Irmgard 'Aluli's life celebrated by family, friends
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
As a baby, a bit of coffee-soaked bread from a Portuguese midwife helped clear her mouth for a first lusty cry on Oct. 7, 1911, in Lahaina, Maui.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
As a girl, she gathered with her brothers and sisters under the stars, wrapped in the scent of midnight jasmine, playing 'ukuleles and guitars by the shore and singing to their parents at the family home, Puamana.
Mahina Souza, the granddaughter of Auntie Irmgard Farden 'Aluli, and her friend Kahala Mossman, who call themselves "Kahala Moon," sang several songs in a musical tribute to Mahina's grandmother. Several hundred friends and relatives of 'Aluli attended a post-funeral gathering to celebrate her life. The gathering was held at the Kalama Beach Club in Kailua.
She was also the mother of seven children, wife of a politician, a real estate career woman.
And then, late in life, in her 50s, Irmgard Farden 'Aluli became the image Hawai'i cherishes, the self-taught musician and composer with a rascal gleam in her eye, a smile on her face and a lilting romantic song of a gentle, happy Hawai'i on her lips.
'Aluli, who died Oct. 4 just three days shy of her 90th birthday, was celebrated and mourned from morning to night yesterday.
It began with more than 700 from Hawai'i's old families, many in wheelchairs or leaning on canes, crowding into St. Anthony's Church in her Kailua hometown for hula and hymns, Hawaiian chants and Roman Catholic homilies.
After a Mass that lasted two and one-half hours, immediate family members slipped into 10 stretch limousines as a bell tolled in the church courtyard to begin the funeral procession.
After one last Aloha 'Oe, a wooden casket heaped almost two feet deep with lei was lowered into the ground under leaden skies at the Hawai'i State Veterans Cemetery in Kane'ohe.
For a moment, the only songs were those of the birds on the hillsides.
And then a wake broke out in earnest with beer and beef broccoli and chicken hekka and booming music and endless "auntie anecdotes" under a tent at Kalama Beach Park in Kailua again.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
A Renaissance woman before the Hawaiian Renaissance began, an icon of the islands who could not speak her native language, 'Aluli embodied a bygone "hapa-haole" time when haole malihini were softened by kama'aina kindness, and many young Hawaiians were brought up as Christians emulating American ways.
Mahina Souza gets a hug from friend Alexandra Avery of Kailua.
The funeral brought out luminaries from all parts of Hawaiian life, community leaders Beadie Dawson and Roy Benham and Watters Martin, entertainers Moe Keale and Chinky Mahoe and Melveen Leed and Kealoha Kalama and Genoa Keawe, political figures Mililani Trask and Kinau Kamalii and former Chief Justice William Richardson, to name only a few.
Son Kale 'Aluli likened a gift of water to the tears of joy and happiness her songs gave, a gift of stone to the strong legs with which her children would always stand for the Farden heritage and "the great name she so royally carried, 'Aluli."
Greater than these, he said, was the gift of breath for her love of Christ and his teachings.
Son Kimo 'Aluli told how his mother's words and ideas and music touched everyone, setting an example of love and kindness, peace and sharing and caring.
And they sang her songs and danced to them: Puamana, about "a beautiful home, nestled along the shore."
"For a Peaceful World," one so sought today.
And at the end, with the music and fun and hula at the pa'ina, meal by Kailua Beach, it seemed like 'Aluli's rollicking 1963 song, "One More Round," was fitting:
"Eia nei, let me stay for one more round, just one more round. One more, just one will put me up on a cloud ..."
