Waimea Williams: Remembering Kaua‘i in the 1950s

LIHU‘E – Waimea Williams, the Senior Book/Production Editor with the Kamehameha Schools Press, was Borders Books & Music in Lihu‘e Sunday to promote her new book, “Aloha, Kaua‘i – A Childhood.”

The book started out as a Hawai‘i version of the standard reference work “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” with key quotations from Hawai‘i’s history making up the quotes, but turned into a memoir, Williams said, after publishers and editors found the personal stories she used to introduce the book’s chapters engrossing.

Williams, who edited dozens of books as a freelance editor on the Mainland, saw the new possibilities for the book and expanded on her own vision of Kaua‘i’s past, as well as cataloging key statements from the recent years of the Renaissance of Hawaiian culture.

Her father, David Williams, was a manager with the Bank of Hawaii’s branch is Lihu‘e – that’s how her family, which included three siblings, ended up on Kaua‘i. Her mother, Margaret Williams’ mother was teacher during the time of the Hawaiian Monarchy and remembered seeing Lili‘uokalani when she was Hawai‘i’s queen.

The Williams family lived across the street from the old Kauai Inn, in the area behind where the Ace Hardware store is today on Rice Street. The author was known as Sally then, and their neighbor was a stately elderly Native Hawaiian, a Mrs. Fountain. Besides working as an educator, her mother was also a contributor to The Garden Island, and worked on the first comprehensive guidebook to Kaua‘i, a book written and illustrated by local artists and writers, and published by the newspaper.

Her mother was also called upon by Grace Buscher, later Grace Guslander, when the Coco Palms Inn began focusing on the legacy of Debora Kapule, Kaua‘i’s last queen, who had her own inn near the present day location of the legendary resort.

Williams recalls driving up to Koke‘e in the middle of the night to get an edge on the opening of the plum picking season along with dozens of other Kauaians, sleeping in her father’s Jeep station wagon.

She also was invited at age 12 for a week-long archaeology adventure on Na Pali, crossing a reef in an row boat covered with canvas to help do research on the Mother of Pearl fishhooks.

Cane trains were an intriguing part of daily life, Williams said during her book signing, though children then had strict orders to stay well clear of the train tracks due to safety concerns. When the trains were being phased out in the late 1950s, the community was invited to go along for a ride. Williams said most interesting was riding the train through the Wailua Golf Course.

The coming of Hollywood moving making added a bit of sparkle to life on Kaua‘i, she said. Her mother served as a “set teacher” for students working on films like “Pagan Love Song,” and in her book she tells of the reaction by local people to Rita Hayworth grandly dressed for dinner in a floor-length red dress, causing some to make comments about possible connections between the actress and Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess.

Children in the 1950s would turn pidgin on and off, Williams said, using it outside the classroom and home, but speaking proper English in front of adults. The era of the 1950s is also seen as a time, by Williams, when the ways of ancient Hawai‘i were still apparent on the Island, in part due to its isolation from O‘ahu and the other main Hawaiian Islands. This connection is nowmostly gone, she said.

The Williams family moved to Honolulu in 1958 to broaden the children’s’ educational opportunities, and ending a unique childhood experience for the author. She returned to Hawai‘i in the years following Hurricane ‘Iniki, in part to aid in improving the documenting of emergency services information vital to the rapid response of Civil Defense agencies in Hawai‘i.

“Aloha Kaua‘i – A Childhood” is published by Island Heritage.