Ruth Duff, 87, Big Island developer
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawaii — Ruth Miller Duff, a real estate broker and founder of the Kalapana Gardens and Nanawale Estates subdivisions in Puna on the Big Island, died Dec. 16 at Hilo Medical Center. She was 87.
Duff was born in Indiana on Dec. 24, 1915. She developed the Kalapana Gardens subdivision of about 725 house lots on 160 acres in 1968, shortly before the death of her husband John.
Lava from Kilauea Volcano began pouring into the subdivision in 1986, finally destroying it and the nearby village of Kalapana in 1990.
Big Island Mayor Harry Kim called Duff "a very special lady" who lost her own home and a good deal of other property in the 1990 flows, but accepted her losses "with the greatest of grace. Not at any time do I remember her showing any self-pity."
The videotape of the burning of Duff's home on Beach Road provided some of the best-known and most dramatic images depicting the destruction of Kalapana in 1990.
"She had a special love of Puna, a special love especially for the Kalapana area, and she showed it with her grace," Kim said.
Duff also had a hand in helping some of the others who were displaced by the eruption.
After the Kalapana Mauna Kea Congregational Church was destroyed by the lava, Duff helped arrange a donation of land for a new church site in the Nanawale Estates subdivision near Pahoa, and donated money for the church rebuilding effort.
"She said that part of her had left with the church when the church went up in the lava flow," said Bernice McKeague, who was moderator of the Kalapana church when the flow destroyed it. The church was later renamed the Kalapana Mauna Kea First Hawaiian Congregational Church.
"She was a really nice lady, kind, and she really loved the people in the gardens because that's where she lived, in Kalapana," McKeague said.
Duff is survived by her daughter Nancy of Berkeley, Calif.; sons William of Banning, Calif., and John Jr. of New York City; and hanai son Paolo D'oro of Berkeley, Calif.; and two grandchildren.
Friends may call from 8 to 10 a.m. Monday at Dodo Mortuary Chapel in Hilo; service at 10, with burial to follow at the Hawaii Veterans Cemetery No. 1 in Hilo.
