Big Island service honored
By Hugh Clark
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
WAIMEA, Hawai'i — Norman Sakata, volunteer leader of Kona's acclaimed Coffee Cultural Festival, today will be named the community winner of the 2002 Richard Smart Community Achievement awards.
Advertiser library photo • Jan. 29, 1996
Sakata, who wears many hats in retirement from state regulatory work, also has been an advocate for the blind and is a long-time supporter of the memorial and educational benefits on behalf of the late Ellison Onizuka — the Kona astronaut killed in 1986 in the space shuttle Challenger disaster — whom Sakata once led as a Scoutmaster.
Norm Sakata, Ellison Onizuka's scoutmaster, looks through his scrapbook at Holualoa's Onizuka Store.
Five others, including long-time Merrie Monarch organizer Dorothy Thompson, will be honored in the 1:30 p.m. ceremonies at Parker Ranch headquarters. Smart was the late owner of Parker Ranch that is now managed by three trustees to create financing for four beneficiary groups he named before his death.
The Smart awards were launched in 1993 after his death two years earlier.
Sakata is the eighth special service winner, following the late Francine Duncan, medical inventor Earl Bakken, Aloha Festivals coordinator Gloriann Akau and James Kudo sharing the award in 1997, and the trio of winners in 2000 — the late Bill Cook and his wife, Patti, and the late Carol Rogers of the Kona Art Center.
Other winners to be recognized today in 1:30 p.m. tree-planting ceremonies are:
- Fair Wind Cruises and its president, Puhi Dant, for Distinguished Business for Environmental Protection.
- Thompson, Merrie Monarch Festival manager, for Distinguished Business for Cultural and Historic Preservation.
- Rodney Ito of Outrigger Waikoloa Beach for Distinguished Planning and Design.
- Retired radio figure Gene Erger of Waimea and former social worker Shigeko Chang of Hilo, co-winners of the Community Education award.
