As a young woman leading hikes in the Rocky Mountains, she was called Jeff. Her five children called her Mom. And to all the nieces and nephews, she was Aunty Mary Lou. But most people knew Mary Louise Jeffrey Akaka as Mama Kahu. It was a title she carried with grace and devotion. She loved being Mama to the congregation. In her life, there were many congregations.

Mama Kahu Akaka died Sept. 20. She was 85. All five of her children were with her in her home when she passed.

Whether it was sitting with someone who was sick, bringing food to the homebound or hosting a visiting U.S. president at Kawaiaha'o Church, Mama Kahu knew what to do and she did it without complaint or fanfare.

"She was very devoted to that role," said son Jeffrey Akaka, a Honolulu psychiatrist. "She carried out the responsibilities with extraordinary sensitivity. She was solid in it. There was never any hesitation that she would do the right thing."

She was born in Colorado and graduated from Alfred University in upstate New York. She was the fourth generation of college-educated women in her family, and went on a full scholarship. It was while she was working as a hiking counselor in the Rocky Mountain National Park that she met her future husband, Abraham Akaka, a Chicago Theological Seminary student recruited to work at the camp.

"He saw her in the window of a camp bus as it passed by," son Jeffrey said, "And he asked 'Who is that?' "

Akaka wrote songs for hiking guide Jeff. He gave her the Hawaiian name Pualani. They prayed together for guidance and corresponded after he went home to Hawai'i.

In 1944, after a two-year courtship, Mary Louise Jeffrey crossed the Pacific in a warship to start a new adventure in Hawai'i with the young Congregationalist minister. They married at Kawaiahao Church on July 22, 1944. She became not only Akaka's wife, but his most trusted partner in every endeavor.

"They shared the same values," their son said. "They believed in God and aloha. They believed that if you let God lead your decisions in life, you won't make a mistake. Those two were solid in that."

The early years were a struggle. Kahu Akaka began his ministry on Kaua'i, where he served Waimea Hawaiian Church, Waimea Foreign Church, Kekaha Chapel and the Makaweli Religious Education Program. He was paid $120 a month. The couple had no furniture, only a few pots and pans, and even after they moved into their rented house, neighborhood kids would peer in the window, see the empty rooms and think no one lived there.

Kahu Akaka later ministered at churches on Maui and in Hilo before coming to Kawaiaha'o in 1957, where he served until his retirement in 1984. He became prominent and beloved and was in great demand to bless everything from Aloha Stadium and new houses to rock concerts.

Mama Kahu took on all the responsibilities that fall to the wife of a minister. She sewed quilts with the church ladies and conducted bible study groups; she opened her home, the parsonage on Bertram Street in Saint Louis Heights, to people in trouble or in need. She invited those who had no family to holiday dinners. She drove tourists who wanted to visit Kawaiaha'o back to their hotels in Waikiki. She did it all sturdily and tirelessly while raising five children.

"She would take the church ladies out to meetings in Makaha in our family station wagon," Jeffrey Akaka said. "The older ladies with gray hair and big hats would ride along in the car with my surfboard racks on top. Oh the stares that they got!"

She understood the value of a good adventure. After Jeffrey got his undergraduate degree at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, he had no money to fly back to Hawai'i so he came up with a plan to ride his bike across Canada to the West Coast and fly home from there.

"When I told her, she said, 'Oh great. You know, my uncle did something like that.' She figured riding a bike across the country was easier than walking."

Jeffrey said his mother believed there is so much you can do and accomplish if you move forward without fear. It was a lesson she held from her mountain climbing days.

"When I was 12 years old, my cousin Danny Akaka and I decided we were going to ride our bikes around O'ahu, something I would never let my own kids do now," Akaka said. "This was in the days before 10-speeds, before the freeway, when it was just Farrington Highway with two lanes."

The boys figured out how long it might take, and got up at 2 a.m. to start their trek.

"She packed us a lunch!" Jeffrey remembers. "She said, 'OK, have a good time.' "

The two boys rode out to Pearl City, where they were stopped by police officers wondering what two kids were doing out in the dark hours of the morning.

"We told them, 'Oh, we're riding around the island.' "

After that brief interruption, they continued out to Makaha, around Ka'ena, through mud where they had to carry their bikes, across the North Shore, down Kane'ohe Bay Drive, around Makapu'u and back into town.

"We got home that night and she said, "Hi. How was it?"

Akaka still marvels at his mother's reaction.

"She was supremely confident. She trusted God in everything."

Her life as Mama Kahu took her from having coffee with the Rockefellers in New York and hosting President Nixon at Kawaiaha'o to crouching into a basement where a homebound person needed help. She believed in higher education, made sure all her children learned to play an instrument (she played the violin) and expected hard work, dropping her daughters off at the Dole Pineapple cannery for the early morning shift.

After Kahu Akaka retired from the ministry, he and Mama Kahu gave all the donations he got for performing blessings to the Akaka Foundation, a charity set up to help the needy, assist churches and schools, give scholarships to people in ministry, and promote peace. As family friend Leigh-Wai Doo said in an e-mail to her children this week, "Mama Kahu fully supported the sacrifice of things that could have gone to her and the children, so deep was their joint commitment to God's love through their action."

Kahu Akaka died in 1997, and after his passing, the foundation took on the additional role of archiving his sermons, essays and musical compositions.

"In the last couple of months of her life, she would say 'lucky lucky,' " Jeffrey Akaka said. It was her way of expressing gratitude for such a full life. "What she sowed reaped such positive results."

A memorial service for Mama Kahu will be held at 6 p.m. Saturday at Kawaiaha'o Church. Donations in her honor are welcome to The Rev. Abraham Kahu Akaka Ministries Foundation, 2825 South King St., No. 3401, Honolulu, HI 96826.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.