BY Christine Hitt
February 19, 2010
I found this profile in the December 1920, Paradise of the Pacific (now HONOLULU Magazine) pages, so I thought I’d share it:
Here is the real Grand Old Man of the Hawaiian Islands, Kiaaina by name.
He was born on the island of Kauai a long, long time ago–so long ago indeed that he first saw the light two years before the earliest missionaries landed at Kailua, 200 miles away. Kiaaina grew up during the days when old Hawaii was passing from its unsettled state to the adoption of Christianity and rapid progress, and his life is contemporary with that of the successive monarchs who reigned over a united Hawaii, from the great Kamehameha the First down to the last loved occupant of the throne, Liliuokalani.
Look at the rugged deeply lined face of this man as he pulls contentedly at his beloved pipe! Think of the sights he has witnessed and the wondrous changes he has seen during his long lifetime! Do you realize that he is one hundred and two years of age and was a grown man when many of the most venerable figures that grace our islands were fretful babes, restlessly crying in their cradles? In his boyhood days the islands were still primitive, and though rapidly disappearing, the ancient beliefs in the gods and in the tabu system were still rife. Kiaaina is bent and stopped today and perhaps his dim eyes are looking into the future when he shall be once more with those many mighty ones who have passed onward into the shadows.
Sometimes he is in a reminiscent mood, and then from his lips will flow full many a wondrous tale of the days of the early monarchies–history commingled with legend–fiction and fact inextricably mingled together but cunningly word-painted by this old man. It is a rare privilege to talk with him for he is one of the few remaining links with the past and in him there is true greatness.
Kiaaina–the Paradise greets you with Aloha.
