 Hi, this is Carl Ackerman, host of Journeys of the Mind, and today we are welcoming Judy Kramer, who is a someone who grew up, and her parents grew up in Lahana Maui, to get her reactions not only to the terrible fires, etc., but also to, you know, in our notion of our title Journeys of the Mind. You know, we want to ask her all about her experiences in Lahana Maui, so we'll have a collection of these memories, you know, after we do several of these interviews. But the most important interview is with Judy Kramer, who was taught at Kamehameha for many years, started their service learning, coordinated service learning, and is now the educational director of Youth Service Hawaii, which is a non-profit dedicated to service learning. I hope I got that all right, Judy, as I get it all right. Yes, you did. Thank you for a wonderful introduction. Well, I'm going to start right away. So tell us about your growing up in Lahana Maui, then eventually getting to going to Lahana Luna as a high school student. Oh, growing up in Lahana because it was, you know, 68 years ago or so. Lahana at that time was a very sleepy town. In fact, there wasn't any tourists at that time in 68 years ago. I remember that the hotels at Kanapali were just being built and there, it was just one of those things that was just starting to become a tourist place. So it was mainly a plantation, sugar cane plantation town. Many or most of the people who live there worked in the plantation and we had it was a very slow moving and very sleepy town. Everybody knew everybody. In fact, when I lived downtown, we lived in these plantation homes downtown right behind Front Street. And when I was four years old, I would go every Sunday morning and I was given a quarter, 25 cents. And I would go to this bakery called Hapwo Bakery and they made the best bread. So we would, I would go in my nightgown and I would walk down to this bakery by myself when I was four and I would buy a loaf of bread and bring it home, which is the reason why I think I just love the smell of baking bread because it it conjures up all these wonderful memories of Lahana and and the slow moving town that it was when I was growing up. Went to Kamehameha Third School, which is right next to the Banyan Tree, played Chase Master, which is tag on the Banyan Tree branches. We would well not run. We would walk fast on the Banyan Tree branches and we would play tag on it. We would swing on the hanging roots that came down from the branches of the Banyan Tree. We'd have lots and lots of fun. Our May Day programs were held underneath the Banyan Tree. We had lots of good times. My brother learned how to swim in that right outside that harbor in Lahaina and many of us learned how to swim right in front of the of the school, which was right up against the the beach in Lahaina. It was a great time and lots of good memories with lots of good friends and you know our slow moving. We could ride our bikes in town with not having any problems and didn't lock doors because we didn't need to. That was a great thing. Then we moved up to Lahaina Luna Road. Our home was right on Lahaina Luna Road. I moved there when I was five and we were there until August 8th when the fire took the home. But that is where we grew up and many many memories of that in that home and lots of good times. Now if I'm not mistaken, Judy, also you were born in 1955. Yes. And so you were born actually in the territory of Hawaii before Hawaii became a state. Yes. That's absolutely wonderful and not something that many of us can say including myself. Not because I'm older than you are, but of course I didn't move to Hawaii until later on in life. But so you mentioned that you were able to walk as a four-year-old down and get a loaf of bread. So I have two questions. One is, what do you think inspired the safe conditions for you to do that? And number two, I mean everyone was like you know what Hillary Clinton said about a village and things like this. And the second question is, what type of people that meaning ethically you know worked on the plantations and then made up the majority of people in Lahaina? Okay. So what made it made me able to at four when I was four to walk without having any worries about anybody jumping me or you know stealing my quarter for the bread was that it was a town in which everybody looked after each other. People knew when I would be going out and they would kind of keep track of me. My brother who is six years older than I he is fond memories of when he was really young that he would my mom would go to work at a like a department. It was a department store but not really a department store. It was more like a sundry and store that had all kinds of it was like a plantation store that had all kinds of different things in it. And then my brother would go my mom would go to work and my brother would he woke up would just grab his pillow and his blanket and he would just walk to my mom's store. So it was one of those things that everybody looked out for each other and you could wander around because people knew who you were and you know who people were. The people and most of the people worked as I said in the plantation and so many of the people were of Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, some Chinese, some Hawaiian people of that ancestry. But yeah people knew everyone and we lived in a plantation camp. So again in the plantation camp because everybody worked on the plantation they you know we knew each other and everybody knew each other. My dad worked in the plantation office as sort of like an accountant bookkeeper. My mom in the beginning worked as I said in in that store behind the store and later worked for a dentist. So she everybody knew her and she knew everybody. It was very funny because people would come up to my mom because my mom was a dental