 Welcome everybody. Thank you for attending the Remembering Marsha program here May 21st at 10am in the morning here on a ThinkTech webinar. And this is for our dear Marsha Joyner who passed on April 10th, 2021. And I guess to start I'd like to play for you guys a slideshow that we created out of the photographs you sent us. I want to make some remarks to set the tone here if you don't mind. Marsha was very close to ThinkTech. She was not only dedicated to ThinkTech but it was important in her life. She kept on trucking until after only a few weeks before she died. So take it from me, go on YouTube, type her name in and you will see an enormous number of videos that she did hundreds of shows for us. And look at her playlists on youtube.com slash ThinkTech Hawaii and you will see all of them hundreds. It was very important to her and she's there and she will be there on ThinkTech and on YouTube for a very long time and you can remember her for years to come. What kind of a person, dedicated, determined, friendly with everyone. But I want to offer this thought, you know, at least as far as I could see. She's one of those remarkable people who had different relationships with different friends. You should have a profile than anybody. You should have a categorized you. Her relationship was with you personally and that's what made it so nice. I really enjoyed that. There are not many people who do that who are capable of doing that. She treated every single person as special. She had high energy, super creative, indefatigable and very nostalgic. She could tell stories from years ago to regal you with fantastic experiences in her life and a life of her families and friends. She got me involved in a number of things, you know, with her marijuana show that was special. She took me on a tour of the facility there and I now know much more about marijuana than I did before. She took me on trips around the palace and I learned about Native Hawaiian royalty. She took me on trips around the capital and she knew them all and they all knew her. It was really something to watch. She was a special person at the capital and at City Hall. Everyone knew her there too. She took me on a trip and we interviewed Ikaika Anderson and others and it was clear that Marsha had a place at the City Hall. She took me around with John Radcliffe to talk about death with dignity. I was there with her and finally after 20 years and Scott knows about this, finally after 20 years they passed the thing. That was a really interesting historical moment and I was there with her. She took me and we made a movie of it. So looking back, all the things that Marsha gave to Sync Tech and shared with Sync Tech, they were gifts and I come to the conclusion she was a kind of person, not only friendly and personal with you. She was giving gifts her whole life I think and everyone here is a recipient of those gifts. So in a way we need to think of her, remember her to give back on those gifts. So by remembering today that's part of it and you know how much she would like that. I don't have to tell you. So I would like to extend the possibility of comments from people and some of them are here, some of them may show up later. But let's start with the ones that I can see and let's start with Lorna Strand. Lorna do you have any comments that you'd like to make about Marsha Joyner? I'd love to thank you very much. Unlike many of you I just met Marsha personally two years ago when I became chair of the Oahu County Democrats and she was a force to behold I could tell from the very beginning and it didn't take long when she joined me in understanding that what you do is you act. You have to get up and do something if you're going to be a member of the party and she taught me so much. She was the vice chair for House District 18 for the Democratic Party and also very active in our Oahu County Council. She held East Honolulu community forums when we were on Zoom and was just amazing in terms of helping us raise funds and do all kinds of things. There are a lot of stories which will tell you about her past including her lifetime struggle for equality and her background in Baltimore Maryland with her family owned and operated Afro-American newspaper and she recognized this is coming from by the way a resolution that we passed at the Oahu County recently on May 1st at the Oahu County Convention. She recognized the struggle for equality and was not an individual endeavor saying quote it civil rights was always something that was part of my life because the newspaper fought against discrimination for more than a hundred years. I think for most African Americans and other minorities that was always a way of life the struggle against the whole way of life in America. It wasn't just the South it was in all of the United States. We declared that whereas Marsha served as the president of the Dr. Martin Luther King Coalition of Hawaii she was also one of the most original people who fought to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a holiday in Hawaii and whereas Marsha Rose Joyner was a pioneer in the civil rights movement and a bold civil rights advocate her entire life and Marsha dedicated much of her life promoting and supporting the Democratic Party both here in Hawaii and nationally and she contributed numerous hours as we all know to as a volunteer for countless Democratic candidates and campaigns therefore be it resolved that the Oahu County Democrats of the Democratic Party of Hawaii recognize the legacy of Marsha Rose Joyner as a pioneer in the civil rights movement and be it further resolved that the Oahu County Democrats of the Democratic Party of Hawaii honor the life of Marsha Rose Joyner and acknowledge the impact she has left on the Democratic Party the state of Hawaii the United States of America and I must say all of our lives. Yeah thank you Lorna you know it's just a one thought I you know I used to ask her all the time what kind of vitamin pills she took. Okay Daphne Barbie are you here can you give us some thoughts. Aloha everybody I would like to start with a quote from Martin Luther King because as you know Marsha Joyner was the first Martin Luther King coalition and the commission. Life's most persistent and urgent question is what are you doing for others so I'll answer that by talking about Marsha Joyner. She did for others and she worked I think all I've known her since the 1980s when she had a beauty salon with her husband Ken who had a barber salon in Waikiki and when I first met her and I walked into the shop trying to make myself beautiful there she was sitting in the queen's chair greeting everybody greeting me and asking me who I was I told her I was a lawyer in town new to town and then she proceeded to tell me all the black lawyers she knew proceeded to tell me about the politics in Hawaii telling me who to watch out for what to watch out for and telling me a lot about their business and I thought whoa what you know you really do get a lot of information from Barbie or barber and beauty shops I mean you really whoa I mean if you really want to know what's going on talk to