Hawai'i sending aloha to New York on Sept. 11

By Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Staff Writer

When Hawai'i woke to the shocking events of Sept. 11, Tim Farley spent the morning on his knees praying in front of a television set with friends agonizing over the probable loss of family members in New York's World Trade Center.

Farley and his volunteers will be at it again this Sept. 11 as he takes many more lei, T-shirts and gift baskets to New York for the anniversary of the tragedy.

Farley is among a number of Hawai'i residents helping to organize Sept. 11 projects and memorials and joining in events aimed at remembering and helping those most affected by the attacks.

Activities range from Farley's Gifts of Aloha, involving scores of volunteers and numerous donating companies, to the efforts of Punahou graduate Maria Lippi Schwartz, who will represent Hawai'i in "Flags Across America," an event that will see pilots from each state journey to New York for the first anniversary of the attacks.

The anniversary is less than a month away and government agencies in all four counties are planning memorial ceremonies, as are various branches of the military and churches across the state.

Retired Honolulu firefighter Dean Firmin will be honoring the heroes and fallen soldiers in person. He will be joining Wind and Fire, a motorcycle club for firefighters, in a ride to the Sept. 11 tribute in New York involving firefighters from across the country. Firmin will be one of 344 riders, representing the number of firefighters who lost their lives in the World Trade Center.

Firmin, who retired in 1995 after 25 years in the Honolulu Fire Department, recently paid $400 for a dress uniform required for attendance to the New York event.

"To anybody that has been put into that predicament — walking into into a burning building and your brothers don't make it ... well, it means something to you," he said.

At 'Iao Intermediate School in Wailuku, Maui, 31 students and a group of chaperones are scheduled to join children's groups from around the world to perform Sept. 11 at the Smithsonian Mall in Washington, D.C.

They will sing the Hawaiian version of "Children Singing Peace Around the World," a song composed by Maui peace activist Dawn L. Ferguson and translated into 15 languages.

On the same day, the group will perform with the Washington Philharmonic Orchestra at another event on the Capitol lawn.

The Maui students, led by '?ao teacher, musician and peace advocate Lei'ohu Ryder, have also been invited to join International Children's Day of Peace ceremonies Sept. 17 at the United Nations in New York City.

"We hope to bring the message and medicine of aloha to the people of New York and Washington, D.C.," Ryder said.

The group has been fund-raising since the surprise invitation was received in the spring.

Originally, as many as 60 students were planning to go but almost half dropped out for a variety of reasons, some because their parents feared another terrorist attack.

"These children are brave; they are heroes," Ryder said of the 31 making the journey. "They carry a message greater than their own voice. In their innocence, they recognize the importance of their mission, and their commitment to peace is at the highest level."

Maui publicist Bonnie Friedman is a native New Yorker who felt compelled to do something after the attacks. But what?

In a conversation with one of her clients, Olinda artist Jan Kasprzycki, an idea came to mind. "Here's to the Heroes" would be an art show on the anniversary of the attacks to benefit the children of firefighters in New York and on Maui.

The idea lost momentum — until Friedman met a New York City firefighter on a flight from Los Angeles to New York in December. She discovered his firehouse on Great Jones Street had lost 10 men on Sept. 11.

Moved by the conversation, Friedman left the man at the New York airport with a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, a copy of the Lord's Prayer in Hawaiian that a hula sister had given her, and a maile lei she had planned to take to the World Trade Center site.

But she knew she had to do more.

Back on Maui, she recruited a co-curator, interior designer Persis Hataria, formed a committee, did some networking and made the art show happen. All of the net proceeds will go to an endowment to provide education for the children of the 10 lost from Great Jones Street, as well as to the Maui Firefighters Relief Fund.

More than 70 artists have agreed to donate works for the event Sept. 11-15 at the Ka'ahumanu Center in Kahului. The opening reception will be at 6 p.m. Sept. 11.

After the trauma of Sept. 11, Farley, a journeyman carpenter and sometimes-documentary cameraman, also knew he had to do something. The desire to help was instilled in him working disaster relief on Kaua'i following hurricanes Iwa and Iniki and during the famine in Ethiopia.

Farley's "Gifts of Aloha" project was intended to help surviving family, emergency personnel and Ground Zero workers avoid a letdown following the Christmas holiday.

Farley and his volunteers arranged the Easter weekend distribution in New York City of 6,000 pounds of pineapples donated by Dole Foods, 300 pounds of fish from four companies and 5,000 lei donated by a multitude of floral companies.

"It was a miracle," he said. "It brought life to everybody. The people of Hawai'i don't know how much their gifts meant to the people of New York. They were saying the lei were the greatest gifts from anywhere in the world except for children's drawings."

Farley was invited back for the Ground Zero closing ceremonies at the end of May, and he brought 3,500 more leis and 5,000 individual flowers.

He will be returning for the Sept. 11 memorials, and his goal is to bring 25,000 lei.

Correction: To sponsor a T-shirt or donate the cost of a gift basket for Tim Farley's Gifts of Aloha, call 228-2745 or 220-3908. The phone numbers provided in a previous version of this story were incorrect.