1925 — 2003
Germaine's lu'au founder

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Staff Writer

Marcia Germaine came to Hawai'i as a tourist and ended up founding a multimillion-dollar business. Photo courtesy Germaine family

The "Germaine's 'Too Good to Miss' Luau" she founded in the early 1970s to entertain in the old Hawai'i way went on to become one of the biggest and most successful in the state, attracting 150,000 tourists annually. Germaine sold the business in 1986 for between $4 million and $6 million so she could care for her elderly parents.

Margaret Germano Mazurek — the name she dropped to become Marcia Germaine — came to Honolulu as a tourist in the late 1960s with a couple of suitcases and a few hundred dollars. She fell in love with the place and the idea of never leaving.

"She told her daughter to send all her things, and that was it," said her longtime comptroller and friend, Sharland Chun. "She had attended a baby lu'au and she said, 'Every tourist should experience this.' And that's how she started Germaine's. She wanted a lu'au with a different atmosphere than Waikiki."

From the early 1970s, when Germaine staged her first modest lu'aus at Sea Life Park, to the mid-1980s, when she sold the thriving company to the owner of Zippy's restaurants, she ran the business with determination and her own bold brand of aloha.

"She wasn't a businesswoman per se," said Chun. "She ran everything with her heart. When I first came here, we had no employment policies, no vacation, no sick leave. I asked her, 'What kind of vacation am I going to get?' and she said, 'You need vacation, take vacation.'

"I said, 'You can't run a company like that. We're going to get in trouble if we don't have policies.' "

The daughter of powerful Chicago labor union boss Joseph Germano, who helped found the U.S. Steelworkers union in the 1930s and '40s, Germaine had been her father's secretary before coming to Hawai'i and launching a new life as a recent divorcee in her mid-40s.

With Chun writing policies, and friend Kim Higa, a dietitian, as her vice president, Germaine hooked up with a Wahiawa catering company whose product and owner, Marian Harada, she liked, then hired the dancers from Pi'ilani Watkins' halau.

"He became her emcee, and she hired all his dancers," said Chun, who still works for the company. "He just trained them at his studio. Their daughters are dancing for us now. It's very family-oriented."

Higa remembers Germaine as a soft touch for even the most casual of acquaintances.

"One day I was in her office, and she got a phone call and she said, 'Where did I meet you?' and the lady said, 'Oh I worked for you a few years ago,' and Marcia said, 'How can I help you?' The lady said 'I'm dying of cancer and need $5,000' and Marcia just sent it — just like that.

"She did that often, a few hundred here, five hundred there. She would help anybody who came to her, whether they were really needy or not — she never checked.

"She was just too good, and people took advantage of her. I used to say something once in awhile and she said, 'Oh Kim, what goes around comes around.' So after a while, I kind of got used to it. You can't change her."

In the early years, Germaine would help emcee the lu'aus herself, and there are yellowed pictures in the family collection of a slim, dark-haired woman standing at the microphone in a '50s-style mu'umu'u. Later, when she developed lupus and diabetes, she became self-conscious about her looks and stepped more to the background, attending a lu'au only occasionally on leased property beyond Campbell Industrial Park, where the company still holds them today.

Germaine won intense loyalty from her employees, who would stay in touch years after she retired. Part of her great charm was the surprise element she brought to their lives.

"She was generous to a fault," said Chun. "I remember one time, I was at home and somebody came knocking at my door and they wanted to put a water purifier in my house. 'What, I never ordered this,' I told him, and he said, 'Well, your boss did.'

"She had read somewhere that everybody needed a water purifier, so she got one for herself and all her management staff."

Even in the last months of her life, Germaine wouldn't impose on others, even her two daughters. "She refused to have her daughters come and take care of her. That's the way she is," said Higa. "One has a flying phobia, and the other just adopted a granddaughter, and she felt the granddaughter needed her more. But she was so close to them. She talked to them every day on the phone."

Germaine is survived by daughters Sandra Walpole and Monica Gruszynski, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Thursday at Sacred Heart Church at 1701 Wilder Ave., with Mass at 11:30 a.m. Burial is at 1 p.m. at Hawaiian Memorial Park Cemetery. Casual attire.

Borthwick Mortuary is handling arrangements.

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