Marsha in her beauty salon I did submit several photographs for the slideshow and one of the photographs I'd like to talk about is Senator Charles Campbell who is an African-American senator he's since deceased but Marsha knew him that was not only Campbell's husband yeah no only judge no only Campbell's husband absolutely so one of the things that Marsha did is we had written articles about him but he really didn't get a lot of good press I mean anyways Marsha went to and Kobayashi was sitting on the city council at the time and she said we need to honor him and because he started the open sunshine law and he not only that he was the first politician in Hawaii to do sign waving on the corners because one way to get votes was to let people know who you were and a lot of people who had money were able to do that by buying newspaper ads or magazines ad so Charles Campbell was the very first person politician in Hawaii standing on the street quarters with his lay prominent lay and asking for people to vote for him so Marsha went to the city council and got a resolution honoring him a couple years ago so some of the photos are of Marsha holding up the resolution that she had in gotten from the city council and she was a fighter of all kinds of isms sexism racism homophobia ism all sorts of isms but she was a fighter and she was a doer the last photo I took of her was two years no actually I'm sorry it's about four years ago and the women's march around the capital and there she was holding her sign and she had to be in her late 70s holding up the sign and marching and you know supporting the women's movement you know it was just lovely to be around her she was such a doer and I will miss her dearly and may she rest in power thank you wonderful thank you Daphne Stanley Chang Stanley are you here morning Jay and it's great to see everyone on this call today um yeah I it's it's so inspirational hearing all of these fantastic words about a pillar of the east Honolulu community who I actually first met when I was at the city council about 10 years ago and she has she was working for council member Ikaika Anderson at the time and you know I was actually surprised to learn about her involvement with so many different causes over the years starting when she first you know integrated her high school in Baltimore Maryland in 1954 all the way up to legislative fights like the death with dignity bill because it was not possible to shoehorn her she wasn't just a crusader for one cause she was so committed to improving our community across the entire spectrum of issues whether it was you know an issue like medical aid in dying or whether it was community issues she had me on her think tech show to talk about a new world languages classroom building at new valley middle school which was just as interesting to her she was just as passionate about as all of the other issues that she was fighting for on a global stage and I'll really miss that about her her passion for not just one issue but all issues for so many candidates over the years you know people still have this idea that east Honolulu is a bastion of conservatism but she worked hard for many years she worked with myself she worked with people like representative mark hasham and one by one east Honolulu started to elect candidates that really saw that really saw eye to eye with her and really fought for her ideals and her principles and that took a lot of hard work from her it took organizing rallies it took reaching out via email it took all kinds of organized organizational work that didn't get the glory but that's the kind of hard work that produced the results that today are a huge part of her legacy in the legislature in the city council and so on I was really proud to have been to lucky to know her I admire her I respect her and I know that her work lives on through all of us and so thank you so much for this opportunity to be with you all today and rest in power marsha joiner yeah thank you stanley that's all of touching in and wonderful and thank you for being here so we're going to take a short break for an oly I know that's not conventional um but but I see that marilane is here and marilane can do this and marilane can you can give us an oly just to you know just to bless these proceedings this is an oly that I actually did for marsha that expresses our collective cherished friendship and that acknowledges her ancestors whose path marsha walked in delving into truth and uplifting humanity so it goes like this oh and so what it says is listen dear friend the flower of friendship one that we cherish it is you who delve and seek like your ancestors till the solid cliffs yield their secrets mahalo for your friendship and good work you see only the beauty of people we love you our flower our cherished friend so I just want to say first to marsha I want to be just like you I love the picture that um think tanks send out because I love your white muu your beautiful leh papali and the leh pikaki that you wore tutu vahini and hoa loha so I have the privilege of knowing marsha as a member of the affirmative action committee of the democratic party of Hawaii for the Oahu county committee though we had never personally met before I knew of this woman because of her incredible reputation as a civil rights activist who was passionate and committed to making the world a better place where all people were treated equally preceded her motivated and enthusiastic with a smile marsha lit up a room when she entered and most especially on her think tank program she loved the native Hawaiian people and their culture recognizing that many in the Hawaiian community or Hawaii community would vote in the election of the office of Hawaiian affairs this past election she wanted to assure that voters were informed and thus held the first educational forum on oha on think tank it was also her way to uplift and support native Hawaiians we will really miss marsha and her very warm smile so mahalo for this opportunity to honor her today thank you thank you merrily lame one we can wonderful to have you here scott foster you you knew you knew marsha for 20 years plus maybe maybe 25 can you talk about your life experience with her where to begin uh i'm from oklahoma and i've been in hawaii for 35 years and marsha was the second person i met when i moved to honolulu and uh i uh i'm a lifelong democrat my family helped found the democratic party of oklahoma so i grew up in in a democratic party so when i moved to hawaii it was very natural that the first appointment i had was to join the democratic party of hawaii and of course i wasn't there five minutes and i met marsha joiner and from there it's been a roller coaster ride of a lifetime and uh uh marsha was truly the most amazing unique individual i ever knew uh her uh work in civil rights of course is renowned that's where marsha and i crossed a lot i'm i'm gay and have been openly gay for 50 years and uh there was a time one couldn't be gay and uh i found in hawaii that one could be openly gay and didn't have to talk about it they could just be what they were and uh so from that point