Services are Sunday and Monday for leimaker Mary Naone Adams, who died Wednesday at her Kane'ohe home.

Adams, born Sept. 15, 1929, spent her days in the airy family room or out in the carport of her home, a tray of pua kenikeni flowers in her lap. Meanwhile, her lei went halfway around the world with hula halau such as Aloha Dalire's Keolalaulani Halau Olapa O Laka and Chinky Mahoe's Halau Hula 'O Kawaili'ula, to the Mainland and Japan. She also was the leimaker to the Honolulu Advertiser's 'Ilima Awards gala.

Entertainer and kumu hula Manu Boyd often stopped by to pick up lei from the woman who was universally known as "Auntie Mary."

"Of all the pua kenikeni lei-makers in Kane'ohe and elsewhere, you could always tell Auntie Mary's leis. She packed the lei with flowers," he said. "It's so easy to be stingy, but she wasn't like that."

Auntie Mary didn't make a huge number of lei, so getting one was special, he said: "She represents the real, fast-vanishing breed of Hawaiian leimakers you just don't see anymore — her hospitality, her generosity." The leimaking trade is fast being taken over by immigrants, Boyd said, but Mary Adams was among those who understood the kaona — the inner meaning — of a lei as a metaphor for a beloved child, a treasured creation.

The Adams family compound off William Henry Road and the nearby homes of relatives and friends have dozens of large pua kenikeni bushes. In an interview Sunday, Mary Adams said many of the neighborhood plants were air-layered from those in the yard of her Adams in-laws.

But her leimaking days began long before her marriage to the late Joseph Kanehoa Adams in 1947. Leimaking was a side business for her mother, a maid at the Alexander Young Hotel. Living on Prospect Street in the 1930s, the girls and their mom would get up early; pick plumeria, bougainvillea and other flowers to make lei, then dress up in their holoku and papale (hats) and walk down to the pier, she said.

"Two fo' quahtah! Two fo quahtah!," she sang, imitating her own once-childish voice. "And we would sell 'em all, you know," she said with a characteristic lift of one eyebrow and a comical sideways look.

Though ill and tired, Adams couldn't keep her hands from the flowers her son placed in her lap, instructing a visitor in leimaking as she had generously done to many others. The five-petaled pua kenikeni is a simple blossom but there is an art to sewing the lei so that the flowers are evenly arranged, and to tying multiple strands so they spiral and sit high on the shoulders, she explained. As she talked, she expertly trimmed the stems at an angle and speared them with a foot-long needle threaded with the three-strand cotton she preferred. "You have to fit one flower into the other. Then no more hakahaka (gaps, like missing teeth)," she said.

Adams charged $8 for a single-strand pua kenikeni. "You go to town, they charge $10 but I felt that, since it's all just at home here, I can't make it too high," she said. "Oh, yes, I enjoy making lei. It keeps me busy."

In fact, Boyd said, she often gave lei away, or declined payment, asking only for a little talk-story, and a kiss at parting.

Adams, who had discontinued treatment for cancer in order to have some quality of life and time with her large family, was one of 16 children. She and her surviving sisters, Violet "Nani" Souza and Julia Lagunero of Honolulu, were fixtures at family parties at her eldest son's home down the street. There, she would preside, nursing the half-size Miller "pony" beer she enjoyed, and offering greetings and hugs to all.

In addition to her sisters and an aunt, Mary Naone of Waipahu, Adams is survived by her children, Priscilla "Puanani" Dumlao, Joseph K. Jr. (Rowena), Colleen "Ipo" Tilton (Leonard), Kimo L. and Ihi, all of Kane'ohe, and Isaac E.K. (Lisa) of Surprise, Ariz. She also had 20 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

Visitation is planned for 10 a.m. Sunday at Borthwick Mortuary with a service at 1 p.m. Burial will be at 10 a.m. Monday at Greenhaven Memorial Park; aloha attire is suggested.