Program benefits keiki, seniors

By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Education Writer

It was a meeting of generations over bright balloons and a billowing parachute.

Mary Reger is among the Kuakini patients who play balloon volleyball when the kindergartners come to visit. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

It was the students' third visit to Hale Pulama Mau as they learn about citizenship and what it means to volunteer.

For the patients, the visits are a source of exercise and smiles.

"It's a wonderful compassion project," teacher Linda Kato said. It was Kato who successfully applied for the Learn and Serve America Grant that pays for the project.

The children's experiences at Hale Pulama Mau have been captured in a class book, "Caring with Aloha." The hardcover book will feature photographs and student art work and writing.

In addition to the hospital visits, students and their families have made 115 banners over the past two years, wishing patients at O'ahu hospitals everything from "Happy Birthday" to "Happy Last Chemo Day."

"It's like a civic duty and meeting the needs of the community," Kato said.

Many of the students admit to a case of the nerves the first time they visited the hospital. The patients look different, one said. And before Friday's visit, another nervously asked what to do if the patients can't talk.

But the 70-year-plus age gap disappeared with a few rallies of volley balloon. Giggling Nu'uanu students scattered among the patients, batting bright balloons as they floated by, and taking turns to hand them to the patients who couldn't reach from their wheelchairs.

Nu'uanu Elementary School kindergartners Sam Sueoka, left, and Eric Dorflinger lift a parachute with Hanako Matsumoto, center. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

And others ran in and out of a giant parachute that the patients hoisted in the air.

"I was shy the first time," said Codie Matsuda. "But not anymore because I know how they're like."

Patient Yukie Ono said she makes sure she comes down on the days the students visit.

"They're so cute," she said. "This is a good program for the students."

The games are great, but it also feels good to make the patients happy, student Chase Morimoto said.

"They're kind of lonely," he said.

Chase hugged all the grandmas he could before he got on the yellow bus to go back to school.

Correction: In a previous version of this story, remarks by Kuakini Hospital patient Yukie Ono were incorrectly attributed to someone else.