is is where all of my friends came from were marsha joiner and uh uh oh the stories the stories that we could tell uh the issues we were able to work on deaths with dignity as you mentioned earlier uh i worked for 35 years on that marsha kind of joined me a little late into that issue but when she was ready to get involved she surely did and helped us push it over the top it took another few years but we did it and uh other issues gay rights of course is one the AIDS pandemic was a uh horror story for all of us and marsha was very involved in the early years of of the age battling battle in hawaii and again it just goes on and on and on i will will uh miss her the rest of my life i miss her every day now and uh i just don't know how many of us will exist without her but i'm sure with with her consciousness that she exuded uh we'll continue on thank you scott well she's here with us today and we're here with her but let me let me offer a thought you know from the comments so far it appears that marsha spelled her last name wrong it was j-o-i-n-e-r think about that okay let's let's talk to katherine takara katherine can you give us your remarks and uh about your life experience with marsha hi hi i'm honored to be here today and i'm thrilled to hear the comments and memories that everyone has been sharing i must have met marsha and the 70s and although i was an educator mainly at the university of hawaii um and i was involved with the public but i was basically always a word person so we had parallel um paths i wrote the issues that she spoke and that she acted and so i did write a small thing here and i wanted just to share it heroes i was thinking about heroes who are our heroes our heroes living and not near and far marsha was a hero a shero committed to others to principles to truth to seeds of harmony she was a pioneer in the vanguard in the islands a leader on her path to peace a communicator to the public a descendant of strong ancestors who knowingly and invisibly opened doors and windows for her the strength and beauty to colorful fashion that caught the eye she was a leader a pillar to vision and perseverance to crossing barriers to overcoming obstacles her presence her presence was calming even though she was feisty with her boundless energy she led in her actions with a smile all engaging extending a hand to those who could help her causes to those whom she helped her courage walked with her like a watering her goodness her goodness shadow far flung her healing vision and message all embracing regardless of race culture gender and other separating labels her dedication to humanity to social justice and peace wafted in the island breezes and endured through winter storms her energy rose like the sunrise inspiring leadership partnerships and promoted her path to peace a hero my shero her legacy lives on after her leaving that's beautiful thank you so much Catherine you so welcome a hero now let's let's uh let's hear what john why hey that he's with us today and we so appreciate that john you knew marcia pretty well and you ran in the same circles in many ways can you talk about your life experience with her i actually i should begin by saying that i thought i knew marcia pretty well in the sense that and i think for many of us we don't really appreciate how full another person is and yet they're our friend you know we we think we're close we think we we know what they're up to and and yet we sort of unconsciously put people in pigeonholes and so marcia was my activist democratic friend but one of the most interesting experiences for me have been this past week and listening to other people talk about her and appreciating what they were saying and and what it what it meant fully you know and and thinking to myself i wish i knew that at the time that you know we could talk about it i mean uh it was at her uh celebration of life recently that i learned for example that her great grandfather was a slave but his father was a label i mean how do you deal with that in terms of your family history and and become much you know and and then i found out that she actually dealt with it she actually went back and researched it and discovered it and and there was no think tech show about it i wish there was a video i could point to not i learned that when she was 15 years old she was an accomplished cellist and and who would have known that you know she's the lady running around organizing making people sing hawaii aloha and things like that and i never saw her do you know give a skill that she had and yet uh there was a picture there is a photograph of her and jones crawford with her holding the telus and apparently she got to play for jones crawford and as the person who was describing this story indicated if you know anything about miss crawford she was but before she'd recognize anybody she was an absolute perfectionist i mean she was a very difficult woman and there she was with marsha smiling and and compliment you see i all of those things make everything so much richer so much richer when you then put into context what we what she got me to work on and that is she wasn't in hawaii for very long after uh or before i became governor and she was already at the capital lobbying and coming to talk to me uh for on on martin luther king day you know we need and we need a holiday what was happening was that the united states congress kept punting the issue so there was no national holiday so it was up to the various state to uh recognize martin luther king and his accomplishment and you know being in a sense out in the boonies here in hawaii within uh the politics of it all was it didn't seem as compelling uh in a sense so what the state had done was uh you know do something halfway we recognized the holiday but didn't give anybody off time off from work and uh and then marsha came to see me and she started to personalize why that holiday was important and you know and the typical kind of objections that were being heard were there are many but basically it was wow public workers have too many holidays anyway you know why do we need and so forth but in the course of educating ourselves and with marsha's help we ended up trading um columbus day for uh martin luther king day which you know in hindsight i showed that we were as usual marsha was ahead of her time we probably would have canceled columbus day now you know i i don't i shouldn't be saying things i get but you you know she was there and and now to learn how how rich she was you know i in closing i was well we worked on so many issues and believe me there's been a lot of participation today by by democrat and how important she was to our party but interestingly enough before her day of remembrance i get a call from the one republican from the republican members of the house who wanted to make sure that she got a resolution from them and representative gene ward made real clear that you know she's my constituent we may not agree on politics but we sure worked on a lot of stuff together and so marsha was everywhere doing what she felt you know i i was blessed she blessed me i should i don't know