Posted on: Sunday, November 28, 2004

Holiday visit home ends with grief

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

Carl "Jimmy" Kawaipa'aokalani Waiwaiole knew, at age 19, that hard work would move him ahead.

Within a year on the job at Hawaiian Dredging, he had moved up from Laborer I to Laborer III, his mother, Carmen Waiwaiole, said yesterday.

"I think that is why he and his girlfriend broke up," Carmen said. "She thought he worked too much."

Carmen cautioned her son to take time to enjoy his life, but she was also proud of him.

"He wanted things in life," she said. "He knew that only hard work would get him there."

"Jimmy" was working on the Big Island, staying at a hotel and returning to O'ahu on weekends and holidays. The Waialua High School graduate returned home to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Sunset Beach.

At about 4 a.m. Friday, Jimmy, who had left the house to give a friend a ride home, died in a single-car traffic accident on Kamehameha Highway less than a mile from his home.

Police said his car veered off the road in Pupukea near the Shark's Cove parking lot and sheared part of a utility pole.

Jimmy, who suffered internal injuries, died at the scene.

On Friday, friends and neighbors piled flowers around a utility pole marking the spot of his death. Family and friends, in a constant stream, came to call at the family's home.

Jimmy was the second member of the extended North Shore Waiwaiole family to die on that stretch of road. Jimmy's cousin, Shannon, 22, died in a single-car accident when he ran off the road at Kamehameha near Hale'iwa and struck a tree in March 2003. Four passengers also died in that wreck.

Carmen said that when her husband, Clifford, woke her Friday morning to tell her Jimmy was dead, she thought the police had the wrong person. She was sure, she said, her son was still in the house, asleep in his room.

"He must have been tired," she said. "I guess he was almost home and he got comfortable and fell asleep."

It was difficult to accept, she said, that the young man who had loved surfing, soccer, basketball, baseball and biking in the mountains was gone.

"This has been my biggest fear in life — and I guess it is every parent's fear — to have a child die before them," Carmen said.

In addition to his parents, Jimmy is survived by his brothers, Edward Lono and Clifford Kaimi; and by his sister, Christy Kahea Waiwaiole-Drummondo.

Services are scheduled for Saturday, from 10 a.m. to noon, at his parents' home, 59-412 Kamehameha Highway. The house is near Sunset Beach Elementary School.

Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.