EDITORIAL
George Chaplin: heart of a paper, community

It is no exaggeration to say that George Chaplin, through sheer force of will, picked up this struggling newspaper in the statehood year of 1959 and gave it life.

For the better part of three decades, Chaplin carried The Advertiser — and through it the larger community — on his shoulders. George Chaplin was, certainly, not without ego. He believed — no, he knew — that his talents and energy had to be shared beyond the four walls of the Newspaper Building.

Chaplin felt it was his duty to commit heart and soul to these Islands he had adopted as his own. And he did. From the groundbreaking 1973 Governor's Conference on the Year 2000, which he chaired, to his work in fostering and growing the University of Hawai'i and the East-West Center, Chaplin was at heart a community builder.

It was a role that, at times, made some of his journalistic colleagues uncomfortable. Journalists tend to see themselves as observers, not parti-cipants. That, plainly said, was simply not a big enough role for Chaplin.

It was entirely within Chaplin's personality to believe that tiny Hawai'i, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, should be the center of the world's attention. And he did his part to make that happen.

Fought for statehood

Actually, this work began even before he arrived here to take the reins of The Honolulu Advertiser in 1959. He had already made a name for himself with a series of editorials and articles urging statehood for Hawai'i. He was convinced that statehood was the first step toward greatness for these Islands.

And as soon as he got here, he also realized that the future of Hawai'i depended on making full use of the multi-ethnic, diverse talents of our population. The Advertiser had a reputation, not entirely undeserved, as being a race-baiting, conservative defender of the fading haole oligarchy.

Chaplin, encouraged totally by his publisher, Thurston Twigg-Smith, and his alter-ego, Managing Editor Buck Buchwach, set about to change all that. The rainbow of races, talents and backgrounds that make up Hawai'i quickly became woven into this state's story as told on the pages of The Advertiser.

From today's perspective, it is difficult to imagine what a revolutionary change that was. That effort is perhaps most vividly captured in the memory of Sen. Dan Inouye, who in 1962 decided to challenge kama'aina scion Benjamin F. Dillingham for the U.S. Senate. Dillingham, whose father sat on The Advertiser board, represented the best of what the haole elite had to offer.

Inouye was stunned to wake up one morning in late October of that year to discover The Advertiser had endorsed him for the Senate.

George Chaplin was also an internationalist. He believed Hawai'i had something to learn from Asia, and vice-versa. He traveled frequently to the Far East, reporting on and participating in various professional and journalistic activities. His reports from China, which he visited soon after it opened itself to visitors from the United States, were breathtaking in their detail and their optimism.

This same internationalist bent led Chaplin to be an early supporter of, and eventual board chairman for, the East-West Center.

With his broad, almost goofy smile and laconic South Carolina accent, Chaplin could come across as the avuncular editor lost deep in an office wildly stuffed with books, papers and memorabilia. But there was a tough streak in him as well; if a battle was to be engaged, it would be engaged fully.

The best example here, of course, was his running fight with longtime Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi, whom Chaplin opposed editorially (some argued excessively) in election after election. Fasi, of course, gave as good as he got, and at one point had the city haul the newspapers into federal court to challenge the Joint Operating Agreement between The Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The ultimate kibitzer

Considering the depth of his involvement in the newspaper and the community, it stunned many of Chaplin's friends and colleagues when he hung up his editor's hat and walked out of the newspaper's front door in 1986. He had plans: For the next several years he toiled on his book, "Presstime in Paradise," which told the story of The Advertiser from its founding in 1856 to 1995.

Always a self-described "kibitzer," Chaplin couldn't help pushing on issues he felt important. After retirement, he threw himself into the anti-gambling effort and appointed himself agent for Hawai'i in reporting to the rest of the world the controversy over, and the eventual ouster of, the former trustees of the Bishop Estate. He shipped packages of clippings and background materials to every major Mainland publication he knew, generating national publicity for this sea change in the Island scene.

Chaplin's full, full life ended yesterday at age 88. But make no mistake about it. In one way or another, he is, and always will be, looking over our shoulders, kibitzing.