if this is a good thing talk about but she blessed me with a nickname so she had a nickname for me and what she used to go and call me was king john you'd always say king john you know king john and and ordinarily you would think that that's a you know a plattery nickname but every time i would be in a room of people and there would be a voice somewhere in the back of me saying king john my back would actually tingle because i knew that that would be followed up with him as a sign you see to marsha king john was the guy who uh ran an errand for her did things for her you know and it was uh it it was a a way of letting me know that uh they ain't no kings left in hawaii and that was just marsha's way so like all of you you know we treasure moments uh when we look back at it and so i have many moments that i would treasure with marsha but i have to say that uh you know thank you thank marsha for being who she was but thank all of you for making the marsha i know so much richer aloha aloha john thank you so much it's clear that marsha was engaging has engaged had friends all through our society and had effect and left a mark on all through our society let me go to uh joanna at tachibana joanna can you offer us some remarks about your life experiences with marsha thank you oh my goodness where do we start yeah thank you for the opportunity and as governor john said the memorial service and brought in our perspective on marsha and her life and i was privileged to work with marsha for two and a half decades my work with the united nations in my background i have the flag here and also this calligraphy is love which represents the heart of things that marsha and i went through and um so many so many treasured memories and i'd like to walk one path is that um if she was dedicated as the the dr martin luther king went founding members and in that vein we would ring the the peace bell the nagasaki peace bell at behind city hall and because of the dedication the nagasaki peace committee in nagasaki japan honored marsha and her comrades to for the dedicated work with nagasaki and together with united nations association we co-sponsored decades of commemorations for on august 9th nagasaki day as in hawaii we commemorate august 6 which is the hiroshima because that's the first bomb and we we kind of neglect and then um nagasaki but we wanted it to be distinctive and um historically you know marsha was a historian and she um said okay hiroshima august 6 sister city then on august 8th you know president truman signed the declaration to join the united nations so 1945 a day of peace we thought hooray hooray i wasn't there but then he also authorized august 9th nagasaki and that stirred many many hearts and we said okay no more nuclear weapons you know this has been a travesty it was the first one it devastated hundreds of thousands of people so we have annual commitment to do a nagasaki ceremony and um there was an article in the paper about marsha and one of the results of the nagasaki anti-nuclear is that we we developed what we call the sunflower project and people love the sunflowers because they're bright and yellow but we discovered that sunflowers also detoxify nuclear waste in the land and it was used at chernobyl when they ended that crisis and now is currently used in fukushima by the people they're planting it so that perhaps they can rededicate the soil to degrade it good in greater use and um so that that is our legacy and we work on that and you know um our united nations association hawai chapter honored honored marsha with the peace award and the 70th anniversary of the united nations a few years ago and our macho is uniting the world with aloha which she she came up with that phrase for us and that goes on all of our stationary and that is part of our flags and um on a very personal note my husband passed away eight years ago and she helped organize the remembrances even getting the rahawain trio to have a prelude program and then so the rahawain band is part of our nagasaki ceremony every year you know so marsha and i have shared many warm moments many life experiences and as you heard that you know all these aspects that john everybody's sharing something and then the rich tapestry that she wove integrated all of us as part of her life and her legacy and um you know i i said that she is my peaceful sister and i shall miss her dearly but we carry on the work because she lives in our hearts and i said that and then i had the privilege of visiting marsha a few weeks before she passed away in her daughter's house which is her daughter marilyn was a hospice nurse so she was there and when we got the call anyway we went there very very carefully my friend ed and i because we thought hospice you know it's close to the end maybe we'll have we'll say hello drop our flowers off you know but no she is vigorous there's storytelling we spent an hour and a half talking story sharing loving and reminiscing on the path we had walked together and before i left i'm going to do this again we prayed together and i'd like to close my portion with the prayer i sang for marsha it's a love song hello kahi a hui hou marsha until we meet again and continue our work in heaven thank you thank you thank you thank you joanna that's that's beautiful and elegant and i actually did not know about all her global activities the causes that we all knew she embraced every cause you could think of here in hawaii but she was on on a global scale also and that's very interesting to know with each speaker we learn more about marsha i want to take a moment and just say there's some interesting comments on the chat if you haven't seen it one of them this is for you uh dafty i quote i really like barbie ken ken farm said that oh i can ken is great he was at her uh celebration of life and he's a very good person i know he was a close friend of uh marsha's oh yeah and um marianne ambrose said to the panelists uh marsha took me around the capital she did that for me too i think and uh then there's one from i can't oh i guess it's also from marianne thank you marsha and think tech for the the book interview underwater acts of kindness um that's very nice and and then is a note from andrea jozaya kenith joiner is watching um and i guess i guess the last one um that is very interesting is from our host uh a long time host sythias and claire who will marsha well and she says j wonderful service i am in tears throughout isn't that nice andrea jozaya to the panelists and attendees beautiful tribute double exclamation and ken farm haha how are you rest in power perfect to describe marsha rest in power okay let's move on down our pipeline here um so we have uh next is gary guvoda you know i met marsha through the international peace phone project in the dr martin new sir king um statewide awards these these focus on students and poetry teaching poetry poetry about non-violence and peace and um but one of the things that i also we also mutually had was history in terms of uh civil rights and organizing again well organizing people specifically in hawaii my work at fighting evictions successfully in the 