Mid-Pac's history wasn't always rich
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer
A lot of people think of Lanikai, and the nearby Mid-Pacific Country Club, as a playground for the rich. But the truth is both have had their ups and downs over the years.
Back when it was just getting organized in May 1926 as a country club for wealthy businessmen spending weekends at their cottages in Lanikai, Mid-Pac was billed as "a Mecca for tired businessmen who seek surcease from the worldly cares in the surroundings of nature."
Mid-Pac's early membership looked like a who's who of Hawai'i society — "Big Five" executives, bankers, politicians, professional men. Many also were members of Hawai'i's other power places: O'ahu Country Club, Pacific Club and the Hawai'i Polo and Racing Club.
But did you know?
• The club's original name was Kailua Country Club, which was quickly rejected as too provincial.
• When the golf course opened in 1929, anybody could play nine holes for $1.
• In the 1930s, the club was so close to bankruptcy that members often stepped in to pay bills out of their own pockets.
• Back in 1949, the initiation fee was just $25; dues were $8 per month and green fees were $2. Despite that, membership dwindled to about 100 members by 1957.
• Members helped build the club's back nine when an expansion program ran out of money after World War II, then helped weed, fertilize and cut the grass when 15 employees went on strike in 1980.
I learned all this, and a lot more, in a new book that has just been published to celebrate the club's 75th anniversary, which will be marked with a big party at the clubhouse on Saturday.
The book, "Mid-Pacific Country Club, 1926-2001," took nearly six years to finish and will be given to all the club's 800 members, said club member Lois Suzuki, who helped document much of the history recorded in the book.
The book, which also documents the early days of Lanikai, takes readers on a real up-and-down journey through history.
You see the transformation of the early efforts to lure Hawai'i's wealthiest men over the Pali to the explosion of Windward O'ahu as a bedroom community. You see Lanikai and its neighbors transformed from a dry watermelon field with few natural plantings into a heavily landscaped weekend retreat and finally year-round neighborhood.
And maybe most importantly, you see Mid-Pacific Country Club grow, through some unusual twists and turns, from an exclusive Caucasian refuge — the first Asian-American member was admitted in 1947, the first women as full members in 1991 — into today's multicultural, full-service family facility.
It's the story of a lot of people willing to work hard, go with the flow, face up to realities and change with the times to create a vibrant social institution.
Sounds a little like the rest of Hawai'i's history, doesn't it?
