LUNCH WITH THE BIG KAHUNA

C.A. Collins still can recall the day her engineer father came bolting in the family room door in early April 1964 he head lunch with his hero - Henry J. Kaiser. The family of five lived in Kailua on the Windward side of O'ahu in the Hawai'ian Islands.

Henry & Alyce Kaiser had returned only weeks earlier from Lytellton Tunnel opening ceremonies in Christchurch, NZ. in late February, 1964. The vast property covering ten acres at the water's edge overlooking Maunalua Bay has been recently landscaped and the many Hawai'ian shrubs and trees planted were flourishing, but not the massive expanse of lawn at the water edge that was brown and parched and sought help from a plastics pipe manufacturer.When he was told by the president of the company the plastics plant manager was a New Zealander.

"A New Zealander, how wonderful - send the Kiwi over - I'll give him the royal tour and lunch."

In 1998 a few months before her father passed away he spoke of that day, a high point in his life; in an understandably reflective mood, sharing far more details on that early June day in 1998. He told his daughter how he was swept away sitting on the massive glass table on Kaiser's lanai (patio) as they spoke of plastics, Hawai'i and New Zealand.

2Jack Smith had been Fletcher's site manager on the Fletcher-Kaiser joint venture. In spite of the being in the epicenter of the 2011 earthquake Lyttelton Tunnel emerged relatively unscathed. The critical artery to the Lyttelton Harbor was only closed for a brief time for the structural engineers carry out their assessment a ray of sunshine midst so many dreary assessments. Collins explains in her book, how the Lyttelton Tunnel was blessed with the: "Spirit of Ho'okuleana" when a preemptive decision in the midst of construction paid off "massively" fifty years later.

Lunch with the Big Kahuna is part of a set of three titles:

Off to Paradise and The Billionaire and the Bishop Trustee.

Dettagli