Police honor all who died in line of duty
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Last night the Honolulu Police Department honored their own who had died while on duty, and extended the remembrance to those throughout the country who had died in the service of others.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Donna Borengasser, longtime companion of officer Dannygriggs Padayao, who was killed while setting out flares at a traffic accident last year, told the officers gathered at St. Andrew's Cathedral that they were all heroes.
Donna Borengasser, right, puts a lei around the photo of longtime companion officer Dannygriggs M. Padayao, who died in the line of duty. Padayao's sister, Gigi Macion, looks on at the service at St. Andrew's Cathedral.
"I looked up the definition of hero," Borengasser said. "A hero is an ordinary person who does something extraordinary."
Officers who offer words of comfort and assurance to injured traffic victims as they wait for the ambulance to arrive are heroes, she said. Those who go to the home of the lonely old woman who reports a suspected burglary every week — even though there is never a burglar — are heroes, she said.
Chaplain Vince O'Neill said Americans had, for the past several decades, forgotten that heroes lived within their ranks. Recent events made them visible again.
The remembrance was extended to include members of all law enforcement agencies at all levels of government. Firefighters who died in the line of duty were remembered, as were military men and women who offered their lives in service to the country.
Police Chief Lee Donohue said one of the men who died at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 attacks, Army Maj. Cole Hogan, was a former member of the Honolulu Police Department.
Chaplain Lon Eckdahl read the list of HPD officers who had died in the line of duty, beginning with Constable Kaaulana, killed in 1851, and ending with Padayao. There were 35 names in between.
Some of the officers had been shot by snipers, drug dealers or escaping prisoners. Many more were killed while performing traffic duties; a large percentage of that group served as motorcycle cops.
The memorial service, held in honor of Police Week, is an annual event. And it doesn't get any easier as the years pass, Donohue said afterward.
One of the men on the list of Honolulu officers killed in the line of duty had been a lifelong friend, the chief said. Several were men who served under him. Duties that exposed those officers to danger are duties Honolulu police officers continue to perform each day.
The difficulty of remembering showed in the eyes and faces of many of those who gathered at St. Andrews last night.
"But it is good," Donohue said, "to remember."
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or at kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
