By Tino Ramirez
Advertiser North Shore Bureau
WAIALUA — Becky and Tony Messina missed the access road to Pu‘uiki Cemetery late yesterday morning and had to double back. Then the search for the graves of Becky’s great-grandparents began.
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| Becky and Tony Messina of Alaska try to piece together the broken concrete cross of her great-grandmother's headstone, which they just recently found after the brush was cleared away at the Pu'uiki Cemetery in Waialua.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser |
The old sugar plantation cemetery has been inactive for decades and, until late 1998, untended. Scores of graves were disappearing into the weeds. Then Thomas Shirai Jr., a frequent cemetery visitor with deep Waialua roots, alerted the community to vandals desecrating graves and Pu‘uiki's poor condition.
Regular cleanups by many community groups, as well as soldiers from Schofield Barracks, followed.
Yesterday, guided by four yellowing, 35-year-old snapshots, Tony Messina found Jesuina Rodrigues’ grave in a section cleared last November by the Wahiawa-Waialua Rotary Club and students from Waialua High.
About 20 minutes later, after the Messinas cleared weeds from the plot and Tony pieced together the crumbled head stone, Rotary member the Rev. David Milotta found Joao Rodrigues’ grave about 50 feet away. It, too, was in the section cleared three months ago.
Becky Messina was elated. A year ago, while visiting from Fairbanks, Alaska, they searched in vain. The graves, as well as headstones, were hidden in brush. But now Tony could fix weather-resistant aluminum plaques to the headstones and take photos for the family archive assembled by Becky, a devoted genealogist.
"One of the things I wanted is to see is if the graves were marked," Becky said. "Because of the wind, the rain and the weather, the names could have disappeared and nobody would know who’s buried here. Just out of respect, I wanted to make sure they’re identified."
Becky Messina’s search for her roots in a cemetery isn’t unusual. Cemeteries are a great source of genealogical information, said Nanette Purnell, founder of the Cemetery Research Project. Grave markers can tell from where a person emigrated, where they worked and name spouses, children and parents, she said.
"You can find out a lot on a marker, the name, of course, and information that might be different from what other sources have," said Purnell. "Sometimes it can be more reliable than other kinds of documents."
What happened to Pu‘uiki isn’t unusual, she said. Cemeteries were established by all Hawai‘i’s sugar plantations, but as the industry collapsed, they were abandoned as families moved away to find work and ownership of the land changed hands. Today, it’s up to communities to maintain them, she said.
Becky said she is grateful for the clearing of Pu‘uiki. Her great-grandparents arrived in Hawai‘i from Madeira, Portugal, in 1906 with 1,320 other immigrants after a 52-day voyage. Jesuina died three years later at 40 and Joao died at 42 in 1911.
"It was amazing they would even do it," said Becky. "She had six children to care for. All their belongings were stored below, and they couldn’t get to them, and there was a measles outbreak and a lot babies died.
"You do these genealogies and read what these people went through, how hard a life they had, so how dare we complain about anything? I really appreciate what they went through to bring the family to Hawai‘i."
Milotta, who is pastor of Waialua United Church of Christ, corresponded with Becky through e-mail, searched for the graves himself and took photos of possible sites. He said seniors from Waialua High plan another cleanup next month and will focus on the Buddhist section of the cemetery to prepare it for Bon season.
Becky plans to send thanks to the students: "I hope the kids know that it’s not just a pain-in-the-neck project. We tried to come through here but the brush was so thick and bugs were jumping all over the place."
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