HAWAIIAN STYLE
Following instincts gave wing to woman's ambition

By Wade "Kilohana" Shirkey

KAILUA, KONA — Her dream took flight, unlike the proverbial one, on TWO wings and a prayer. And caught the eye of the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs in the process.

INABA

"Ninety percent of the decisions of this company have been by (my) na'au — that's a very Hawaiian mindset," she said. This "gut feeling" has never been wrong.

For the hapa-haole Inaba, Hawaiianness comes naturally. Her father, Horace, of the well-known Blanche Pope family, lived in Papakolea, she explained, "where his parents wouldn't want the young Pope to 'go jump the fence'" and play with the Hawaiians.

Eventually he did, she said, and brought home not only a Hawaiian-Chinese-haole wife (her mom, Lydia), but "Hawaiian kids as well."

"He was always proud of (his family's) Hawaiianness and made sure they would be proud of their culture,"

Inaba said. "Dad was always adamant about that — the Hawaiian part (in our consciousness) had to come first," she said.

"He wasn't Hawaiian, but his kids were." And he had an admiration for the culture that a younger Inaba didn't always appreciate.

"Pass the pa'akai," he'd say, motioning at the salt. "Oh, Dad," his hapa daughter would admonish. "This is the '80s!"

Eventually, a maturing Inaba realized that the sum of the parts — haole and Hawaiian — far surpassed either alone. But on applications, given a choice between Hawaiian, Caucasian and "other," she would choose Hawaiian.

Before applications even offered that choice, the young Inaba would cross out "white" and write "Hawaiian." Her blood may have been half white, but her heart was fully Hawaiian.

Growing up, all the seemingly divergent parts gelled into a spirit of determined entrepreneurship: "I was part-white. I was part-Hawaiian. I was a woman."

What she wanted to be was a businesswoman. None of the rest were obstacles, she said — they were just who she was. And what she was, was determined.

After graduation from Konawaena High School, she followed in her father's footsteps. Captain Horace Pope was a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines, and among the first to make the jump from interisland DC-3s to DC-9s in the late '60s.

At 23, as a part-time Aloha Airlines agent, she was happy but unfulfilled.

"I wanted more," she said. "There I sat on a golf cart, boarding passengers, tickets in their pockets, the plane revving its engines, and I thought, 'One day I'm gonna fly that thing!' "

A year later, in 1989, she had her private pilot's license, working the midnight shift so she could travel to Maui for flying lessons.

Sadly, her pilot father had died the preceding March and never saw her accomplishment. "He'd be proud," she said.

By 1996, her experience had run the aviation gamut: private pilot's license, instrument rating, commercial rating, flight instrument certificate. She was on her way. And now she owned an airplane.

She quickly added teaching and flying private tours to her repertoire, and in May of this year, interisland service.

Now 39, with children under her wings as well, she made them into "kama'aina" tours.

"See Hawai'i through the eyes of a Hawaiian," was her lure.

Soon Mokulele — the word means "airplane" — had a fleet of four planes and 18 employees.

Daily commuter service soon followed. "Tours are a luxury, but interisland service is a necessity," she said.

Inaba had proved what her na'au had told her: "You don't have to be one haole to be one pilot, to have those stripes on your shoulder." Or, a man, for that matter.

"I'm so proud to be a Hawaiian girl and be a success — and still go beach and hang. This is my way of making a statement" for fellow Hawaiians, Inaba said. "You can do it, too!"

"Taking Hawaiian values and applying it to the Western business world — that's how I treat my employees and demand that they treat the customer," she said. "This business is not about being Hawaiian, but Hawaiian at heart."

Now, with a business built on two wings and a prayer, the young Hawaiian businesswoman soaring into the world of island aviation takes as much pride in saying, "I did it" as being able to say one other thing: "He Hawai'i au: I am Hawaiian."

The Advertiser's Wade Kilohana Shirkey is kumu of Na Hoaloha No'eau o Ka Roselani hula halau at Kawaiaha'o Church.