1970s so we started talking and and one one day marsha mentioned how for more than a year and have probably more than two years the the african-american position of ethnic studies had not been filled and this was at the time when the university of hawaii was trying to woo uh president obama's to bring his library to hawaii and i just felt it was you know like her really outrageous and so we worked together and she put together a panel uh on public tech the public cable television um and i invited liwa i do um and former councilman and representative of the sanny at san association larry kama kaveva oly who was the former kukua hawaii member uh and uh a lawyer and um buddy akul was from the winward side and we had we had a panel and a panel discussion it was very effective um and we let let the administration know about this and uh three months later uh within three months later there was an announcement that they were going to fill the position so you know it's hard to say just what makes people decide but if they had it we would have already organized the core of a protest and i think marsha understood that and so did they probably because we occupied the university of hawaii administration building um about 50 years ago in order to preserve ethnic studies to continue it i just wanted to thank marsha for for being there when when people really needed it i wanted to introduce my my wife who's actually the coordinated work with marsha for more than 20 years on the statewide uh dr martin mr king peace poetry contest melinda gone maybe she can say a few words hello ha i'm melinda gone and i am the coordinator of the international peace poem project and we're creating the world's longest poem on peace and 22 years ago we decided to begin a outreach to all the schools public and private inviting every teacher to have their children submit poetry on peace and non-violence in honor of dr king and i want to draw your attention to our banner behind us so 22 years ago when we were holding our very first dr king awards um and they were going to be statewide we'd tiny new project all volunteer and one of our directors are my my co-po at frank rich who's a wonderful wonderful writer knew marsha and ran into her in oahu and shared with her our project and she said oh and she said have melinda contact me we have to get this to the mayor's office the mayor has to be involved and so frank contacted me and i contacted marsha and she assisted us that very first year in bringing our winners to jeremy harris's office to be honored by the mayor and he had issued certificate of honor for our little winners and he had blocked out 15 minutes of his schedule and marsha used to love to tell this story because she said that there she was and he looked out the window and there were our 50 little winners and their families all dressed up with leis and aloha where and he canceled the afternoon and he spent the entire afternoon with marsha and with frank rich uh welcoming and congratulating each little family and each little winner and every year thereafter we celebrated at the honolulu holly and then at the misty memorial auditorium and marsha was always there with us to celebrate each child she believed that it might be the only time a person was ever honored and she really helped me to learn to really recognize the importance of each little poet and i have kept that lesson in my heart all these years she thought that our work in educating the students and having the teachers in the schools teach about peace and non-violence and honor of dr king was of the first importance she said and she continued to work with us every year and was present at all the award and i was able to raise funds we're all volunteer to bring her to molokai she was so excited when molokai was big enough and we had the first awards there oh my goodness it was just marvelous and the officials were there linda coyton colleen mashado and a number of people were there to celebrate our kids with marsha and she was overjoyed um she really believed that there was something important in every child's heart and that we had an opportunity to awaken them to the importance of peace she stayed with us in our home here in maui and was a guest of honor at our maui awards we also went to the big island together and she was able to see belly kanoi and she was so happy to see him particularly before his death and she was instrumental with me in sending him special pictures and and our commemorative prize to be sure that he knew how much his his presence meant to her so we're just so honored and so delighted to be included in this forum of thanks for for marsha i shall miss her dearly i i don't know how we'll do the awards without her but we will and she'll be smiling at us and i thank you all she would be there and she would send her heart to each and every one of you and we thank you very much aloha thank you gary thank you melinda um it's it's wonderful to hear these stories and and i have a chat message if you haven't seen it from sequoia car brown to all the panelists she says uh i love all of these wonderful stories about marsha i only knew of marsha through mentors and her fabulously fashionable appearance at a black futures event rest in power lovely lady that was while you were speaking okay let's go on to sharon yabbro we hear a thick tech we all know sharon yabbro she is uh integrated into the fabric of think tech and she has been doing shows for a long time sharon can you talk about your life experience and i know it's a deep life experience uh with marsha rose shoyne yes marsha marsha marsha i i just i love marsha love love love marsha uh she was she and ken who is ken is on the line it's his daughter and jarea joceia they are on the line now they were at our wedding um almost you know 25 almost 30 years ago what i'm going to do is um i'm we were at the governor and i and daft me uh we were at marsha celebrating the life of marsha so i'm going to read what i what i read at her memorial and it's entitled love never dies one of god's most precious creations marsha rose joiner who was blessed with the gift of sharing her love with whoever she met and that love never dies the physical part the shell that everyone sees is the present and past and it is shown through memories recordings books videos and all of our photographs when one contemplates the way life used to be we see queen marsha and think of good times we shared all of us can think of good times that we have shared and the joys she had for us none of us thought we had to say goodbye because times before you were always there now time has passed on and now you are gone though it is hard we will carry on love never dies because we knew your laughter your smile your listening ear will remain here in all of our hearts to ease away the pain we think of your advice we have gained we will miss you and so we have all learned to smile again because dear queen marsha love never dies sometimes we kept ourselves talking to you as if we were you were standing there many times we have shed tears because queen marsha you are so very special to us living in our memories