 Welcome to ThinkTech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things in matter-to-tech and Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Keisha King. In our last show, we took a tour of Elani Palace with Wilson Moore, an attorney who has conducted tours there for more than a decade. After the tour, Chief Justice Recton Wald of the Hawaii Supreme Court presented a proclamation recognizing Wilson for his years of service to the Judiciary and the Judicial Evaluation Panel. We were pleased to be there for the presentation of the proclamation and to meet those who came on the tour and attended this ceremony. And as you'll see, their comments were memorable. Wilson Seymour Jr. has had a distinguished legal career culminating as a name partner in one of Honolulu's most prominent law firms, Rush Moore, whereas Mr. Moore has practiced extensively in Hawaii's courts and his extraordinary integrity and commitment to upholding the public's trust and confidence in the legal profession have never wavered. On September 27th, 2020, a 2000 after his retirement from the practice of law, Chief Justice Ronald Moon appointed him to the newly established Judicial Performance Review Panel to assist in evaluating judges through the Judiciary's Performance Program. Since his appointment, Mr. Moore has generously given his time to prepare and personally meet with individual judges drawing upon his vast experience and wisdom to provide guidance and enhance each judge's performance and improve on their skills and techniques. And whereas in addition to his vital service to the Judiciary, Mr. Moore continually found ways to selflessly share his time and talent with Hawaii's community. One such way has been his service as a docent of Yolani Palace. For 10 years, Mr. Moore shared the rich history of Yolani Palace, the only official residence of royalty in the United States, on these sacred grounds and the stories of the many people who made an impact on Hawaii's history. Through his personal guided tours and the light-hearted stories he shared of his own experiences, he provided a unique opportunity that took visitors back in time for a glimpse into the lives of Hawaii's last reigning monarch. So therefore, Hawaii State Judiciary proclaims its sincere appreciation to Wilson Seymour Jr. for his service as a member of the Hawaii Bar, his dedication to improving the administration of justice in Hawaii, and his commitment to sharing and preserving Hawaii's history. His efforts have had a profound effect and will be appreciated for years to come. Willie, please accept this token of our appreciation and gratitude. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. I'm deeply honored. Sharing with my family, sharing with people in the bar with whom I have the greatest respect, this is a very, very high honor. I'm deeply appreciated. Thank you very, very much. So what do you think about today? Oh, this was fabulous. I'm so honored to be included on this tour to have a chance to listen to Mr. Moore give his special tour. You can tell that he just has such a passion and a depth of knowledge for this history, and it's just so special to be on this tour today. I'm so grateful. Oh, fantastic. I'm just so impressed, and he's put so much of his time and himself into being a part of the palace and 10 years, quite a while. Thank you. It's a special day. What do you think about today? I'm very, very grateful that he's been honored. He has truly given so much. He loves Hawaii. He's loved his job. I remember him saying all those years ago, being a lawyer, was he never worked a day in his life because he loved going to work. So I know he's made a difference in a lot of different ways into the community, and I'm very, very proud of him, and I'm very happy for him to have this honor. I would add the same thing as well. She well overdue of someone to speak up and acknowledge the many things he's done. He's been tremendous as a father and someone to look up to, and he's been a mentor to too many people in this town, and he's well deserved the things that he's done. I wish I could follow his footsteps and be as he has, but he's just an amazing person. I've only been in this family for about three years, and I'm already seeing the benefits. It's been a pleasure having him as a father, and I'm getting to know him a lot better, and he's actually showing us how to age gracefully with his ability, his mental abilities, his physical abilities. So when my husband and I retire, we are going to start picking up trash along Clonnie on Olay because we would like to live as long as him. It's just a privilege to spend some time with Mr. Moore. He is a lion of our profession, and it's a great honor to be here today, and it's good to hear him speak. You could imagine him in a courtroom given what we heard today, and I'm just honored to be here, and to be honest with you, I wish I had turned out a bigger section of the bar because this was a gem. Amazing. I mean, I hear these stories. He's my father-in-law, so I hear these stories all the time, and from when he was a little kid and the things he has seen and the changes he's seen and been such an integral part of so many things in Hawaii for so