Aunty Bella's hula legacy not forgotten
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer
KAILUA — Twenty years after her death, the impact that kumu hula Aunty Bella Richards had on the community and her students still resonates. On Sunday, students who have felt the wrath of her discipline and love in her heart will gather to reminisce and maybe do a little hula.
Having taught for about 40 years until her death at age 57, Emily Rosabella Kawehionapua Richards was also the first honorary mayor of Kailua and collaborated with Shigeru Hotoke on productions that took the Kailua High School Madrigals around the world.
As a hula instructor, Aunty Bella touched the lives of thousands of students in her studio on Kalama Street and at the high school. She started to teach as a means to overcome loneliness after moving to O'ahu once she married William Richards in Hilo where she grew up. Military officers' wives and children of Japanese farmers were her first students.
"She had a specific talent to bring out the best in kids in her own way," said Hotoke, 77, who along with Aunty Bella took a small group of students to different countries — including Africa, India and Afghanistan — to entertain each summer. They worked together for about 20 years with as many as 500 students at a time, he said. "She was a disciplinarian, but they all loved her."
Her hula shows were lively and colorful, often taking groups of girls out to entertain at parties, for veterans groups and weddings.
Her husband, sister Lehua Kamalamalama and brother Sonny Maluo played music for the performances. Later her son William Jr. and niece Alberta Kamalamalama joined the band along with an assortment of their friends.
Talk to any of her students and they all recall the discipline for not paying attention or for forgetting a move: the yardstick she always carried, the duckwalks and the repetitive hula steps, 500 at a time with deep-bent knees, to music. Of course these exercises made the students better and improved their dancing, said Pat Chang Caro, 48, but the legs always ached afterward.
Caro, who dances at the Hawaiian Hut, said she adheres to Aunty Bella's style and passes on the tradition to dancers she trains for the Hawaiian Hut show. She is among dozens of dancers from Aunty Bella's studio who went on to entertain in Waikiki and around the world.
A visionary of Polynesian shows to come, Aunty Bella branched out and learned other dances of the Pacific, including Tahitian and Maori numbers that she taught to her students and daughter Adah Enos, who now teaches from her mother's studio on Kalama Street. Those dances were integrated into her performances and made her students sought after as entertainers.
"A lot of people would come to her for dancers because they were good dancers," said Cheryl York, 49, an Aunty Bella student who entertained for 20 years after graduating from high school. "They knew they were disciplined."
The celebration Sunday at Ko'olau Golf Club is a chance for all of Aunty Bella's students to socialize and remember, said Enos. Reservations have all been filled, and more than 120 people are expected.
"Those that are coming are the ones that stuck around after the discipline," she said. "They are the ones that are happy with the discipline because it took them beyond hula."
Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com or 234-5266.
