Educator Mary Jane Kahanamoku dead at 81
By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
KEAUHOU-KONA, Hawai'i — Mary Jane Kahanamoku, a noted music educator who also played a key role in the revival of Big Island canoe racing in the 1970s, died Monday at Kona Community Hospital. She was 81.
Her husband, the late Louis Ko'oliko Kahanamoku, was the fifth of six brothers of the legendary sports family whose most famous member was three-time Olympian Duke Kahanamoku. Family stories say she wooed her husband while playing 'ukulele at the Moana Hotel in Waikiki.
She spent more than 20 years as choral music teacher at Konawaena High School and devoted most of her energy in retirement to promoting outrigger canoe racing.
"She had a Hawaiian spirit throughout her life," said younger sister Lorraine Sohm, who lives in Kona.
Kahanamoku was born Jan. 7, 1920, in Waiakea, and developed a lifelong love of things Hawaiian. Her mother was Portuguese and her father, who worked for Hawai'i Consolidated Railway in the early 1900s, was British.
Don Isbell, who taught instrumental music at Konawaena during much of the time Kahanamoku taught classes in singing and 'ukulele, said she "just loved the kids." She took her choir on an extended tour of California and then to Tahiti, where she would later promote Polynesian canoe racing.
She helped found and served for a time as the secretary general to the International Vaa Federation, a canoe racing association.
Isbell's most vivid memory of Kahanamoku is watching her "hyperventilate on the football field" after a 1972 fire destroyed the school music room and most of her collection of 'ukulele. "She was just devastated," he recalled. But she bounced back before retiring from the public school system.
She was a guiding force with the Kai Opua Canoe Club and later was a co-founder of Keauhou Canoe Club.
"There was a force about her," according to her sister.
The Kahanamokus left Hawai'i in the late 1980s for California, where Louis died in 1994 of complications from emphysema. His wife returned to Kona.
Funeral arrangements are pending at Dodo Mortuary in Kona. Sohm said a scattering of the ashes will be held soon at Keauhou Bay.
In addition to her sister, Kahanamoku is survived by a daughter, Mrs. John (Jill) Fetz of Arizona; a son, Sanford "Sandy" Kahanamoku of California; a brother, John May of California; two grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
Correction: Mary Jane Kahanamoku was a co-founder of Keauhou Canoe Club. Because of a reporter’s error, another organization was listed in a previous version of this story.
