Abraham Aiona, community leader, dead at 75
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
He was a World War II paratrooper, a policeman, a police chief, a county councilman and an OHA trustee.
Advertiser library photo
Abraham Aiona, whose record of service to his country and community spanned almost six decades, died in his sleep yesterday at his son's Waimanalo home. He was 75.
Abraham Aiona served as an OHA trustee from 1990 to 1998.
Aiona, who called himself "one of the few three-fourths Hawaiians still around," succumbed to the kidney failure he had fought for years and which forced him to retire as Maui's man at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in 1998.
Born Aug. 29, 1925, he was one of eight children raised in a poor but strict Seventh-day Adventist home. Aiona and others in Kaimuki Boy Scout Troop 10 learned thrift, honesty and loyalty.
After enlisting in the Army in 1944, Aiona jumped with the 82nd Airborne in World War II. He then returned to Honolulu and spent 22 years in the police department.
In 1969 Honolulu Police Chief Dan Liu urged his young executive officer to apply as Maui police chief, and Aiona was chosen over 16 other candidates to take over a department racked by politics.
Aiona raided a notorious Lahaina gambling den and cracked down on organized crime. He disciplined or dismissed officers for everything from slander to stealing.
"He told me one time," oldest son Abe Jr. said yesterday, "you are going to make friends and you are going to make enemies. The enemies you don't have to worry about — just worry about your friends; you are not going to please everybody."
But his friends were legion. "We couldn't go into a restaurant and eat as a family without him stopping to talk to 20 people," hanai daughter Ellen Caringer of Maui said.
Aiona's budget run-ins with Maui Mayor Elmer Cravalho prompted him to run for Maui County Council. He won, and was re-elected four times. He ran for mayor and lost, then was edged in another council race by a newcomer named Linda Lingle.
Elected to OHA in 1990, Aiona became Clayton Hee's righthand man and finance chief, helping parlay the trust's $19 million bankroll into $150 million with a state settlement and then nearly doubling it.
He is survived by a sister, Helen Cockett of Honolulu; sons, Abraham Jr., Leonard and George of Maui and Jeffrey of San Diego; and hanai daughter, Ellen.
He will be buried next to his wife at Hawai'i State Veterans Cemetery in Kane'ohe. Services are pending, with Hawaiian Memorial Park Mortuary in charge.
