Looking forward to Easter sunrise
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer
When she was a little girl, Vera Estes would wake in the dark before dawn on Easter Sundays.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
That was more than seven decades ago, but she still recalls bundling up, the redolence of hot buns from Young's Bakery permeating the air. She'd head from her home on North School Street to the base of Punchbowl. There, helped along by Boy Scouts from the nearby Pilgrim Church, she and other Easter sojourners made their way to the Miller Street path up the rugged slopes of Punchbowl, grabbing at haole koa along the way to steady their steps.
Paul Phillips and Vera Estes view the city from Punchbowl, where they remember Easter sunrises of small-kid time.
At the summit of Punchbowl — the old volcanic cone known to Hawaiians as Puowaina, or Hill of Sacrifice — a crowd of hundreds would greet Hawai'i's most-watched sunrise in an Easter service that, talking about it today, still gives her chicken skin.
This year, Punchbowl celebrates its 102nd Easter sunrise with what continues to be the largest ecumenical service in the Islands. For Estes, 77, however, those Easters from small-kid time are the ones that resonate in her memory.
There were no chairs for the weary back in the 1930s, of course. Everyone stood, facing a huge white cross erected by boys from Kameha-
meha Schools the previous Palm Sunday. People would be whispering their hellos and catching up on family news when a sudden hush would fall over the crowd.
That's when the first soft strains of organ music were heard. As all eyes turned toward the eastern sky, "we saw a little glimpse of light," Estes said, noting that was the very moment the band would cue the hymn, "Christ the Lord Has Risen Today."
"Then everybody turned and hugged each other."
Surely it was a sight very different from today's observation deck at the apex of the federally run cemetery, one so geographically unique that its landscaping takes into account the area's 14 different weather patterns. And even after the cross ran afoul of church-state separatists in 1995, the Rev. Charles Buck said, the magic of the early sunrise services lives on to this day.
"I guess the service really does make an impression on people," said Buck, a United Church of Christ minister who has been attending for the past seven years. "It's timed to start at 6:15 a.m., and the sun tends to break through the clouds about the same time as the declaration 'Jesus has risen' is being said in the Scripture reading.
"It's almost always cloudy, but the sun always manages to come through. I'm not going to tell you why that happens."
While attendance is down from its peak of 7,000 in the 1970s and '80s, the history of this annual service is as resplendent as the 'ohi'a, lush bougainvillea and blooming cactus that now thrive there.
The history can be traced to the beginning of the past century. Felix Tranquada, a social worker, learned that boys in his Sunday school class had a hide-out on the crater rim of Punchbowl. Inspired, he led his class by lantern light up the trail above Prospect Street, where they would camp. At dawn, he would conduct sunrise services.
"From this modest beginning has developed a community sunrise service on Puowaina that is world- renowned," reads Tranquada's obituary. He died in 1955 at age 84.
Johnny Martin, a YMCA youth worker, has been credited with bringing Punchbowl's sunrise service to the larger community. A program from the 1921 service noted that a floral cross was "affectionately dedicated" to his memory, and said he was "untiring in his efforts to make it a real Easter pilgrimage for people of all nationalities and creeds."
The senior member of Hawai'i's congressional delegation, Sen. Dan Inouye, was among those who hiked it as a boy on Easter Sunday before the cemetery was built, his press secretary Mike Yuen said.
Inouye's churchgoing ways were influenced by his mother, Kame Inouye, a Methodist.
"Easter was a special day in our family," Inouye said.
The service today draws about 1,000 people who drive up the paved road built in the 1940s, with neatly tended lawns on either side. Tourists often hear about the Easter service from their concierges and catch the two special shuttles from Waikiki, departing as early as 5:15 a.m. Public-address systems transmit the message this year from Chaplain Jeffrey Rhodes, deputy chaplain for Marine Forces Pacific.
Rhodes was told he wasn't the first choice to lead this year's service. A certain former president and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner was.
"It's OK to be second team to Jimmy Carter," Rhodes said. "I don't feel bad about that at all."
Buck said they received "a very courteous response back" from Carter, but "we're going to keep trying."
Carter will be teaching Sunday school today at his 132-member home church, Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., according to Pastor Dan Ariail, who said that last Easter, with Carter teaching, 10,784 visitors came to Plains.
The Rev. Frank Chong, who led one of the Punchbowl services in the 1970s that drew 7,000 people, as well as a recent one about a third of that size, said the Punchbowl service of yesteryear was the major one for mainline Protestants. In the past 15 years, Easter sunrise services proliferated, and now they take place in parks and beaches from Makua to Kailua.
Still, Punchbowl remains a favorite.
"It's quite spectacular, because you sit on the steps facing Diamond Head, the service starts when it's still kind of dark, but by the time it ends, the sun is rising over Koko Head and you see the whole city skyline change," he said. "The view is almost 180 degrees, and it's just beautiful on an Easter morning to see that."
Paul Phillips, 80, of Kailua, was probably one of those Boy Scouts way back then helping little girls like Estes up the slope.
Though he hasn't made that arduous uphill trek to Punchbowl's sunrise service in years, "I still have fond, fond memories of it, during the pioneering days," he recalled with a laugh.
As a Cub Scout, Phillips and his pack would gather at their headquarters before dawn, then position themselves along the Prospect Street trail — one of several different routes, if his memory serves.
"As you grew in rank, you moved up to the top," he said. "Just like everything else!"
He doesn't remember putting out his hand to many little ones.
"Moreso, it was the seniors," he said. "Usually the kids would scamper up there like goats. Later, it was by car, though the courageous ones went up by trail. By then, the novelty had worn off."
Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8035.