assistant for first Dr. Uno and then later a Dr. Kehoe and people would come up to her and they would say oh this is Takatsuka. That's my maiden name. They would say this is Takatsuka. I have this thing in my tooth and can you look at my tooth right here? You know they would open up their mouths and they would they would when she was like shopping at the grocery store they would do those kinds of things. You know and they would say oh and she would say oh just come to the come come to the dentist and we'll help you. So yes so I know that because I would be standing there waiting waiting for her like this you know and people would come up to her and talk to her about their dental problems. So it was one of those things and people knew you know everyone knew everyone. So that was what made it a safe place in a safe town to live in. And then when the hotel started to open up people would then work in hotels. But the majority of the people still worked in the plantation and then there were immigrants who came later on and they started working in the hotels. My dad worked part-time. He worked full-time at the plantation and then a few hours a night in the hotels as my brother got closer to going to college and they needed more money for that. Save money for that. So yeah so that's how things were in those days and very safe and very wonderful place to be to be living. Also a little bit more Judy about the plantations because you know that is often referenced by people and politicians in Hawaii but we rarely get a sense of what it was like living on a plantation and you know what you were growing and things like that. Not everyone knows about you know our major industry before tourism. So yeah people lived in the plant. So everybody worked not everybody but many many many people worked in the plantation. My grandfather came over from Hiroshima and he worked and came up specifically to work in the plantation with thoughts of moving his family back to Japan. But once his family got settled here nobody wanted to move back to Japan. So he ended up staying here. So he and my grandmother both worked in the plantation. My dad worked in the plantation and my brother worked in the plantation. My my grandmother and grandfather lived in a plantation camp called Pump Camp and it was called that because there were there was a there was like a reservoir above the plant above the camp that would pump water down into the camp. In the camp there was there were all different sections in which people lived. So there was a section that had mostly Japanese and there was a section that had mostly Filipinos and mostly Japanese and Filipinos in those at that time and they and that was part of Pump Camp. It was a whiny village they called it and it was right in the middle of the Kingfields. So people we lived they lived there we lived downtown we lived in the town and but that still was a camp and most of the people who lived there I guess were like office workers. But my brother and most of the people who boys especially when they got to be high school age and then got then went out away to college during the summer they would come back and they would work the plantation they would cut sugarcane they would help harvest the sugarcane and stuff like that. That was one of the things that happened. We had you know we knew that there was going to be harvesting of sugarcane because they would you know actually burn they would it would be a controlled burn of sugarcane the leaves off so that it would be easier to harvest the the sugarcane stalks and we would when we're little it was so much fun to catch the sugarcane ash that you know that would float down into your yard and we would try to catch it without it the sugarcane the ash disintegrating this integrated and we had so much fun doing those kinds of things. Yeah it was it was lots of and lots and lots of fun we had we did have a time in which every so often because to keep the mosquitoes down they would have these fogging in nowadays that would be awful people would not be able to do any of that but there was this I don't know what it was insecticide or something that would just with a truck would just fog up our our our roads come down the roads and just fog up the the camps and stuff and and we just like oh you know it was it was bad smelling but it didn't last very long so we just kind of let it go and just kind of breathe it in but we okay people live you know there are people from plantations my mom lives to being 95 my dad lived to be 90 and so you know it seems like you didn't bother us I guess I don't know but that's what kept kept the um the mosquitoes down I guess yeah fogging these foggers they were called. I said you know I know I know the chemicals that were involved with that and you know I think you know day you know we in Hawaii as you well know tend to our houses by putting in poison or gassing our houses and then coming back because we have somebody bloody insects and putting cockroaches that fly yeah so that's just great um Judy tell me about your experiences at Lahaina Luna high school because that's such an unusual school and I remember distinctly about 20 years ago or so we were in this big conference and the president of Punahou school on Oahu stood up and said you know I'm with the oldest school west of the Mississippi and you said uh I'm afraid not uh you know so tell us about like of course because that is Lahaina Luna that Punahou school so uh tell us about your experience at Lahaina Luna because it's such a wonderful wonderful school. Yes Lahaina Luna is um here's the oldest school west of Iraq is it was established in 1831 by missionaries they wanted to have people become educated so that they could actually in the beginning wanted to spread the gospel but then it became one of those things that to me the third said that he wanted