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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, January 30, 2003

A final aloha to Gladys Brandt

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Staff Writer

Gladys Kamakakuokalani 'Ainoa Brandt joined the ages today, leaving behind a sorrowing community and a heritage that embraced and molded a century of contemporary Hawai'i history.

Members of Hale o Na Ali'i o Hawai'i benevolent society conclude a papahana kumakena, or service of mourning, for Gladys Kamakakuokalani 'Ainoa Brandt at Kawaiaha'o Church. Her funeral yesterday ended a long vigil.

Bruce Asato • the Honolulu Advertiser

Her lifetime spanned the final remnants of Hawai'i's monarchical past and a cultural rebirth, serving as a mirror that reflected the loss of Native Hawaiian culture and its rekindling, in which she played a major role.

Capping an unprecedented three days of services that honored her ali'i past, hundreds gathered at Kawaiaha'o Church yesterday afternoon, through the twilight and into darkness, to mourn and to celebrate a life that stood for uncompromising spirit, justice and dignity.

Brandt died Jan. 15 at the age of 96.

"She held fast to the hope-filled belief that the way of the new century would be illuminated by the enduring values of our past — aloha, pono, lokahi, ikaika," said Neil J. Kaho'okele Hannahs of Kamehameha Schools in his remembrance. "She told us that 'These are the values that kept us alive in the dark shadows of history. And these are the values that assure our future survival and well-being.' "

Throughout a windy day that drizzled with occasional rain — a Hawaiian blessing — mourners said farewell in a 24-hour stream through the downtown Honolulu church built by missionaries. U.S. Judge Samuel King eulogized his longtime friend as someone who brooked little nonsense but had a soft and kolohe — rascal — heart.

"She enjoyed recounting how she tamed school bullies," King said, "but she never dwelt on the many ways she helped salvage problem lives. She also never dwelt on the many careers she helped to advance."

The great and the small sat shoulder to shoulder to honor her memory. Prominent ali'i descendant Abigail Kekaulike Kawananakoa, Gov. Linda Lingle, former Govs. Ben Cayetano and George Ariyoshi, Chief Justice Ronald Moon, trustees of the Kamehameha Schools, tourists who wandered in and hundreds more crowded the church where Hawai'i's kings and queens once worshipped.

By midafternoon the comfortable music of a backyard, rubber-slipper kanikapila session, offered by some of Hawai'i's most popular entertainers, drifted past the soaring columns as friends and family gathered from all over the Islands for a last moment with a good friend.

For Ethel Leimomi Buchanan, who had known Auntie Gladys since small-kid days, these were honors fit for the queen that Buchanan felt Brandt was.

"Growing up, she and her husband were dear friends of my parents, Joseph and Anna Palama of Kaua'i," said Buchanan, 81, "and I used to admire her for whatever she did for the community. She has so much will and power. Whatever's on her mind she knew she was going to get it for her people."

Compilation of memories

The Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai'i is compiling memories of Gladys Brandt from people throughout the community. Those who wish to add to the collection, which will be presented to her family, may e-mail them to: chsuhm@hawaii.edu.

Born into a strong-willed family, Brandt used her strength of will to become a leader in the education community, first on Maui and Kaua'i and later on O'ahu at Kamehameha Schools, and then in the community at large. She served as a trustee of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, of 'Aha Punana Leo, of the University of Hawai'i. She was Hawai'i's first woman public school principal; the first woman district superintendent; and the first woman of Native Hawaiian ancestry to serve as a principal at Kamehameha Schools.

But Brandt's enduring legacy will be as one of the voices of the "Broken Trust" article that in the late 1990s helped topple the former Bishop Estate trustees who came under a cloud of fiscal and academic mismanagement.

Her legacy will also be as one of the sinewy roots that reclaimed Hawaiian culture and values over the last half-century. As principal at Kamehameha School for Girls from 1963, she bucked the trustees to re-establish — and honor — standing hula.

In the years since, hula halau and internationally recognized hula festivals have flourished around this living tradition, with young people from Wai'anae to California and beyond becoming reacquainted with a cultural consciousness.

That cultural consciousness was hers, as well, and it grew through her early years when young Hawaiians were forced to deny their heritage, coming full circle to a recognition that to be Hawaiian was to be part of a proud line of voyagers and explorers who settled the Pacific under harsh conditions.

"As we sit here in remembrance today," Hannahs said, "we need to understand that Auntie Gladys had high hopes and expectations of us. She said, 'By working together to integrate our values and practices into the fabric of mankind's modern existence, Hawai'i will serve as a beacon to the world in setting the standard for life in communities characterized by diversity.' "

Puanani Rogers, a member of a Kaua'i unit of Hale o Na Ali'i, waits her turn in standing guard over the ashes of Gladys Brandt.

Bruce Asato • the Honolulu Advertiser

With Gladys Brandt in the wings, and later on the board, the Punana Leo Hawaiian language immersion grew and flourished. With Gladys Brandt on the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents, the Center for Hawaiian Studies was born on the Manoa campus. Last year it was named in her honor.

"We saw here, not merely a cementing of stone and mortar," Brandt said then, "but a cementing of our promises and dreams — our promises to honor the memory and preserve the values and traditions of our kupuna — our dreams that our young people, touched by this center, would come to know their ancestors, understand their identity, perpetuate our culture."

As outspoken as she was, Brandt rarely spoke of something deeply personal, her successful fight against breast cancer 30 years ago. But it led to an intense involvement as a supporter and fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society, Hawai'i Pacific. Monetary gifts received at the services will go toward an American Cancer Society Chair in Clinical Trials to be established at the Cancer Research Center of the University of Hawai'i.

"She raised so much money for us," said former state Rep. Jackie Young, now a spokeswoman for the cancer society. "She was the one who had lunch with Barbara Cox Anthony and asked her for $1 million — and got it — to keep the Honolulu center maintained over the years."

But yesterday's final goodbye celebrated her boundless spirit almost as much as it did her intense dedication to children, educational institutions and programs, the university, cancer society, and so many others.

It was Hannahs who told about the commotion a night earlier just as the solemn processional by members of Hale O Na Ali'i brought her ashes into the church.

"A pueo — owl — lit in the tree just back of the sanctuary," Hannahs said. "The church staff had no recollection of such a sighting in recent memory."

They concluded, Hannahs said, that it was Brandt's longtime friend, the late Monsignor Charles Kekumano, one of the co-authors of "Broken Trust," who had come to take her with him. Not long ago Brandt supervised the installation of an 8-foot statue of a pueo outside the cancer society headquarters in Kekumano's honor, even directing the crane operator how to set it up.

But it was Judge King who put it succinctly when he said that his wonderful friend did not like lengthy recitations.

"I can hear her now saying, 'Sam, keep it short,' " he said. " 'And not too gloomy.' "

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.