Posted on: Thursday, June 28, 2001

On Campus
A strange place to keep a ring

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Staff Writer

Ouch.

No one pulled punches at the recent farewell roast of outgoing University of Hawai'i President Kenneth Mortimer, who will mark his last official day on the job tomorrow.

To start off the evening at the Hilton Hawaiian Village's Tapa Ballroom, KSSK Radio morning show hosts Michael W. Perry and Larry Price announced that the event would explore the funnier side of UH's notoriously buttoned-up president.

Of course, they noted it had been discovered during the event planning that "there is no funnier side of Ken Mortimer."

The roast, called "Gone Fishin" after Mortimer's favorite hobby, raised more than $162,000 for a scholarship endowment named after Mortimer and his wife, Lorraine. Mortimer, who took his share of heat during his eight-year tenure, was handed even more from the roasters. His daughter Lisa Holman, Kamehameha Schools president and headmaster Michael Chun, UH Regent Ah Quon McElrath, Hilo Hattie's Jim Romig and KHNL/KFVE sports director Jim Leahey each took turns at the microphone.

From his daughter, on her dad's lack of authority: "I don't know why my father is taking all this heat, because the one really running the university is my mother."

From Chun, on Mortimer's success in getting the UH regents to raise the president's salary: "The regents finally listened to him. Evan Dobelle thanks you from the bottom of his heart." (Dobelle, who replaces Mortimer, will earn $442,000 a year, compared with Mortimer's $170,000.)

McElrath noted during her time at the lectern that Mortimer will take a position as a senior scholar with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.

There, she said, he will teacher others "how to run universities into the ground."

Leahey talked about the Mortimer doll being sold to raise money for the university: If you whisper the name Ben Cayetano in his ear, it will actually sweat.

The budget cuts at UH mean there will be no new buildings on campus to name after Mortimer, as is the custom at some colleges, Leahey said.

He suggested nailing a plaque to a tree with this brief, to-the-point poem: "Nothing quite good ever came to fruition. What the hell, let's raise the tuition."

At the end, Mortimer had a chance to roast the roasters. But he saved his best remarks for Cayetano, who was in attendance.

Mortimer told of how, on an initial visit to see Cayetano, one of the governor's staff members told him that the governor was nice "once you got used to him." All you have to do is kiss his ring, the staff member advised.

"I didn't know he kept it in his back pocket," Mortimer quipped.

Mortimer also suggested naming a street after Cayetano.

He'd call it One Way.