to have his people be educated so you know people like Samuel Kamakau and David Mallow who are very well noted um historians of the Hawaiian history went to they were the in the first graduating class at Lahaina Luna and um going there uh so that was the first graduate class and then later on Lahaina became like a um industrial school in that we had a farm we had a dairy um and there were boarders who came who lived on campus and there were 144 122 boarders that lived on campus and uh there were two dormitories and they um and they worked on the farm and uh they did various um chores I just was at a reunion uh with um some of the boarders and we were talking about um their memories as as boarders at Lahaina Luna and so um the because the school was had was a farm the boarders would wake up early in the morning before six o'clock and they would um they would make their beds and fold their clothes and they were it was very regimented and they went down to um to punch their number in this huge it looked like a clock with many numbers around it and it was like a punch clock and they would come they would punch their number in and then they would go working uh my last year as a freshman in 1969 I think it was um was the year that um it was the last year for um for the dairy uh the boarders would milk the cows and they would pasteurize the milk and we would be able to drink the milk that um the boarders um got from milking those cows and um there was a pigory there were chickens there was a farm that grew all kinds of different vegetables they it was pretty self-sustaining uh for the boarders there and um and uh we you know benefited at even in our cafeteria the kinds of foods that um that was being produced by our the farm that was right there the the boarders also got to learn a skill different skills and I remember one time where on the intercom we were in school and on the intercom the uh yes it was the principal said will all boarders report down to the punch clock because we're going to need to round up some cows because they had gotten out of round up some cows so apparently these cows had gotten out of their out of their pasture and they were roaming around somewhere and so these boarders had to go and round up these cows um right during school time because they they needed them done right away so my friend who uh I was talking with them just recently at my reunion and they said that um they went to uh to the military right after um right after high school and many of them said military was a breeze for them compared to how regimented their um school was like in um uh their regimented their life was like at uh as a border in school so they really um had lots of uh good skills that they learned in fact one of the boarders who became a principal or vice principal of a school in San Jose, California said that he still falls his clothes the way he was taught when he went to Lahain Luna so those kinds of skills are still there for in him uh as as he continued to grow older yeah so it was it was a great school Lahain Luna is still continuing to be a great school um and um yeah we hope that you know as as a town continues to rebuild that you know the kids at Lahain Luna will continue to uh carry on the legacy that that is so important for Lahain Luna High School. Well Judy that notion of getting an announcement at any school asking people to go out and herd cattle and in this case dairy cows you know that's just a crack up I mean it's just that doesn't happen anymore well may happen in the in the Midwest you know because but having met a lot of the um university students in Iowa and Nebraska when I've gone back for AP readings of of history as I'm a historian as you know um you know it's just the salt of the earth and I think that many of the things do you let me go back to you so you know as part of your work now um you um are uh you know the ed of a of a organization that is you know devoted to service learning and it seems to me that you and you talk about this that you grew up with service learning and you know it was learning to produce the food on the tables and so that's were quite remarkable. Yes yes um uh I think it's part of who I am as um in terms of a servant service learning and servant leader so um yes um part of youth service Hawaii which is what I'm is executive director of and you are a treasurer of we um we honor so much and we think that that's the best way for people to learn because as I said that person still to this day um still incorporate some of the things they learned in the high school in terms of the service that they did and and the kinds of skills they learned um being of service to the school and so um service learning is such a wonderful way to to learn and to um to have civic engagement and to and to actually um use whatever uh things you learn in school in a very meaningful way because uh you're being of service to people or the to the environment so service learning is certainly I'm very um I'm very uh whatever the word is but um I very sold on the idea that that is the way to go in terms of having kids um having the impact of education on kids is through service using their knowledge that they learn in a serve meaning in a meaningful way doing being of service to their community and Judy before I start to um ask you about the fire because you were in it and I know about your house I just wanted to let our audience know that you you after Lahainah Luna you went to the University of Arizona in Tucson you came back to Hawaii and served as a teacher for many for four decades if I'm not mistaken Matt Kamehameha Schools which if for people on the continent must realize that you have to be a part Hawaiian ancestry to go to those schools and you served once again and um you know when I was talking to you one day I remember years ago you were mentioning