long, it's incredible. It's incredible. And he also can occasionally shoot his age in golf. So forget that he's still doing this and that he's still picking up trash and everything else with the judicial. He still shoots 90 once in a while, which is unbelievable. We should all hope we still are as relevant as Willie is when we get to be, and hopefully get to be, 90 years old. 1973, I was working for the general contractor who did the renovation here. So I've been through every nook and cranny of this building when we were doing that renovation work. It's really quite exciting for me to watch this place being torn apart and then have all these specialists put it back together again. So, oh yeah, I found a brass button that came off of one of the uniforms of one of the guardsmen that we work here. They had square nails, square shaped nails that they used at the time. In some of the places where we had to clear out, they had a newspaper that crammed into a crevice and you open up the newspaper and it's back into the 1900s. So really quite amazing. That's great. That's a great story. Thank you. It's been a great tour. I've lived here all my life. It's the first time I've been on the second floor and I was impressed with Mr. Moore's knowledge of Hawaiian history. It's really great. Thank you. Yeah, it was really educational. Yes. Did you know about the exam? It's 10 questions. It's a true-false and it's a small subjective question at the end. It's about everything he said. Are you ready? Did you bring your pencil? Everything went perfect just the way we planned it, Jay. Everything was wonderful. We had a good time and, you know, Willie got honored, which was right. And all the participants did something from the heart here, you know, a good spirit. You know, it was meant and intended to be positive and that's what happened. So sure. Well went well. It was lovely. Thank you for doing it, Mark. And congratulations and a job well done. Thank you very much, Jay. Very proud of the Senior Counsel of Vision. We're very proud of Mr. Moore and we're delighted to be here in attendance today. And it's an example of the people who have had long careers in the bar can go on and continue to contribute during their entire lifetime. It's only a short walk across the street, so we're very fortunate to be neighbors of the Elani Palace. We treasure that relationship and that's what makes today so special to be able to come here and honor Willie Moore, who is icon of the bar in Hawaii, who's given so much to the judiciary since he retired and has given so much here as a docent for the last decade. So I'm really honored to be able to come here and just show our appreciation to Willie for all he's done. We're honored to be here too, CJ. Yeah, I appreciate everything Think Tech does to help highlight important stories in our community, important issues in our community. So thanks for being here today. I thought it was an amazing tour. And again, just to be able to honor Willie is something, you know, the attorneys of his caliber are few and far between and he's had such an impact, I think, on so many other attorneys in the bar, including me, who looked up to him during the time he practiced and who had the opportunity to meet him in other contexts. So I think his impact goes beyond just the cases he had. It really is an impact on the professionalism of everyone he's met who see him as a role model. I'm totally overwhelmed at the occasion, but I have always said that I get as much out of volunteer work like being a docent at Iolani Palace as I get. Because to remember, to begin with, I'm a great history buff. I love Hawaii. I was born and raised here. My dad was a Bishop of State trustee. I have Hawaii in my blood. But remembering all those dates and facts and putting them all in the right place is doing me a great deal of good too, helps my memory. So I really feel that it's been a privilege to be a docent and I'll be always grateful for the opportunity to have done so. Wilson, you know they say that Iolani Palace is a treasure trove of Hawaiian history. Well, so are you. Well, that's very generous. I'm not so sure. Thank you. Thank you. There's more. In the week following, we met Wilson in our studio for a talk show to discuss his work at the Palace and his deep-seated interest in Hawaii history. Here are some clips from that show. Well, I was a lawyer for 40-some-odd years and casting around for something to give back to the community that had been so great to me. And one of our great friends is Alice Gill, which is an icon in this community. And Alice and my wife are great friends in the Garden Club and Alice said, you know, Willie's got a good gift to gab, why don't you get him to be into the training of the docent. So I looked into it, they accepted me and I entered the training in the spring of 2009. And Zita Kupchoy is the marvelous educator up there at Iolani Palace and she not only taught me an awful lot of what I needed to know, but infected me with such a desire to learn more about the monarch life in the palace that I did a lot of collateral reading. I probably did more than I should have because some of my tours kind of run over, but it was fun to do. Well, it's