In 1980, Chief Justice William S. Richardson spoke to the eighth graduating class of the University of Hawai'i Law School, which wasn't yet named for him and didn't yet have a building. The fledgling law school had long been his dream. It troubled him that Mainland law schools were unaffordable for many talented island students, and he started pushing for the law school back in the 1960s.

Richardson's message to the graduates that day was that as long as there are people in Hawai'i who lack economic security and political power, there will be worthy causes for lawyers to fight for. This was a theme throughout his legendary career: to look out for people who couldn't fight for themselves, and to make sure that anyone who was willing to work hard would get a fair chance.

Retired Chief Justice Richardson still has an office in the law school that bears his name, which thrills the students no end. It is a rare thing to be able to sit with the founder for whom a law school is named. Richardson visits several days a week, talking with law students and, as he puts it, "Just encouraging them." He attends all the graduations and many functions, watching over the students like a proud papa.

"I wanted it all along," he says of the law school. "It was kind of a dream come true."

A hard-earned dream at that, for it took a lot of convincing at the Legislature.

"I should put it this way — the final funding appropriations were won by one vote."

WIDE INFLUENCE

Speak his name among Hawai'i's legal community and people get rhapsodic. There is more than respect for him, there is a great aloha. There are stories about how as chief justice, Richardson took young lawyers under his wing, how he would invite law clerks to talk-story sessions in his chambers at the state supreme court, and there are many who credit his example and his encouragement for making their careers possible.

But his influence reaches far beyond Hawai'i's legal circles.

You'd have a hard time naming anyone else alive today who has had greater influence on these islands.

He wrote the decision that ensured that all Hawai'i beaches are public property. He established public water rights by ruling that private property owners don't own all the water in streams flowing through their property. He ruled on the case that established the state owns all new land created by lava flows. He was the first to allow news cameras in the court room. And he held fast to the dream of establishing a law school at the University of Hawai'i, wishing long before it seemed possible for Hawai'i's policy makers to be educated in Hawai'i.

Richardson will turn 90 next month. With all the contributions he has made, you'd think he'd brag a bit about himself, recount some victories, crow a little. He's certainly earned that.

But Richardson just doesn't have it in him. It's as though he never did.

All the archival stories of his amazing career are devoid of any kind of self-aggrandizement, even when he was head of the Hawai'i Democratic party, even when he was running for political office, even as Hawai'i's first part-Hawaiian lieutenant governor. Imagine, a politician not touting himself. Richardson is one of a kind.

He will, however, talk about the struggles of his early days with a measure of pride and a good deal of gratitude.

He was the third of five siblings growing up on Fifth Avenue in Kaimukí in a house his father built from surplus and cast-off lumber.

"We had some indoor plumbing, but no hot water," he recalls. "My job was to pick up kiawe wood from the trees that were cut down for roadwork. I would stack the wood for drying. With the wood, we'd start the fire to heat the water and get the water going. My father took a bath first, then my mother, then the kids in descending order of age."

The house was down a dirt lane overgrown with thorns — what Richardson calls in Hawaiian, "kukus." During those yearly Liberty House dollar days sales, he would get a balloon, which never survived the walk home down the thorny dirt lane.

It was a simple, make-do kind of life. Richardson's mother would collect buttons from other people's cast-off clothing to make shirts for the family. Once a year, they went to Liberty House and bought pants that were too big so that they could grow in to them.

He and his siblings went to school barefoot and he didn't own a pair of shoes until he was in the sixth grade.

Richardson claims he wasn't a particularly good student, though he enjoyed school, especially sports. "All kinds, every kind available," he says.

HIGHER EDUCATION

When he wasn't in school, he worked summers and Christmas break at the pineapple cannery. After school, he sold newspapers, "Two for five cents, and we'd spend all afternoon just to get 15 cents profit so that on Saturday morning we could go to the movies."

College was never a consideration, but at Roosevelt High School his football coach was Neal Blaisdell, who planted the idea of higher education into his athletes. "He wanted all of us who played football or ran track for him to go to college," Richardson says.