that you know a certain like a quarter of your class uh you know came from really um very poor um poor in terms of economics not necessarily poor in terms of culture or and wealth of family love um that always has to be a distinguished quality but now let's return um to recent events in Lahainah and I'm just going to let you describe what happened um in your own words and um we at ThinkTek Hawaii um really like to develop ideas deeply meaning we want to hear the full story we don't want just a sound clip and that's the you know that's the legacy of the men's Jay Fidel but I'm going to stop talking about Jay and talk about you so uh let us know what happened Judy because you were there that day in you. Yes so that morning um there were actually two fires I don't know if people know that there were two fires the first fire was of early in the morning uh there was some electricity that went out and it was about eight o'clock when we I think lost electricity my nephew and his family so that means my nephew his wife and his two children ages seven and three uh were leaving to go back to Iowa they were staying with us in my family home and on Lahainah Road and they were leaving to go back to Iowa they were leaving um Maui at 12 o'clock noon um but we wanted to make sure that they wanted to make sure that they were that there were no glitches so we left about eight o'clock in the morning and even then the wind was very strong and there were some downpoles we had to do some detours actually to get out of Lahainah because of the downpoles that were already um across well it wasn't the poles but it was the wires that were across the roads um I'm not sure if the wires were live or not um but I'm sure that um that the police officers were were directing us and so we got out of Lahainah there wasn't a problem getting out of Lahainah then and uh we dropped them off uh had breakfast came back around 12 1 o'clock came back to um and that by at that time the bypass was still open um came back no I'm sorry the bypass we had to detour a little bit and so the bypass excuse me at when we got home there was because of the wind there were downed uh there were shingles that were flying around that were blown off people's um roofs there was um when we got back to my family home there was broken lumaria tree branches uh leaves that were all gone uh off the branches the um the netting that was on top of the greenhouse uh that was part of attached to our patio had blown off so it was a fairly um substantial wind and I thought to myself oh my gosh we're gonna have to clean this mess up we're gonna have to wait for the um for the wind to die down so that um because no sense we clean it up then then at about 2 o'clock no excuse me 230 we saw uh we heard um fire engines racing up Lahainah road which is where we live on on Lahainah road and um then we saw some smoke coming down but I thought oh good the that's okay because the you know the um the fire engines were up there and they were gonna take care of this fire and it was a brush fire we've had but Lahainah has had brush fires before so it was a brush fire they're gonna take care of it fine when we um but then the smoke got to be really really thick and it started to race down uh Lahainah road because of the winds that was blowing and then it became a little bit hard to breathe because of all the smoke that was coming down I didn't see any flames it was mostly smoke and um when we got when it got into our patio the smoke was so hot that we decided okay it's time for us to evacuate we did not have there was it was our decision there was no um there was nobody was that coming was coming to say evacuate your home nobody there were people that was coming down Lahainah road that was already evacuating so um we got into that line coming down Lahainah road to evacuate got to the main intersection of Lahainah road and um Honua'a Peelani Highway the police officers that there were the those were the first police officers that we saw there were two of them they um because there were downpoles on either side of the highway and that's the reason why a lot of people got caught in that traffic and with all that lines of cars that you always see that were burnt because of the downpoles that were all over the place so um we had to dodge uh we had to go down front street dodging um poles and we had to actually when we got to um front street we were stuck because people who were turning towards who were turning north to go to the evacuation center which was a civic center um that line of cars was not moving at all and that was I I suspect that was a line of cars that were burnt that you see in in many of the pictures um so we waited for about 10 minutes and we just didn't move we couldn't even get into the line we were trying to get into the line but we couldn't so um my brother said I'm going to turn around and he said and we looked on the towards Wailuku and we saw that there was a little bit of movement of cars as well as blue sky way down far down towards Wailuku so we decided to turn around and even then as we went around there were many many many downpoles we'd go down as we um head down a street and we saw downpoles so we had to turn around we had to go down another street to find another street that wouldn't have downpoles one of the streets Luokini street was um a one-way street but we went the opposite way because that was the only way to get out and um there were people thank goodness for these people because these were people Hainatown was not taken yet so this was about 3 34 o'clock Hainatown was not taken yet and so there were people who were actually cleaning the roads to let us through I hope to God that they got out because they were helping us get through didn't seem like they were getting into their cars to evacuate and that was because the the fire had