interesting because you brought to that your experience as a lawyer, and a litigator, a researcher, and somebody who can talk to people, all those things came together and now we have somebody who's willing in his retirement to be a docent. That's quite something. Those are a lot of skills. And I suppose, you know, you gave tours that were different than the customary kind of tour, am I right? I think every docent brings to the palace their own experiences, their own reflections on the life of Kupchoy back in those days. And I think our job really is to not only show off the palace, which is a marvelous restoration, but to try and tell people what it was like for the monarchs to live in those hallowed rooms with those wonderful artifacts. And in the process, teach a little bit about Hawaiian and monarch history, but it was more fun than work, I'll tell you that. Oh, sure. And it's the stories, the stories that bring it alive that make it memorable. Not only for tourists who come around, but for local people who'd never heard the stories before. You have people asking you questions, people who know a lot about the palace and people maybe who don't know anything about the palace. How do you handle that? And have those questions been a help in conducting these tours or are they sidetracked? The questions usually belie the interest of the tour group, so then you can guide your presentation more toward that question, because that's helpful in that way. Let's talk about the tours that you give. You take us into a room, you talk about all the icons and artifacts in the room, you talk about the people who were in the room, what they did in the room, even how they got along in the room, why they were there, what they aspired to, and how they fit into Hawaii history. That's really something. And your tour is just, you don't take a breath, do you? Well, you've got so much to cover, and we're under a time limit. We're supposed to finish the two floors, the upper floors in Iolani Palace in 45 minutes. And like I tell you, I talk so much they sometimes call me waha-willy, which means mouth and Hawaiian, as I tell too many stories. I think my job, in addition to telling everybody about Iolani Palace and what it means to all Hawaiian people, is to be entertaining and to make the tourists want to come back again. So that's part of the, I think that's an important part of any tour. And you get to know, you get to know the royal family. You get to know the dynasties that were there. You get to know how they thought, what they did, how they lived. This is very interesting stuff. So who's your favorite royal person? Who's your favorite king? Do you have a favorite king? Well, I think Kalakawa, of course, was the inhabitant of the palace the longest and left the greatest mark on it. Probably the Kalakawa. But they're all interesting. Yeah. And Luyo Kalani spent some time being imprisoned in the palace after the overthrow. In 1895, there was a rebellion. And as a result of that rebellion, she was arrested in January of 1895, and some say on less than convincing evidence. But at least that's what happened. And then in February, she suffered the indignity of her trial in her own throne room and then was house arrest in what is called the imprisonment room for seven months and 20-some odd days. And then she was paroled and had to stay on the islands for a while. And then within a year after the original trial, she was totally pardoned. Yeah, and it's clear. The palace is a symbol of the kind of progress that Hawaii and the monarchy was making in the 19th century. They had come from a place which was not at all sophisticated in, say, the year 1800. By the time of the overthrow, they had achieved world repute. They had achieved all kinds of technology. They were lit with electricity before the White House was, you said. 1887 was the first year. 1886 was the first year. The exterior was electrified. 1887, the interior of the palace electrified four years before the White House. It's a very forward-thinking guy. Telephones they had. They had telephones. I think there were at least 300 subscribers in Honolulu at 1883. And by golly, the king was certainly one. And what you saw on the wall and the kings in the library was the original phone. I think the original one is in Bishop Museum, but this is an identical copy. Extraordinary how Hawaii was so progressive through that whole century. And it's all reflected in the palace. If you look at the things you were showing us, you realize that they were making really incredible progress. They were globally minded, globally aware. And I can understand why the people admired them. They were leaders in a community that respected leaders. But there was also current in the global scene. If I were an ordinary citizen in that period, I would have been proud of them. I would have admired them and I would have been loyal to them. I think that's very true. Remember, Hawaii was very literate back in those days. Yes. Thanks to the missionaries and converting an oral language to a written language in the late 1800s, Hawaii was said to have been the most literate nation in the world. So they had a knowledge of the outside world. And of course, in a strategic