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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, April 10, 2005

FAMILY MATTERS
Words, teacher's inspiration link generations

By Michael C. DeMattos

What do a late school teacher, an aging journalist, a stalwart social worker and an inquisitive second-grader have in common?

Nothing, until you look just below the surface.

It started as a second-grade assignment in which my daughter was to interview her grandfather about growing up in Hawai'i. Papa Joe, as he is known to her, is a veteran of the second World War and a retired journalist. This time, however, the tables were turned and she was the reporter.

It turns out that my father's love for the written word was born in the seventh grade. He had a lovely literature teacher at Lili'uokalani Intermediate School named Mrs. Henke. She was a real inspiration. My father would go to the library every Saturday and borrow seven books for the upcoming week. He would then read each in turn, one a day, and give Mrs. Henke a brief report about what he had learned.

That experience informed my father's life both personally and professionally. After nearly two years in the Army, he would later take a job at the Naval Shipyard as assistant editor of the Shipyard Log and then later still as the editor of The Patrol for the Pacific Submarine Force.

Mrs. Henke was a wonderful teacher. Anyone who could get a young precocious kid like my father to read a book a day deserves a medal of honor. She was committed to her students and to her subject.

But she was not the only educator in the family. She was married to a Professor Henke from the University of Hawai'i. Professor Henke was a researcher who specialized in animal husbandry. His office and laboratory were on East-West Road just Diamond Head of Hamilton Library.

So now we have a second-grader interviewing her grandfather as part of a class project. She listened intently and took notes, much like he did for nearly 40 years. We also have a schoolteacher who was a real hero and inspired that man, my father, to pursue his passion for writing. And we have her husband who was a professor of animal husbandry, but something seems to be missing.

That is where I come in.

I'm a faculty member at the UH school of social work. The school was once housed in historic Hawai'i Hall, and relocated when the building was being restored, but never returned. Instead, the school now occupies two small one-story buildings just Diamond Head of Hamilton Library, collectively known as Henke Hall. Yes, that Henke!

In a weird way, Henke Hall connects me to my father, despite the fact that he never attended the university. In fact, he never completed high school.

The building is old now, like my father, and some of the timbers are giving way, but the brick and mortar are holding fast. Each tile is laid one upon the other like the stories from my family, building a foundation designed to stand the test of time.

So, what do a deceased grade school teacher, an aging journalist, a stalwart social worker and an inquisitive second-grader have in common?

Maybe everything, at least everything that really matters in this beautifully tangled life of ours.

Our family is connected by words. They have been spoken aloud, written on paper and etched in our souls. Still, more important than the words are the lives of the people who made those words real.

The words make the stories and the stories reveal the lives and in the telling we help each live on ... long after we have gone.

Family therapist Michael C. DeMattos has a master's degree in social work.