not come down yet so we finally got out to the highway and there were Hiko people and these people were also helping us you know there were at least eight downpoles down on the highway and so we were trying to get out and the Hiko people if they were helping or moving the poles and moving the lines there were light down lines all over the place down cable lines all over the roads and um because we saw the Hiko people we thought okay these must be dead lines the lines that didn't have any electricity in it so we went over the lines we just pulled those over over the the cables and there were quite a few of them that we had to go over we finally got out of Hainatown and um and it was uh it was a long ways um we we were after we got out of Lahaina and we took many many detours but finally got on the highway to get to Wailuku and and um even then the road was very slow moving because the they were trying to so people were coming into Lahaina because at that time it was maybe five o'clock or so people were coming into Lahaina were workers that didn't know that there was a big fire and there were and tourists who didn't know there was big fire and they had reservations at the Kanapali hotels but the police officers were turning them around and ally us so that um that was the road that we were on so we were all trying to move on the same road which is why it took us a long time usually takes about 45 minutes to go from Lahaina to Wailuku it took us from 3 30 to 7 o'clock that day to get to Wailuku so we were trudging along um but i'm very very grateful and very glad and very blessed that we did not turn right on that line of cars because i'm sure would have been one of those cars that would have been stuck and and been burnt and uh people had to jump in that's where people had to jump into the ocean because uh their cars were were on fire so they had to jump into the ocean um and uh we were very blessed and lucky that we did not take that route we went to Wailuku and um we got out safely there were quite a few i mean my cousin has another story and that's for him and i know i'm not sure how much time we have so i i do want to wrap it up but there's lots of everyone in Lahaina has a has a story to tell and so um it's sad why whole my whole home is totally destroyed there's nothing left nothing uh no house no structure the our refrigerator looks like it was a piece of metal that had been crumpled up nothing standing at all uh well i take that back our wash house was just made out of concrete is standing but i'm not sure what it looks like inside um because of the fire so um we haven't been back and we haven't um because i am and i'm very lucky and blessed that we have a home here and my brother has a home in Iowa um but because i do not have a Lahaina address on my driver's license i could not get back into Lahaina to check on my home um i've seen pictures of it but i've um not been able to go and actually buy my on my own or literally go and be there and i'm not sure how soon we can do that i heard that now there's some openings there's some places that open the people who could go back or the people whose homes were standing but my home was not standing so we could not um i'm not able to get back there yet so that's our status right now well judy the heartwarming part of your story was these people who were there and much not caring about their own personal safety were clearing the road yes and you eloquent i you know i haven't heard a better description of what happened that day than your description and that's not hyperbole that's truth and i want to just tell our audience before we end today we are running out of time that um yet it i guess it was the 20th of september jay fidel and michael stupe's really talked about what's happening in terms of insurance things on the ground how people are recovering and it's one of the best reports that i've seen um and it's on think tec hawaii and it's um um from the 20th of the up september and that's a great interview the other thing is i just wanted to share with you judy being a local girl me being a local guy here at oahu um is that um ryan schatz gave a speech in the u.s senate on september 5th and he outlined and gave pictures of many of the things that have happened and you know it was a heartfelt speech from a senator and it was you know there were republicans and and of course our president came and and visited the site and things like this so um you know the the tragedy um may may um and i hope will bring uh people together and i'm going to leave you with all the last words on this um on your story judy um but i i think the words that are a subtitle for this show is now strong but i'll leave the ending to you yeah so we are very blessed that you know i have a home to come to there's many people who have not and so one of the things that we um i hope that people will have is continue to have hope and continue to be strong so that um la jaina can be rebuilt um and we can rebuild as long as we continue to have hope and faith in each other and um and continue to um and the wonderful thing is that there are so many people who have been so generous and so i want to thank those people who have been so very generous whether it be for goods or for monetary um donations um it's we're gonna need it for a long long time so um we need to continue to have the fortitude and the perseverance so that we can continue to um build and not give up hope um and to know that la jaina can come can come back but we must all stand together to to do that and not um not give in to um what people might think might be a quick buck but um if we really love la jaina we can do this we just it's it's gonna take time and and perseverance and um yeah continue to move on yeah in one thank you word thank you judy and thank you for the for this wonderful journey of the mind