When local legend Anna Sloggett turns 100 this month, 400 friends from around the world and throughout her life will be there, including students from her third-grade classroom at Kapa‘a Elementary School. Friends from Canada, New Jersey and Florida are
When local legend Anna Sloggett turns 100 this month, 400 friends from around the world and throughout her life will be there, including students from her third-grade classroom at Kapa‘a Elementary School. Friends from Canada, New Jersey and Florida are also expected, she said.
Sloggett, whose father, William Hyde Rice, was the last governor of Kaua‘i under Queen Lili’uokalani, was born in a home on Rice Street in 1906 where her mother, Mary Waterhouse Rice, gave birth.
A dynamic lifetime resident who still enjoys driving her sport utility vehicle, Sloggett said she learned how to drive on a Ford Model T.
Dubbed a “living treasure” by the Kaua‘i Museum in 2002, Sloggett only lived away from Hawai‘i once, in Balitmore, Md., from 1942 to 1945, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, she said.
But Sloggett is probably best known on the island for her role as a 35-year teacher who rarely relied on generic lesson plans to inspire her students.
To learn about baseball, Sloggett’s students were visited by former Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers player Harold Henry “Pee Wee” Reese.
When it came to the arts, her students’ guest was Marie-Louise Habets, the muse for the 1956 novel “The Nun’s Story,” which later was made into a film featuring Audrey Hepburn.
Habets, a Belgian nurse and an ex-nun, taught the 8- and 9-year-olds in Sloggett’s class how to become bilingual thespians.
“Mother got her to come in and they made a play of Little Red Riding Hood — all in French,” said David Penhallow, her son and administrative assistant to former Mayor Tony Kunimura.
To entice her classroom visitors, Sloggett would merely approach them and ask, whether at parties or out and about, Penhallow said.
Penhallow also was a student of hers, something he remembers as “interesting for the both of us,” he said.
Sloggett’s teaching method also relied heavily on out-of-the-ordinary field trips, which included visits to sugar and pineapple factories, inter-island piers, Waipahe‘e Falls and a Japanese warship.
Exposing students to culture and fostering imagination were key, Sloggett said, and throughout the years it was her goal to perpetuate that philosophy.
“I tried to broaden their horizon by taking them all over this island, having them over to my home and having them meet people that were prominent and who could give them something — a chance to be better students and citizens.”
She praised students for their efforts, she said, and those who went above and beyond by reading more than 40 books in a year earned a party at her home, and got to see and hear her “spontaneous” cuckoo clock, she said.
Because of Sloggett’s unique classroom perspective, a scholarship fund has been set up in her name for future elementary school teachers, the onset of which will coincide with her 100th birthday, Penhallow said.
Sloggett hopes it will help would-be teachers foster creative ways to benefit the children of the future.
“I’d hope that girls and boys that are going to be teachers would be fond of children and want to give them an opportunity to have something to look forward to in life,” she said.
Residents interested in celebrating with the Sloggett family can attend a golf tournament Saturday or attend a poi luncheon Sept. 17, Penhallow said.
• Amanda C. Gregg, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or agregg@kauaipubco.com.