giving our souls wings to fly while it is true we all have to we know in our hearts we will meet again because love never dies your laughter in everything we do we can't help but think of you the energy that pulls us through love never dies and though you're gone your laughter your love leads us on our feeling way and your smile remains in our minds day by day queen marsha we all miss you so feeling sad and blue and we all have to do is think of you and the shining light you have given us will pull us through love never dies with open arms and open door there was never a stranger in your phone so marsha rose joiner right now and forever more you would not be alone but love never dies and this is from my husband Herman in yarrow the third it's Sharon Thomas Yarbrough marsha we love you thank you thank you Sharon that's beautiful I think I will always remember that phrase love never dies thank you okay it's time to open it up to the attendees beyond the panelists so if they are interested in talking about marsha let them raise their hands hi everyone thanks for letting me in I was a long long time friend of marsha's among the many but I wanted to focus one particular thing about her I loved the phrase love never dies what her passion and obsession was partly with history but it was with living history it wasn't with any like you know compartmentalized past literally she dealt with you know living history walking history street theater and so on I had been friends with marsha had a nice relationship with her it's like you know she had interesting stories about being in snick and civil rights and but the day came she called me up and said our dear mutual friend glenn grant most of you remember glenn has died and now kaufman tom she would never said kaufman sit tom you are the my go-to person for history and you have to realize that we have to accept that and whenever I want to talk to somebody about history and I'm going to call you up and we're going to talk and we're going to get together and she did so and she we had many conversations about history which were very much in the vein of living history one of them was about queen she was she often thought about the queen and drew parallels between the queen's nonviolent response to the overthrow and the the central importance of nonviolence to the civil rights movement she seized on the masthead keloha aina which was the leading among several newspapers resisted the overthrow resisted the annexation and was the the voice of the navahi family uh joseph navahi and his wife emma navahi way up through the war into like 1947 she took a hold of the masthead of keloha aina and did a whole historical addition of keloha aina delineating the transition from the annexation as it was called and the anti annexation movement and the evolution into the home rule party and then the links to the democratic party and it was absolutely pathfinding in its historical development but it was also a genius way of weaving different histories together right and that was her uh i think her uh you know finest contribution uh one time we did a living history project on the steps of on the palace and it was about the bogus con convention constitutional convention that was held by the white provisional government and the way they had packed the delegation to write this tremendously racist reactionary literally mississippi um constitution for the so-called republic of hawaii marsha grabbed this story and brought it to life and it was very chaotic as a lot of the of the living history projects are because then we got into different people acting different parts and so on and so on and i think god this this is um part i jumped the gun on my part and marsha said i thought oh god i screwed up so i had this whole sense of this this thing is that said is a mad jumble but marsha just hung in there with it and hung in there with the whole audience and at the time i was there you were there i was there i remember seeing you there yeah your book was the centerpiece of that that historical program in front of eolani palace and uh marsha marsha insisted that i that i'd be part of the play she wanted me to be this racist judge okay and i i felt bad about that because i'm not a racist judge um and i rather you know sympathize with the other players she had there but it got worse because one of the other players in this little play another racist person back in what 1894 wasn't it or 1895 yeah uh one of the other players failed to show up that day and marsha said no you have to play him too so now i have played two racist people in this play and you know there were two or three hundred native Hawaiians out there um among the palm trees on the way to the bandstand in front of eolani palace who were really emotionally involved in this and they were looking at me as i was a symbol of all that had brought the kingdom down emotional as it went on despite the very very chaotic thing and at the end remember jade remember at the end she said all of those who want to stand i think it was probably like who want to stand with the queen come up the palace steps and everybody flocked up to the palace steps and stood with the queen and it was it was really total fabulous thank you very much living history living history and marsha was certainly absolutely into that let me ask if there's any other attendee who would like to speak okay there is somebody uh go ahead can you come on hello everyone i'm glenn joiner i am the son of kenneth joiner marsha's husband and marsha's that makes me marsha's step son and jay was able to make it i was able to get my flight squared away so really happy i was able to be here yeah i called the airline for you thanks so much you you you're a man of much power i can see that and this is my wife um antonella we're in the san francisco bay area um it's really lovely wonderful to have so many people sharing their stories about marsha and many of you were at her memorial service a couple of nights ago so um thank you so much for all your contributions um on behalf of our family i just wanted to say you know marsha lived a life that can only be called inspirational i mean she certainly was an inspiration to me um you know unlike many working stiffs she managed to dedicate her life to doing what she what she loved the things that she was really passionate about and that was helping underserved and underrepresented peoples from african americans to native hawaiians to other pacific island peoples like micronesians to the lgbtq community and she lived her life to the fullest um when she was done she really left nothing on the table her bucket list was complete um and i don't think any of us knew like king john said i don't think any of us knew just how much she did for so many people just how how big her sphere was um and the influence she wielded um at the highest levels of democratic politics now much like uh mlk she definitely threaded the needle between social activism and political power um and perhaps her greatest skill was as they say in texas getting shit done she really knew how to get shit done um the most senior leaders in