Mauna Kea Oral History Appendix - Office of Mauna Kea Management

HH: I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in March 23 rd , 1918 [chuckling].
KM: It’s so amazing! When we just saw you after the election and at 86.
HH: Eighty-six.
KM: Gosh! You’re so dynamic, there’s just so much going on. It’s a challenge for me.
HH: I think that’s what keeps me going.
KM: Good! You were born far away from here
HH: That’s right.
KM: When did you come, what brought you to Hawai‘i
HH: I had a little girl 3 years old, and my husband and I, we’re both part African American. In
those days they called them colored or black or whatever, we’ve gone through all these
stages. My husband was from the South. His father was a President of Tennessee A & I
State College. I was born in Minneapolis but when I graduated from the University I
couldn’t get a job because of having a little bit of Non-Caucasian blood. The job I finally
got after college was down in Tennessee, A & I State College. That’s where I met my
husband.
KM: Wow!
HH: Our daughter was born about five years later in New York City, but we moved from there
to California seeking a warmer climate, although I’m from Minnesota [chuckles]. And also
kind of “go west, young people.” So we went west and ended up in San Diego. After my
daughter was born we looked around, and this was in 1945, and we decided we didn’t
want to bring her up in the United States, in that area. We looked around the Pacific area,
first we thought we’d like to go to Samoa, but we’d finally… Well, I was teaching at San
Diego State College when Don Blanding came through. He was known as a poet
laureate of Hawai‘i in those days. He was kind of like Edgar Guest, who was a popular
poet, and I’m an English major, and I was teaching English and he came to San Diego
State College. And the professional staff, the professors, they turned their nose up at this
kind of populace poet. So they gave him to me to take around [chuckles]. I was just a
young lecturer then, with an English major, but teaching all kinds of other things too. So
he gave a lecture in the college to all the students, and he read some of his poetry and
he talked about this place called Kona. I went home and I told my husband, I said, “That’s
where we want to go, is Kona.” And we had no idea where Kona was. We tried looking
on the map, and we couldn’t find any place called, Kona because that’s the district.
KM: Yes.
HH: The maps all talked about Kailua. But we finally figured out that’s what he was talking
about. My husband came over to Hawai‘i. He and his sister had both gone to Columbia
and stayed at International House, and his sister was in Honolulu at that time visiting a
friend of hers. He came over to Hawai‘i, and he told the Department of Education that we
wanted to go to Kona. “People from the mainland want to go to Kona Nobody wants to
go to Kona in those days.” [chuckling] It was back woods, and teachers in Kona usually
were trying to get out of Kona and go to Honolulu. The thing that attracted us about
Hawai‘i was that no matter where you taught, you had the same salary based on your
experience and your education. Kona was fine with us, we’d always sort of wanted to go
to the country, although both of us were urban people.
So we couldn’t come that year, my daughter contracted TB so we had to wait a year,
then we finally came the following year and got a job at Kona Waena.
KM: That was in ‘40
Mauna Kea– “Ka Piko Kaulana o ka ‘Äina”
Kumu Pono Associates LLC
A Collection of Oral History Interviews (HiMK67-050606) A:600