By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

"Kolohe" means rascal in Hawaiian. That's what Bill Kea was at the Kamehameha Schools. But it wasn't he who blew up the school's new chemistry laboratory. The last ROTC court-martial at Kamehameha wasn't his fault, either.

The point is, stories like that shouldn't be buried with him, because they contain so much history that goodie two-shoes students forget to tell.

He was 96 when he died this month, the last of his class of 1927. To see his affable smile as vice president of public relations at Hawaiian Telephone over the years, you'd never guess he had been a terror on the old Kamehameha campus.

Kea enrolled at Kamehameha in the first grade. In those days, Kea said, the school supervised everything — such as when students should have their tonsils out and when they should be circumcised. As a boarding student in primary school, he had no idea why they were taking him to the hospital.

A nurse, who told him to undress, put a chloroform mask over his face. He passed out. On the way back to the campus, he felt a pain and it wasn't in the area of his tonsils. Then he knew what had happened to him. Kea looked on the bright side. He still got to eat ice cream.

Kamehameha was run along military lines and Kea said he participated in the last court-martial held at the school.

One of the teachers had a habit of sneaking up on students to catch them in "flagrante delicto" — in the act. Because of her stealth, they nicknamed her Popoki after the Hawaiian word for cat.

One day Kea had brought his laundry bag down to the steps of the dormitory to be picked up. A stray cat crawled out from under the steps.

Kea tempted it with the string of his laundry bag, calling: "Here, puss, puss, puss."

The sneaky teacher happened to be walking by with two others. She assumed the worst, that Kea was tormenting her, and went to the adjutant general of the ROTC who called a court-martial to hear the evidence. Student attorneys appeared for Kea and the teacher. He was acquitted.

One of the teachers printed the church bulletin with hand-set type. Kea worked as his assistant. This was during World War I when students grew victory gardens. The teacher caught Kea helping a friend make his bed instead of tending his victory garden.

The teacher took a stick to punish Kea. Kea got a stick and fought back like Errol Flynn in movies. Then he went on strike. That week there was no church bulletin.

After he was ordered to turn on the gas in the new chemistry lab, three explosions blew out the windows and doors.

Kea said he already had his bags packed when everyone learned that in building the lab, careless carpenters hadn't capped the gas jets before boarding them over.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.