With Blaisdell's encouragement, Richardson entered the University of Hawai'i in 1937. He majored in business and economics, but wasn't sure if he'd graduate.

"The thought was to get as much schooling as we could while our parents could afford it, not so much to graduate," he says.

To pay for school, he worked as a chauffeur, driving an old lady around town in her car to go shopping and visit her friends. "I would take my books with me and study in the car while waiting for her," he said.

His chemistry professor at UH, Lenore Bilger, for whom Bilger Hall is named, saw something special in him and suggested he consider law school. She pointed him toward the University of Cincinnati, where she and her husband had previously worked. She talked to Richardson's father and "twisted his arm," Richardson says. To pay for law school, his parents rented out his bedroom.

Bilger also wrote to friends and former colleagues in Cincinnati to make sure they looked out for the student from Hawai'i. It took five days by steam ship to get to the West Coast and another three days by train to get to Cincinnati.

"It was like going to the other side of the world," he said.

Once there, Richardson couldn't afford to come back home for breaks or vacations. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, it took weeks for him to receive word that his family in Hawai'i was OK.

After finishing law school, he began his service in the Army Air Corps in 1943, eventually becoming a second lieutenant and leading an infantry platoon of Filipino-American soldiers into combat at Leyte. When the war ended, Richardson came back to Hawai'i and served in the Judge Advocate General corps. He soon began practicing law out of his father's bill collection business Downtown. He was in private practice for 17 years, also serving as head of the Hawai'i Democratic Party during its legendary formative years and was an active supporter of statehood. In 1962, he was elected lieutenant governor. A photograph from his first week on the job shows him at his desk in 'Iolani Palace in the suite of rooms where Queen Lili'uokalani had been imprisoned — an emotional thing for a Hawaiian man deeply tied to his heritage.

HIS DEFINING CASE

In 1966, Gov. John Burns appointed him to be the state's chief justice, a position he held for 16 years.

The ruling he is most remembered for is "Sotomura and Ashford," the beach access case that defined so much about Hawai'i. It was the case that meant the most to him, too.

"Before that, you couldn't get down to the ocean," he says. "At Waikíkí, you couldn't get to most of those areas. It was all private property and blocked off."

As a child, he went to the beach every chance he had. "My brother and I would walk down from Kaimukí carrying the heavy surfboard, and it was really heavy, not this cork stuff they have nowadays ," Richardson says.

He remembers having to stand in the water outside The Royal Hawaiian hotel because the sand was off limits to those who weren't hotel guests. He stood in the ocean and watched people dancing at a party at the hotel. That memory shaped his landmark decision.

His decision on what is known as the "water rights case" was similarly huge in scope but also tied to his commitment to look out for the little guys.

"People talk a lot about that case but to me it was kind of simple. There was Hanap[0xeb]p[0xeb] River, and there were two plantations. Both were getting water. But they weren't the ones I was worried about. It was the rice patches and taro patches down stream. I was thinking of them," Richardson says.

After he retired from the bench in 1982, the UH Law School was named in his honor.

He then went on to serve as a trustee of the Bishop Estate, where in addition to his fiduciary duties, he attended as many sporting events, song contests and graduations as he could. He was known to show up at the cafeteria to have lunch with the students.

Then, as now, to encourage students, he doesn't have to say much. His life story serves as the best example: that if a barefoot boy from a kuku-filled lane in Kaimukí can grow up to be chief justice, then they can do great things, too.

These days, he spends time being grandfather to six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. They all call him "Puna," short for "kupuna," the Hawaiian word for grandparent that also refers to a starting point or the source.

To everyone else, he is CJ, a term that conveys both deep respect and a kind of warm familiarity for this living legend with a wide, easy smile. For many outside his family, he is also "the source."

Richardson's 90th birthday will be celebrated at a benefit for the UH Law School, to be held Friday, Dec. 4 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Coral Ballroom.

The dinner is themed "Realizing the Dream."

Tickets can be purchased online at www.law.hawaii.edu/CJ90thBirthday or by calling 956-5516.