politics came to her for precisely that reason um she just knew how to get things done um when leaders made promises they came to marsha to to help execute them but it was never clear who was actually uh in charge was it the leaders was it the governors like the senators like senator stanley chang governor why hey us senator brian shatz or was it marsha i mean it was never really clear um and when an event was done and when it was finished you know she would come home to my father and he would ask her you know so how did it go and she would modestly respond good because of that self-effacing quality um i don't know that any of us knew the full scope and panorama of all she managed to accomplish when she passed all the news stories came out chronicling all her achievements and all the people came forward as today and in the moral services saying all the things wonderful things that she did so we really began to understand the giant that she was and the um amazing uh gigantic life that she led everything came into focus only at that point but i wanted to end with one story that kind of um encapsulates the uh charm and the attractiveness she had how she was able to get people to do things for her even strangers um at my father's 55th birthday party um way back in the mid eighties um she marsha i was her accomplice accomplice in planning that she wanted to get something special for my dad so she went to a boutique in Waikiki my dad's birthday is in February February 2nd and she went shopping and she saw something that caught her eye it was a pink uh sports coat a pink blazer and she thought this would look great you know uh on ken but she wasn't sure about the size so she picked it up and there happened to be an african-american man standing next to her and um she says i'm not sure if this is gonna fit him and so he heard her and she said well okay well maybe i can help how tall is your husband so he's about your height oh okay well how how big is he me he's about your size and she was okay but why don't i just try it on for you and she goes oh that would be wonderful so he tries it on models that looks great on him so she decided to buy it and and she said oh by the way my name is marsha joiner um thank you so much you know yeah my name is walter walter payton walter payton the great walter payton also known as sweetness the highest honor in the nfl is named after him the walter payton man of the year award so that is the way you know and marsha didn't know who she was no thanks walter we'll see you around and when my father um heard that story marsha told my father the story he was he loved the the story even more than the jacket so that's kind of effect that marsha had on people she was so attractive charming and inspirational so thank you glenn a wonderful story so many so many memorable stories that we will not forget nor will we forget marsha so we have we have eric gill would like to offer a short remark and a short comment i've learned a lot about the many many things marsha did by listening to this and um i i can't add more stories to what i've seen i i wanted to just express my my my my gratefulness to marsha you know marsha revered my revered my dad um because of his uh role in passing the 64 civil rights uh amendment in congress in his one term there and i learned more from marsha about what my dad did than i knew from any other source and she she transferred that to me and you know she always was supportive i've been through many trials and tribulations and and at every turn marsha was supportive she would she would call me up and just let me know how that she was proud of me and that she's how my dad would be proud of me she was sending me flowers you know on the text and all i can say is uh one of the best things i've ever been called is when i went on her program on think tank and she introduced me as her dear friend just wanted to say that to everybody i'm gonna miss her thank you i'd like to read a piece we got from sharon nakashima on the chat if you haven't seen it sharon says thank you so very much this is beautiful and touching a celebration of a legendary peace leader gracious in her beauty fierce in her spirit and with her kindness and aloha aloha of one who has dedicated and fought valiantly for peace and non-violence marsha is inspiring you can count on all of us to carry on your peace legacy to care for the community your peace work will live always thank you sharon okay we have debora butler first of all thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak marsha and i used to fellowship a lot when we would see one another out in passing and at the zeta five beta functions as long as well as the democratic events marsha inspired me because she was a mover and a shaker she knew how to make things happen she used all her gifts and she used all her talent and that's what she would want for us she would want for us to use our gifts and our talents and i want you to imagine if you will imagine being on your deathbed and in most cases when we imagine this we see our families and we see our loved ones standing around our deathbed saddened by our dying but that's not what i want you to visualize this time i want you to imagine standing around your deathbed or all of your dreams that you're not using all of your ideas all of your talents and all of your god-given gifts all of your books all of your sermons all of your skills and goals that god has given you in life that you never developed that you never nurtured that you never did anything with just imagine them all standing around your deathbed looking at you with large angry eyes and large frowns of disappointment saying god gave us to you and now we must die with you forever because you never done anything with us you never used any of the gifts any of the talents that god gave you all you did was just sat on us and procrastinated about us and you kept us all to yourself so the question is if you die today or tomorrow what dreams will die with you what ideas will die with you what talents will die with you what abilities and skills and books and sermons and seminars and businesses and songs and poetry will die with you this uh Miles Monroe may he rest in peace said the wealthiest place on the planet is the cemetery he says it's not in the far east where they have oil in the ground and it's not in South Africa where they have diamond mines he said the wealthiest place on the earth is the cemetery he said because there you'll find dreams not live books never written songs never sung sermons never delivered businesses never erupted talents never nurtured skills never developed degrees never pursued don't wait too late to be the master of your fate and i say to you today don't wait too late to be the captain of your soul because the next minute is not promised to any of us and just as miss marcia used all of her talents and she used all of her skills and all of the gifts that god blessed her with we too shall pick up the patan and use our gifts and talents and skills use them now while the blood it's still running warm in our veins thank you David we have five more people waiting