location in the Middle Pacific, they had traders from all over the world. So they had interests from the Russians and the French and the English and the Americans primarily traded there. So they had quite a bit of knowledge of the world. And there were so many things, tragically, that were taken and sold after the overthrow. It was dismembered in many ways. And luckily, the friends of the palace and other people who were friends of the palace managed to get a lot of that back. But it's not all back yet. We've gotten 40% to 50% of the contents back. And you're right. Queen Kapiolani's executors, Lily Okolani's executors, and the government sold the contents off, much of the contents anyway. And people would buy and then scatter to the forewinds. But we have a little bit of a treasury that we can use to buy things up. For instance, if we see something on Suthpies that claims to be a artifact from Iolani Palace, and it bumps the price because of it, we will do our investigation, or the curators do. And if it is, in fact, ours, we'll see if we have enough money in the kitty to buy it. And if we don't, we'll walk downtown and suggest to one of the business men that they could make a contribution to Iolani Palace. And that's how we've gotten 40% to 50% of the things back. If you want to see what happened, if you want to be there and be part of it somehow, you should go to Iolani Palace. But I want to offer you this last opportunity in our show to address the people, to tell them what you would like them to remember about the palace and what you think they ought to do about preserving the palace and visiting the palace. There's camera before. Well, I think the palace is a real blessing for all the people. It reminds people of a bygone day, yes, but of a rich history that the Hawaiians have. And I was a real privilege for me to be a part of it for 10 years. I felt that I gave back as much as I got back as much as I gave. You can't teach all that and have that interaction with people without a lot of it rubbing off on you. And I was certainly encouraged people to take their retirement and do something like that because it's a blessing and a lot of fun too. Thanks to Mark Schlauble for organizing the tour and the ceremony. Thanks to Wilson Moore for a great tour and for coming to our studio for the talk show. If you want to know more about Iolani Palace, check out IolaniPalace.org. If you want to know more about the Hawaii State Judiciary, see courts.state.hi.us. And now let's check out our Think Tech schedule of events going forward. Think Tech broadcast its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. And some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends. If you miss a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on demand on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube and on our free iPhone and Android apps. And we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. Visit ThinkTechHawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live streaming YouTube links. Or better yet, sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories. Think Tech has a high tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to see it or be part of our live audience or participate in our shows, contact shows at ThinkTechHawaii.com. If you want to pose a question or comment, call 808-374-2014 and help us raise public awareness on Think Tech. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at ThinkTechHI. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands and in this country. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of Think Tech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. Thanks to our Think Tech underwriters and grand tours. The Atherton Family Foundation. Carol Monli and the Friends of Think Tech. The Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education. Collateral Analytics. The Cook Foundation. Dwayne Kurisu. The Hawaii Community Foundation. The Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners. Hawaii Energy. The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. Hawaiian Electric Company. Integrated Security Technologies. Gailin Ho of BAE Systems. Kamehameha Schools. MW Group. The Shidler Family Foundation. The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust. Volofoundation. Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. OK, Keisha, that wraps up this week's edition of Think Tech. Remember, you can watch Think Tech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. Can't get enough of it, just like Keisha does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more Think Tech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on Think Tech, visit thinktechhawaii.com. Be a guest or host, a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our Think Tech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii. And of course, the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it, including the study of our unique history in Hawaii and the recognition of those who have provided lifelong service to our community. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important Think Tech episode. I'm Keisha King. And I'm Jay Fidel. Aloha, everyone.