74 years later, valedictorian returns home

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Time has been kind to Auntie Marie and it shows in the smile on her face.

Ninety-five-year old Marie Rasmussen will return to Kohala High School on the Big Island today to address her alma mater's homecoming assembly. A picture of her when she was in high school is displayed behind her. She was valedictorian in 1929. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

But even after a September birthday party attended by 500 people and a stack of accolades from congressmen, the governor, the mayor, legislators and educators, Marie Ahai Akone Rasmussen felt something was missing from her life.

She wanted to return to her high school alma matter with a message for the students of Kohala High School.

That will happen this morning at the Big Island school's homecoming assembly.

Rasmussen has not been on the campus since she gave her valedictorian speech in 1929. The school didn't even have a typewriter then, she said. Now it has a Web site.

The generation gap — 74 years, a lifetime for many — may sound daunting, but Rasmussen has prepared a 20-minute speech. And her nephew, psychologist Wiliama Coward, coached her on a bit of youthful lingo.

"I told her to say, 'You're the bomb,' " Coward said.

Rasmussen's message to the students is drawn from her own life: Dream big and work hard and success will be yours.

"My parents always said, education will be your father and mother in later years," Rasmussen said as she sat in her nephew's home. "It's the truth."

Rasmussen grew up on O'ahu and moved with her family to Kohala in 1923.

Those were simple times. Rasmussen often rode a horse to the lush, green Kohala campus. In high school, she was a top student and played sports, captaining the girls basketball team and playing volleyball and baseball.

"I just loved that school," she said.

Her dream was to become a nurse, which she did after attending the University of California at Berkeley and the St. Francis School of Nursing.

But something funny happened in her first few years back in the Islands. She was asked to teach.

After a few jobs, she opened the 'Alewa Nursery and Day Care Center in 1952. For nearly five decades she devoted her life to early childhood development and generations of the center's young students.

She planted the seeds of dreams and their laughter kept her young.

"The children were wonderful," she said. "I was a teacher and a grandma to them."

That relationship forged a bond that still exists for many of them, now grown up with children and grandchildren of their own.

"Today you see them around at different offices," she said. "I know where they are, and they remember me, too."

They've treated Rasmussen as her doctor and those preschoolers-turned-lawyers have helped with legal advice, she said.

Rasmussen became godmother to six of them and remembers the college students who would come home from Mainland studies, seek her out and request one of her trademark daycare lunches: creamed tuna.

"Those children were well taken care of," she said. "And even when their parents were sick and couldn't bring their children to school, I'd say, 'You bring them. I am not here for money. I am here for the education of the child.' "

And years later, decades even, those grown-up toddlers sometimes see her at a grocery store or a mall and pay the bill.

All this is what she will bring to the Kohala High School campus today.

Coward said Rasmussen will try to give back something to "a little community" that did so much, so long ago, to set her life on the path to success. He hopes his aunt — the nicest person he says he has ever met — will inspire the students.

"If you want to be that nurse or doctor, pursue it with every ounce of stamina you have," Coward said. "Love yourself. Believe in yourself. And reach out to your supporters."

Rasmussen has no idea how the Kohala students will feel about her message. Some of them won't care, and she knows that.

"They have to have someone explain to them that education will help with your dreams," she said. "I guess they'll understand. It's up to them to take it from you."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.