Posted on: Sunday, April 10, 2005

OUR HONOLULU

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

The old Edgewater is one of the hotels under the wrecking ball in the renovation of Waikiki. I drove down to take a last look at the corner of the lobby that Roy Kelley used as his office. I guess he wanted to keep an eye on the business while he did his paperwork.

That was about 1954 before he became owner of the biggest hotel chain in Hawai'i.

In those days, I made a regular circuit of Waikiki to collect items for my In One Ear column. Estelle, Roy's wife, usually gave me an anecdote about a bellhop or guest. She had a marvelous sense of humor. Roy was too busy to give me the time of day.

To my disappointment, they had partitioned off the lobby where he used to sit. To me, that was a historic place. Where Roy Kelley sat in the lobby of his first hotel should have been made into a shrine. It could have happened only in that era in Waikiki.

Nobody could even remember that he sat there except me because memory of the people I talked to went back only five to 10 years.

There wasn't even a stoplight in Waikiki the first time I went hunting for column items. Lei sellers parked their jalopies draped with strands of blossoms on Kalakaua Avenue in front of what is now the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center.

They're going to renovate it. To me, it seems only yesterday that it was built. Before, there was a magnificent lawn. From Kalakaua, you looked through the coconut palm grove at the pink palace. It had the elegant feel of Kahala before all those walls and gates went up.

Most of what they're tearing down came after the building boom that started with statehood in 1959. Kelley's hotels sprouted like mushrooms. They were not monuments to architectural beauty so it's just as well they are to be done over. However, I have a special memory of the Reef on the Beach that's to be renovated.

Alan Villiers was on his way somewhere so I chased him down. Any sailor knows that Alan Villiers was one of the last square-rigged sailing ship captains. His books capture the true, muscular, poetry of life at sea. He had a room at the Reef hotel on the beach. I caught him at night and we talked high up on a balcony with the dark ocean spread out before us. A Young Bros. tug towing two barges in tandem slowly slid by, its running lights winking in the dark.

"Young man, there's a story for you to write," said Villiers. "Your Hawaiian tug captains are the best in the world, but few seem to be aware of it. They are so skillful, they make it look easy. Handling barges weighing hundreds of tons requires unique competence yet they seldom have an accident. I'm in awe of them."

Ever since, when I watch a tug and barge go by in the dark, I feel proud.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.