By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Gladys Brandt will be remembered for all the big things she did: policy and politics, ideas and ideals, all the boards and committees on which she served. But her influence was also very personal. She made a difference one-on-one.

Domingo Los Baños, now 77, is one who credits Mrs. Brandt with changing his life. His first official job after college was as basketball coach and athletic director at Kapa'a High School on Kaua'i. It was 1950, and Mrs. Brandt was his principal. From the start, she saw something in him, demanded more of him.

"It was like getting orders from a general," says Los Baños, a World War II veteran. "Never mind how it was going to get done, just get it done.

"She was a person who liked to micromanage," says Baños. He says this with admiration, not complaint. "She liked to have her fingers in things, and she liked to check things off. So what I did, as athletic director, I provided her with the checklist of what I was supposed to do! After that, we got along real nicely."

Pretty soon, Mrs. Brandt was assigning Los Baños to tasks outside his area of expertise. He would oversee events such as graduation and May Day, and liaise with the community. "What I learned from Mrs. Brandt is, if you do something for the public, it gotta be spit and polish."

"One day she said, Domingo, come with me. Let's go to this workshop on economic education. Now, I'm in physical education. She's bringing me to a summer workshop on putting a curriculum together to teach teachers how to teach economics."

Sure enough, Los Baños was then put in charge of implementing the business curriculum in the schools. When he told Mrs. Brandt he still had three years left on his GI Bill and wanted to go to graduate school at Columbia University, she promised to hold his job for him. When he came back, she pushed him into a course on becoming a school administrator. "All I wanted to do was run a good physical education program. Next thing I knew, I was principal at Anahola School!" Soon after, Los Baños won a fellowship in school administration at Stanford University. Mrs. Brandt's vision for him was becoming a reality.

When Mrs. Brandt left Kapa'a, she insisted that Los Baños take her place as principal. He later took her place as superintendent of schools for Leeward O'ahu. "Because of what Mrs. Brandt did for me, I had so many varied experiences. I never had it in my mind to do all the things I ended up doing."

Today, Los Baños travels to Washington, D.C., to see his labor of love for the past eight years, the documentary "An Untold Triumph" presented at the Smithsonian. He is sad that he won't be able to attend the memorial services for Mrs. Brandt, but he is comforted that she was in the audience the night the film premiered in Hawai'i and that it met with her approval. "In everything I do," he says, "I always think of Mrs. Brandt."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.