Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 7, 1 July 2011 — Imua Kamehameha [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Imua Kamehameha

Aloha Mai Kākou, As I write this message I am fresh from two weeks away from my home to

Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, Utah, then to my 50th class reunion at Kamehameha. As my classmate Judy Sistrunk mentioned, her three priorities in life are her family, her God and Kamehameha. And so briefly, I was able to visit my son Kohono in Virginia and his family, including our newest grandson. The rest of my trip to D.C. was well worth the effort as we had an op-

portunity to explain federal recognition to others and to seek to diffuse the erroneous view that recognition is racist. The fact is that it involves indigenous issues relating to our Native Hawaiian people whose continued existence requires legal protection from repeated race-based lawsuits and also preservation of their legal identity, culture, language and traditions as the indigenous, aboriginal, native people of Hawai'i. Salt Lake City was uplifting to my wife, Maile, and me, as usual, and we had a ehanee to visit with old friends, talk about OHA issues and tend to matters of the spirit. Finally, Kamehameha was a wonderful experience and seeing some classmates for the first time in 50 years while renewing old acquaintances was exhilarating. The class of 1961 opened the Prep School at Kapālama and ruled as the first seventh-grade class and the first eighth-grade class there. We also ushered in a new classroom building at the Boys' School as seniors and so our mark as a class still exists, at least in our minds. That's to say nothing about our ILH football championship and so many more experiences we had to include ROTC, where as young students we learned and experienced leadership while generating several military academy grads. Our classmate Dr. Miehael Chun has led the

school with integrity and distinction bringing to Kamehameha students and families a sense of aloha, care and empathy as well as excellence in

so many areas. We will all lose from his retirement next year, for he set the standard and example after having suffered through the refiner's fire for all of the students and alumni of Kamehameha. I was impressed that many of my classmates, all retired by now, excelled in their respective fields, and

I commend the school and thank the Princess for her enduring love and eoneem for her people. Education has been the key to Hawaiian survival thus far but we have a long way to go. Eben Paikai tells me he was a Poliee Chief in Florida twice, including at West Palm Beach, and now teaches at two universities. Dr. Larry Brede is a retired Colonel with a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice living in South Carolina. Eddie Alexander is a Meehanieal Engineer for Boeing, working many years on the Space Shuttle in Texas. Elliot DeMatta just retired as a Naval Engineer in Washington, D.C. Dr. Dennis Gonsalves is an intemationally known scientist now heading the USDA's largest research facility in the Paeihe. Charlotte Souza's son, Andy Vliet, is Kamehameha's only Rhodes Scholar and Nani Inaba's son, Albert Tiberi, is an Attomey at OH A, etc. Most of my classmates may not have basked in the spotlight but did raise families and did work hard and did eonhnue in humility to do good in their communities. They are the ones who have carried on the koko and the spirit of Kamehameha and whom I especially respect and honor. May we all keep our families, our God and our culture as our priorities in life. Imua Kamehameha. ■

Būyd P. Mūssman VicE Chair, TrustEE, Maui