By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer
Ann Malo fell in love with her husband in increments the day they met.
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| Makia and Ann Malo are the benefactors of a scholarship for Native Hawaiian students who want to pursue medicine, dentistry or law.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser |
It was his dry sense of humor and the rhythmic way he could tell a story.
It was the time he took to wash his hands in an unfamiliar bathroom, even though he was blind, and even though his disease had numbed his worn fingers so that he could not feel the faucet handles or the water.
Today, Ann Malo can finish many of Makia Malo’s stories on cue. She smiles before he starts to tell a joke, and she can direct him up steps and down hallways without having to be asked.
More than a decade since they met, her voice gives away that she’s still awestruck by the man who has a valentine for an entire community.
He told her when they were making out their wills that he had a gift to give back. He wanted to create something in the memory of his younger brother, Pilipili Malo, who died from Hansen’s disease, the same affliction Makia Malo overcame.
He also wanted to allow his childhood friends and role models to share in his success.
In a slide-show presentation today in a McCully bowling alley, the Hawaii Community Foundation will feature the Malos as benefactors of a scholarship for Native Hawaiian students who want to enter the fields of medicine, dentistry or law.
Makia Malo, who was banished to Kalaupapa, the former Moloka‘i "leprosarium," when he was 12, always wanted to be more than a curiosity.
His disease took away a "normal" childhood. It segregated him to a remote peninsula where he watched his brother die. It slowly stole the feeling in his fingers. It made him blind by the time he was 30.
But along the way, Makia Malo met people who strengthened his will to grow instead of to remain in isolation.
He enrolled in the University of Hawai‘i when he was 37, and seven years later, he became the only Hansen’s patient from Kalaupapa to earn a college degree.
'I thought my life was over'
"After I became blind, I thought my life was over," he said. "I was resigned to just fade away like so many people."
But caring people, including his occupational therapist and teachers along the way, convinced Malo that he was worth something. One friend’s words stuck with him: "No let other people’s hangups stop you from being what you are," he said. That became his mantra.
He is 66 now, old enough to think about his will and his legacy. He said he hopes to inspire young people to take advantage of opportunities the way he did.
"I hope they come back here, but most of all, I want them to honor other Hawaiians," he said. "This is just a helping hand. I had a helping hand."
Makia Malo went from being jobless a decade ago to making a career as a respected Hawaiian storyteller. Those who know him say this is what he is all about.
"His gifts, from his intellect to his personal insights, are truly exceptional," said John Kofel, president of Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, where Malo is an artist-in-residence. "He has shared with me, professionally and personally, insights that if I was given the rest of my life to figure out, I couldn’t have."
Malo also has an adventurous spirit that’s contagious, said Richard Radtke, a University of Hawai‘i research professor who works with Malo in a mentoring program for children with disabilities.
"He’s just a real person," Radtke said.
For so many years, when people talked about her husband, it seemed to be all about a disease he had overcome a long time ago, Ann Malo said. But she sees him as Everyman, as anyone who has ever been handed a challenge and succeeded.
Ann Malo doesn’t need a box of chocolates or flowers today.
"Makia walks the Earth as a valentine," she said. "He doesn’t know any other way."
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