Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of the three-part history of Grace Guslander, former manager of the Coco Palms Hotel. Part 1 discussed how Grace incorporated the royal history of the Wailua area into Coco Palms lore. Part 3 will
Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of the three-part history of Grace Guslander, former manager of the Coco Palms Hotel. Part 1 discussed how Grace incorporated the royal history of the Wailua area into Coco Palms lore. Part 3 will run a week from today.
The lagoon area of Coco Palms — which Grace Guslander promoted as the site of the Royal Fishponds of former Kaua‘i royalty — had actually at one time been divided into an extensive series of walled up fishponds of varying degrees of saltiness. During the 1830s and 1840s, Queen Deborah Kapule, Kaua‘i’s last queen, had in fact used them to fatten her fish.
The Queen’s large thatched houses were situated nearby and served as a most hospitable inn for travelers of the time.
Grace carried on Deborah Kapule’s tradition of hospitality, but with a style uniquely her own.
To entertain her guests, she adapted a legend to create the Coco Palms famous torch-lighting ceremony, which was later adopted by many Hawaiian hotels.
This ceremony, called the “Call to Feast,” which Grace Guslander narrated, took place at 7:30 p.m. every evening at dinner time for many years, until Sept. 11, 1992, when Hurricane ‘Iniki struck Kaua‘i, effectively closing the resort.
At the torch-lighting ceremony, young men carrying lighted torches would jog along the hotel’s paths in the evening darkness, stopping to light standing torches along their way that illuminated the night.
Grace’s Hawaiian style was reflected in other ways, also.
In the hotel lobby, a conch shell-blowing doorman would greet guests when they checked in.
When Grace’s guests complained about the croaking of frogs in the lagoon, which kept them awake at night, she looked for a Hawaiian legend to justify the commotion and even glorify the frogs. Finding none, she commissioned a legend and had it posted in her guests’ rooms to their satisfaction.
As an added attraction, images of frogs were incorporated into the wallpaper, on the doors, and shaped into ashtrays as well.
There was even a planting ceremony performed to replenish the property’s grove of coconut trees, which had originally been planted by copra grower William Lindeman in 1896. The hotel also took its name from this grove.
