Hawai'i food maven Maili Frost Yardley

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Staff Writer

Maili Frost Yardley, 86, longtime Advertiser food columnist, author and member of the board of directors of the Kapi'olani Health Foundation, died yesterday morning at Wilcox Memorial Hospital on Kaua'i. She had been ill for the past three months, according to her daughter Louli Yardley of Punalu'u.

YARDLEY

During World War II, she was a member of the Women's Air Raid Defense; a memorable column she wrote from 1977 was "What did we eat during the war?" She met her future husband, Paul T. Yardley, in January of 1942 on a blind date and she fell in love with the quiet Navy man who, after the war, opened an appliance store.

When she lived on O'ahu, Yardley was a full-time homemaker active in her church, St. Andrew's Cathedral, and was a member of the Daughters of Hawai'i, the Friends of 'Iolani Palace, the Honolulu Garden Club. She campaigned for the restoration of 'Iolani Palace. A primary focus of her charitable work was the Kap'iolani Medical Center for Women & Children; a museum there that she had long worked to create opened last year and was dedicated to her.

She and her husband moved to Lawai, Kaua'i, in 1973, where they built a home on a hill situated so as to catch the breezes; her kitchen opened right onto a lanai where they entertained. In retirement, Paul took up painting and Maili continued to write, working in a sunny, quiet, book-lined room at the rear of the house.

Yardley was part-Hawaiian on her mother's side and, in her columns, often reminisced about visiting her grandmother's home on Bates Street in Nu'uanu — catching 'opae in Nu'uanu stream, the back yard filled with fruit, the breadfruit poi that always sat on the kitchen table covered with an old rice bag. She said she regretted that she hadn't listened closer when the older women spoke in Hawaiian and had not learned the language.

"I was truly blessed with the best of two worlds: the old Hawaiian ways and an awakening Honolulu," she wrote. And this was her gift to her readers.

"It wasn't the recipes so much, it was that she represented a lifestyle and a time that doesn't exist anymore and she kind of chronicled it through food," said food writer Kaui Philpotts, a friend and former Advertiser food editor. "She was an authority on things like poi suppers. Poi suppers sort of epitomized the way she entertained and her era, that hapa-haole kind of slower lifestyle — gracious, privileged."

Yardley wrote The Island Way column for The Advertiser food section from 1977 to 1994. Her daughter, Louli, recalled that Yardley was dedicated to her readers: "She never left a letter unanswered." Similarly, she maintained a prolific correspondence with friends all over the world.

In her typical way, Yardley's writing career began with a service project, a slim fund-raising cookbook she created for St. Andrew's Cathedral. It was called "Kitchen Scriptures" and appeared sometime in the 1960s. The book was followed by her first cookbook, "Hawai'i Cooks" (Charles Tuttle Press) in 1970; it is now a collector's item.

She wrote 14 books altogether, including five cookbooks; several histories, including a history of what was then Kapi'olani Hospital, and a life of Helen Kapililani Sanborn Davis; and a novel, released last year, "Letters from The Lanai". This novel is a sweet story about an old-fashioned romance.

"I'd had cookbooks up to there," Yardley said in an interview with The Advertiser, "so I thought I'd try something new. I wanted to preserve old Hawai'i and I didn't quite know how to do it."

Yardley is survived by her husband, Paul T., of Lawai; her daughter, Laura, son-in-law John Pavia, of Lawai; son William "Frosty" and daughter-in-law Marci of Waimea, Hawai'i; daughter Louli and son-in-law Bill Guy of Punalu'u; sister Kina Claire Frost Fields of Sydney, Australia; and five grandchildren

Services are tentatively scheduled for 5 p.m. Saturday at St. Micheal and All Angels Episcopal Church, Lihue, Kaua'i. Plans for an O'ahu memorial service are pending.