HAWAIIAN STYLE
Airport to bring back volcano fountain
Elephants, they say, never forget.
Advertiser library photo
Apparently, neither do airport planners.
The volcano fountain at Honolulu International Airport was demolished more than 30 years ago. Airport officials have announced plans for a new fountain to be built, promising to restore the airport's landscape to "postcard material."
They're finally making good on a promise more than 30 years old: bringing back the old airport volcano fountain.
" I remember seeing the fountain in the mid '60s (while on military R&R)," said airport district manager Benjamin R. Schlapak.
"Of course, at night, it was kind of a landmark," Schlapak said, recalling how the spurting water came ablaze in a cataclysmic light show of volcanic reds, oranges and yellows.
By the time Schlapak returned here in the early '70s to begin a career as chief planner for the state airports division, a tangle of freeway overpasses had begun to gobble up great parts of the airport entrance's lawn, including its signature volcano fountain.
The fountain joined other beloved landmarks lost in the name of progress: Trader Vics, Cocos, Civic Auditorium, The Biltmore and the Dole Pineapple. Postcards depicting the fountain remained on Waikiki drugstore racks for years.
No sooner had freeway construction reduced the fountain to a pile of lava rock rubble than the adoring public demanded the fountain back. Airport planners promised it would return.
So firm was the planners' intent, said Schlapak, that the fountain's lava rocks were saved.
"Of course, by now they've probably become part of some garden treatment," he joked.
When it was built in the early '60s, the fountain was the focal point of the new, clean, modern, spacious airport built "to usher in Hawai'i's jet age," said Schlapak.
The official name of the fountain was the Arthur Godfrey Fountain, a forging of that well-known radio and television star's love of aviation and of his adopted Hawai'i.
"He was the initial marketer for Hawai'i tourism," said Schlapak. Godfrey made a monetary contribution to support construction of the fountain, he said.
It opened in March 1963, designed by Richard C. Tongg, the noted island landscape architect whose work graces other landmarks such as the University of Hawai'i's Krauss Hall and the Kokokahi YWCA's Friendship Garden.
The $30,000 lava-rock masterpiece featured a central "volcanic plume" cascading over rock slopes, surrounded by seven smaller spouts. The larger pool, said Tongg, "designed to convey the feeling of the Islands," represented the Pacific Ocean; the smaller ones, one for each of the major islands, were to suggest water washing up on Island shores.
The fountain put on its watery show from 7:45 a.m. to midnight daily and became a city landmark.
This year's planned airports division celebration of the 100th anniversary of powered flight — the Wright Brothers' historic Kitty Hawk flight of Dec. 17, 1903 — offered airport planners the perfect chance to fulfill that promise.
Schlapak test-marketed the concept with mockups and pictures of the old fountain and its proposed replacement, drawing enthusiastic responses. It will be built slightly makai and diamondhead of its original location.
Schlapak said the new fountain will honor the spirit of the old.
"We should stick with something like Arthur Godfrey had," he said. "It'll be a decent water fountain and lights. The (central airport) gardens and the fountain will again be postcard material. Those are the (airport's) classic signatures."
A Hawaiian blessing will be arranged — remember, they're moving pohaku (rocks) — as airport dignitaries throw the switch sometime next year, at a site at the end of John Rogers Boulevard.
The most amazing thing about the fountain, said Schlapak, is that the beloved landmark lived in the minds and hearts of the public for more than 30 years.
"We promised to give it back — and we are," he said.
The Advertiser's Wade Kilohana Shirkey is kumu of Na Hoaloha O Ka Roselani No'eau at Kawaiaha'o Church. He writes on island life.