so i want to give them a little time before we run out of time but thank you very much thank you very much powerful but let's go to the five people who are waiting and if they could please hold their comments down to about a minute that would be helpful so we can finish on time okay who's first i think a lot has been said already about marcia one of the things i think that cannot be stressed enough was you know her ability to make the judgment call of when the push when the pool when it came to the messages or convincing people even in the legislature about certain things and she was very good at that something that i will miss dearly as a friend but also something that i learned the other thing too is the ability to what i call vol untold people about doing things early in the morning on the phone hey i need you to do this for me she's always with that so i mean that's something i will definitely remember um and i do like what you said in the beginning about uh we will call you back because you know that was her message on the phone i will call you back so i'll keep it short thank you very much jay thank you very much ken that's great i i just want to share a little bit about my my connection with marcia you know i i can't remember when i met her it seems like i knew her all my life and we work together on the restoration of the ghandi statue i remember in 2015 after we had performed my wife and i and our group performed for that celebration of ghandi day i stepped back and looked at the sculpture and i realized that it was so dark i'm a sculptor um and i realized that i could change the patina and make it visible to everyone um and um marcia just saw that and went together with me and my wife and we created the friends of the ghandi statue in waikiki and and we did it we we raised the money she was so crucial in helping us raise the money to to do that restoration work and a part of that was my finding the the original artist who's part shani and i and i connected with him got permission to change the patina and created you know it was so dark no one could see it we we accomplished that and and she brought to my attention someone who i did not know but have since learned so much about hong waiqing and um we we got together and and she inspired me to come on board to to do a sculpture of hong waiqing and connect and do a proposal to the family and the the ohana of hong waiqing and so um i'm hoping that that comes to fruition and we'll certainly dedicate that to marcia if if it does thank you kim kim defa really appreciate very interesting how many people marcia knew in the community everyone synthia one of our hosts a long-term host who sent such a nice note in a few minutes ago i um i wanted to just say how how touched i was by everyone's tributes and songs and poems and olies and just it was just beautiful and i've been in tears throughout i remember how she would come up to me so i know she's done all these big things but she changed my life in just a small but gigantic way with cannabis chronicles i've struggled with um autoimmune disease for 30 years and i've had to hide in the corners to use medical marijuana um and and it was such a still even now a touchy subject and and the controversial issue and her cannabis chronicles really changed my life and she told me i didn't have to hide anymore and and she took away a bunch of shame from me and that was just an empowering moment that changed my life so she pestered me for a year to come on her show after i first got my show and then when i finally did we were fast friends ever since and i'm grateful grateful to jay for this this time today kisses to you synthia as always uh who's next i would like to say that uh i was there at the signing of governor uh igay when he signed the our care our choice at and that senate bill eight three nine and that was in the latter part of 2018 and that was very very forceful very impactful for the kupuna caucus which i am a member and of course marcia was very strong in that she was also there as well uh in addition my memories of her was fairly recent i guess it was a 2020 uh march of the martin luther king day a parade and unity a rally she was active in the democratic party i've seen her in many of meetings she'd come up to me and and tell me make sure make sure that we're represented at the martin luther day parade so i really took that at heart and we were represented uh in addition uh we were at the unity unity rally but it was very important to me that she did approach me and wanting to make sure that we were represented uh marcia as well as the other one in civil rights that we've lost which is fey kennedy very very strong in civil rights and made a big impact in my family as well as my daughter with several of uh galas and events that we've attended so thank you melody we're almost out of time okay we have one more speaker thank you so much for for being here and for those remarks it expands our knowledge of what marcia was doing and it would take a long time to learn everything that she was doing okay we have our last our last speaker uh from from the attendee group i'm here with my father kenneth and i'm actually standing in marcia's garden and i've known marcia since i was 16 years old she's been married to my father for over 35 years but until i started planning her memorial service i discovered that i really did not know her at all but i just wanted to thank me on behalf of the family and reiterate what my brother glenn said is thank you so much for sharing your love and your tributes it's been just a tremendous tremendous uh feeling of of expression and gratitude and um marcia i believe showed her love with so many people by sending them texts of flowers so i mean here in her garden i don't know if you can see the beautiful white orchids that have bloom since her passing and i just wanted to share that with all of you and just reiterate my appreciation and gratitude from the family she was such a big had such a big life and a big personality that none of us truly knew everything about her but she will live on and leave her legacy with so many in the islands and worldwide so again thank you mahalo we love you for everything that you've done for for us in our family mahalo and aloha thank you andrea um it's wonderful to see marcia's garden that's a that's a great great closing image for us so thank you everyone for coming today for remembering marcia don't forget your remembering it it isn't done yet keep on remembering and keeping on keep on looking at all her hundreds of talk shows and literally thousands of guests on think tech away dot com and youtube dot com slash think tech away that's what she would want of you and before i say aloha i just want to say that i've i've listened to all these great speakers and great testimonials and great memories but nobody has actually answered the question of what kind of vitamin pill marcia was taking and then i realized just integrating all of that i realized that marcia herself was the vitamin pill so nutritious for her and for all of us aloha to you all aloha to you marcia of course kisses from all of us