palms and now the unofficial caretaker of the closed hotel, Economy and his wife, Jan, were inspired to visit Kaua‘i and Rivera.
The Coco Palms, once considered a flagship hotel of Kaua‘i in the 1950s and 1960s, was devastated in 1992 by Hurricane ‘Iniki. Though the hotel was severely damaged by the hurricane, Rivera still arranges wedding ceremonies there.
“Larry Rivera sang at our wedding in 1988,” Economy said. “This time, we got a tour with Larry and he sang our wedding song for us. That was a cool thing for us after 20 years.”
Economy said they chose to get married at the Coco Palms because they wanted “that old 1940s Hawai‘i resort feel.”
While here nearly 20 years after their ceremony, Economy said he picked up a coconut while on their tour with Rivera and wrote the message. He took it back to their hotel in Koloa and later threw it into the ocean.
“I thought it would end up in San Francisco in a few years,” Economy said.
Little did he know it would end up less than 10 miles away in front of the Lawa‘i Beach Resort.
For now, the coconut is sitting in Robert Rupp’s room at the resort.
“We haven’t decided what to do with it yet,” he said.
• Rachel Gehrlein, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) or rgehrlein@kauaipubco.com.
