Reflection: An isle family’s deep connection to Father Damien

By Alika Hussey Sheldon
Special to the Herald

Sometimes in a family’s long and complicated history, a story emerges from a long-lost relative that was shared with family members who believed it was worth preserving. Oral tradition is usually passed on in this way and goes back to the time of the early church.

Then a hundred or more years pass by.

One day this family story from long ago was shared with the family at a descendent gathering. Not everyone was affected by it, and most just accepted it as another part of the family history, a jewel of information to be treasured and preserved in the memories of those fortunate enough to hear it.

But this story was different. It held a deeply personal and spiritual meaning to someone who was there. Someone who didn’t realize just how deeply it would affect their life. How it would connect them to their ancestors in a way nothing else ever could.

I had never heard the story before, and truthfully had not realized how much its impact would have on me. It offered a validation in my life I had never thought I needed, yet I came to realize soon after that I wanted it.

Hearing it opened something within me, and offered me a platform to lay down my hookupu (offering or tribute) to Ke Akua, Iesu Kristo.

Family of faith

Hawaiian families were influenced by the ancient gods of Lono, Kane and Kanaloa, but then some years later the religious influences of the Protestant, Anglican and Catholic faiths emerged in the islands. Much later, the Mormon missionaries entered Hawaii along with many other religious influences that have infiltrated the islands since then.

My grandparents, parents and immediate family members were all very deeply Catholic. Our lives, schooling and friends were centered around the Catholic Church and the clergy. But we came to learn later that my paternal relatives were of other church affiliations as well, mainly Protestants, and later Mormons.

These influences opened doors into how others worship. It offered an avenue into what they believed and why. It also offered an opportunity to compare the Catholic faith I believed in so strongly with those of other denominations who claim a deep faith as well. It also offered insight into the patriarch and matriarch of my father’s family.

Alexander Pollard Hussey was a seaman on a whaling ship that left Nantucket, Massachusetts, in November 1843. He was 18 years old, unmarried and the eldest son of four siblings. His father was killed on an earlier whaling expedition.

Like his father, he became a whaler and set sail to do a job that would help support his widowed mother and younger siblings. Two years after leaving the East Coast, Alexander’s ship pulled into a harbor on Hawaii island 1845 to unload cargo, replenish necessities and give the crew some time to rest. Restless and not eager to return to the seafaring life, Alexander remained on land and never returned to his ship. He found a job as a carpenter building churches and homes in Waipio Valley.

Farther inland on the island in an area known as Kapaau, in Kohala, lived a young Hawaiian girl who attended a Protestant boarding school. Her parents were strong Protestant converts and expected their daughter to be educated and formed by their new faith. Her name was Kaaikaula.

Traditional retellings of their relationship indicated that they were introduced by the Rev. Elias Bond, who was the pastor of the Protestant church where Alexander was hired to build the structure in 1862. They married in September of the same year. Together they had 14 children — eight sons and six daughters!

The couple made their home in Niulii, a small town in the Kohala district, several miles away from the Protestant church they attended — Kalahikiola Congregational Church. It is still there today, and the carpentry work of Alexander is on full display if anyone visits this beautiful church.

During his lifetime, Alexander continued his building contracts throughout the district, while Kaaikaula raised their children on the homestead known as Kapuaiowalu.

Working with Damien

Two years later, in the summer of 1864, a young, newly ordained Catholic priest from Belgium arrived on Hawaii island with another priest from the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The two men were assigned to separate districts to evangelize and baptize the Hawaiian population to the Catholic faith. Competition was fierce since the Protestants had been there first. There was no time to waste.

Sacred Hearts Father Damien de Veuster was assigned to work the Puna district, while his companion worked the Kohala-Hamakua coast. Within a short time, it became evident that his companion could not cover his assigned district alone because of its sheer size. The two men agreed to swap.

Father Damien was now the sole Catholic influencer in the area where my ancestors lived and worked.

With the new districts assigned in the early months of 1865, Father Damien began to build a church in the Kohala area and sought assistance from the local Hawaiian families who were willing and able to help him.

He didn’t speak Hawaiian, the primary language of the people, so he sought assistance from those who were bilingual. Alexander and Kaaikaula’s names were mentioned to him.

On one of his weekly horseback rides through the district, he paid a visit to the couple at their homestead in Niulii.

The couple had been married a few years by the time their first meeting with Father Damien took place. Kaaikaula had several little ones under the age of 5 to care for. She was naturally impressed and fascinated by this young priest, who was the first she had ever met. She learned that she was less than five years his senior, so they were practically the same age.

Her husband, Alexander, now known by the local community as Alika, spoke with Father Damien primarily because of his fluency in English, and the couple agreed to help him in his efforts to meet and communicate with the people of the Kohala community. (Alexander was fluent in both Hawaiian and English after nearly 20 years of working and living on the island.)

Curiosity to conversion

By the 1870s, the plight of many Hawaiians across all the islands had taken a severe turn for the worse. Many of the island people had contracted what was later known as Hansen’s disease, or leprosy. Many were taken and moved to Molokai and placed on an isolated parcel of land called Kalaupapa.

Knowing that they were being deported because of the disease, many Hawaiian people hid from authorities and were often assisted by their family members.

Through his work in the Kohala-Hamakua area, Father Damien cared for many of the Hawaiians who were afflicted with leprosy. Kaaikaula worked alongside him and witnessed firsthand how he lovingly cared for and assisted many of her people, some of them her own family. She vowed to devote her life to helping Father Damien because of how he loved and cared for the Native Hawaiians.

The fact that she wasn’t a member of Damien’s church did not matter. What mattered to her was that this was a man who loved her people and cared deeply for them. She would help him in any of his endeavors.

By all accounts, Kaaikaula was a devout member of her Protestant congregational church, yet she felt something lacking. She was often found alone in church in solemn prayer and meditation. When Father Damien was the celebrant at daily Mass, she would attend.

She did not understand the rubrics of the Catholic Church, but her curiosity kept her coming and participating. She was deeply drawn to the spiritual life and faith of Father Damien.

Her curiosity also took over when she decided to enter a lengthy fast of 40 days. She became ill near the middle of the period which had her family and Father Damien deeply concerned. Once recovered, she asked Father to receive her into his church.

Father Damien obliged and Kaaikaula was baptized a Catholic in 1870. She remained a faithful convert to the faith and to the Catholic Church for the remaining years of her life. Her children were raised in the Catholic Church as well.

Our family stories through the years never revealed whether Alexander made the conversion to Catholicism, so we assumed he did not.

Legacy in Hawaii

Father Damien would finally leave the Kohala-Hamakua area in 1873 when his orders came to transfer to Kalaupapa. He would become well known to the world for his unselfish work and care for all those Hawaiians exiled there because of leprosy. He would die on April 15, 1889, of the same disease at the age of 49, having lived and worked among his Hawaiian friends for nearly 16 years in Kalaupapa.

My great-great-grandmother, Kaaikaula, always said that nothing stopped Father Damien from pursing what he knew was God’s work. He approached all circumstances unafraid and placed himself and the people he cared for in the safe hands of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. He trusted his life and theirs would be protected and cared for by a deep and abiding faith in God.

He brought many of the Hawaiian people to God through the baptism of the Catholic Church. This deep and abiding faith comes through generation after generation in many of the Native Hawaiian families in the islands.

The Catholic Church and our Catholic faith remain a solid foundation in our family because of our matriarch and her deep and loving relationship with a young Belgium priest who came to live and work among her people. She witnessed the life and experiences of a very holy man who changed her life and ours forever.

“He pomaikai ia mai ke akua” — “a true blessing from God.”