LOVE STORIES
Chase led to marriage for 2 'hashers'

By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Staff Writer

Marla Mina and Steven Burrell, who met as members of the Aloha Hash House Harriers, were married March 7 in a sunset ceremony. Cramer Claxton photo

It didn't really matter who was chasing whom when they began dating.

The way they met was a rare connection in itself.

"We're hashers," Mina said. "We're in a hashing club."

A what?

"A drinking club with a running problem," she explained.

(In case you're wondering, hashing is an actual sport, or at least a social sport for a loosely organized group of people you could loosely call athletes. These two runners are part of the Aloha Hash House Harriers, one of several O'ahu hashing clubs that meet weekly to "chase the hare" leading the run and party at the end of the trail.)

The club is how Burrell and Mina ran into each other. And, given the nature of the politically incorrect hashers, it's not much of a shocker that Burrell was given the nickname "Peter Pansy" (because he resembles Robin Williams, who was in a movie based on Peter Pan), and Mina became "GW" (that's the polite version, you'll have to ask her for the details), which she now proudly displays on her license plate.

Mina was reluctant to date a fellow hasher, but there was something about him she liked, even if she did stick his phone number in a junk drawer at first. By July 3, 2003, she had called him, and their whirlwind courtship took off. Mina, a laboratory assistant and local girl at heart, decided to stop running after other guys and set her sights on this divorced military man from Maryland.

"He was very different, very gentle," she said. "He's such a special man." She liked the loving way he talked to his mom and his sisters on the phone. And she was impressed with his manners, especially when he hit it off so well with her parents at Thanksgiving.

He liked that she was so outgoing and friendly. And he respected that she had a hard life, raised two children as a single mom and worked her way out of public housing.

"She kind of impressed me when she told me her life story," he said.

Soon, Burrell asked Mina's Filipino father for her hand in marriage, and her father was so touched that he cried.

Burrell, 44, proposed at the end of February at Aaron's Atop the Ala Moana. They told the groom's sister they'd get married if she was in town, so two weeks later, they got hitched on a Sunday night in a sunset ceremony behind Duke's Outrigger Canoe Club on the beach in Waikiki. It was March 7, five days before the bride's 46th birthday.

"I just never thought I was ever going to get married," said the new Mrs. Burrell. "One thing led to another. Everything just worked out."

Then it worked out that the groom, a chief warrant officer handling maintenance on an Army boat, was deployed for two months to pick up a boat in Seattle and bring it back to Hawai'i.

Now that he's back, they will celebrate their marriage with about 150 guests at a July 3 reception. It will be exactly a year from when their courtship began. Two days later, they'll fly to the Mainland to visit family and friends.

For now, they're still sorting out RSVPs to the reception and trying to match the real names of fellow hashers with the alter-ego friends of Peter Pansy and GW.

Tanya Bricking Leach writes about relationships for The Advertiser. If you'd like her to tell your love story next, send the details to tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or call her at 525-8026.