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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, August 2, 2001

Lab School's first grads mark 50th

By Kapono Dowson
Advertiser Staff Writer

Alumni and former faculty and staff of the University of Hawai'i Laboratory School will return to campus this weekend from all over the world — Germany, France, Connecticut, Manoa — to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first graduating class.

They're in for a time warp, with rooms decorated for each of the five decades to tickle the memory.

Lanning Lee, event coordinator, said he's expecting 350 alumni to attend. For this small school tucked away in lower Manoa, that's big. With fewer than 2,500 alumni over 50 years, the graduating classes have been small and close.

Kristel Yoneda said her Class of 2001 was one of the biggest, with 48 graduates.

"Anything 40 or over is big for us," she said.

Hawai'i Circuit Court Judge Steven Alm, president of the Class of '71, said he appreciated his small class where everyone knew everyone else and grew up together. He recalled times when classes had impromptu tug of wars during lunchtime.

"Whoever wanted to participate could," said Alm. "Our science teacher, Frank Pottenger, would try to convince us that shoes would be better. You could get a better grip in the ground," said Alm, who always went barefoot.

Alm also mentioned how special the cafeteria supervisor, Shizumi Kunioka, was. "Shizumi encouraged us to eat the food and was everybody's friend. We used to hang around after school and play football. When we played in the rain, she and her staff would put our shirts in the dryer. It felt so warm by the time we went home."

Kunioka will be there this weekend, but this time to eat and not cook. Retired after 37 years in the cafeteria, she recalled how workers baked their own bread and made a favorite called "pig-in-a-blanket" — hot dogs wrapped in bread dough and baked.

"One time I got scolding from one mother who said her daughter was sick but wanted to come to school because it was pig-in-the-blanket day," Kunioka said, giggling.

She can rattle off the names of countless children and their accolades. She had nicknames for many of the students; Alm's was "Steenie."

"I feel proud when they grow up," she said.

State Sen. Norman Sakamoto of the Moanalua-Salt Lake area came as a sixth-grader and graduated in 1965. The small class size meant "you remember each other," he said. He still meets with classmates at least once a year.

Dr. Hubert Everly, who lives on the Big Island and is 86, hopes to be well enough to attend the reunion. Laughing at being called a young dreamer back when the school began, he said: "I guess I was. We all were."

Considered the lab school's founder, he lobbied the Legislature and persuaded UH officials to form a school with kindergarten through Grade 12 in the late 1940s.

Everly said he had this idea to create a small school to be a model for other schools, creating an outstanding curriculum and exploring other ideas, much like the charter school concept today. Because the ideas were so new, lobbying was difficult, he said. The school was always fighting for its existence, whether with the Legislature for financing or with the university for campus space, he said.

For Everly, the value of the school is proven by the fact that it has survived for 50 years and is still going. He said every time it is threatened with closure, the parents, students and alumni "rise up to keep it going."

Loretta Krause, principal since 1971 and, Everly said, the driving force behind the school, has a similar passion for the place. Krause said the school has applied for charter status with the state Department of Education. The school will open in September despite money problems, she said.

"This is where all children are given the opportunity to find out there are no limits to their learning potential," said Krause, who taught at the school before becoming its principal and is looking forward to seeing the adults who were once her students.

"It's wonderful to see these children develop," she said.