THE BILLIONAIRE & THE BISHOP TRUSTEE

C.A. Collins arrived with her family to O'ahu in the Hawai'ian Islands in early 1960 when her engineer father accepted a position managing a plastics plant in Honolulu. At the end of their first year in the islands her family was extended an invitation to visit a residence in Nu'uanu Valley a large two storied plantation style house with a real life elevator circa, 1919.

Their host, Atherton Richards, had eighteen months earlier stood at edge of Kuap Pond at the East end of O'ahu with billionaire industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. Richards, a Bishop Estate Trustee had negotiated the lease on the vast property overlooking Maunalua Bay for Henry and Alyce Kaiser's residence at 525 Portlock Road.

The ambitious undertaking necessitated a massive dredging job. Honolulu businessman Walter F. Dillingham had dredged Pearl Harbor in the early 1900's and later the swampy land for Ala Moana Center that opened a week before Statehood August, 1959. Richards, was acutely aware that Kaiser and Dillingham had come to blows over a concrete plant. It is not far fetched to speculate Richards mentioned Dillingham's dredging projects as part of the "dare" as some cite this pivotal moment in East O'ahu history.

In April 1964, the author's father met the other half of the daring duo - Henry Kaiser, the details of his visit unveiled in Lunch with the Big Kahuna.

Ancient Hawai'ian catchment for the ocean's bounty

Keahupua O Maunalua is the traditional name for Kuap Pond on the East end of O'ahu. It was once the largest catchment for fish in the entire Hawai'ian archipelago. Stone walls were constructed to be in perfect alignment with the incoming and outgoing tides; many fish were caught on their return to the sea. Some stone wall construction in the islands credited to the little people of Hawai'i, the Menehune, who work only under the cover of darkness. They possess a very healthy appetite for bananas, their favorite food; which they need to provide energy for their ambitious nocturnal stone wall building projects. Those who do not honor Hawai'ian traditions do so at their own peril, as it is with the Maori traditions of her native New Zealand.

The Billionaire and the Bishop Trustee is part of a set of three titles:

Off to Paradise and Lunch with the Big Kahuna.

Dettagli