Elizabeth Kahihikolo poses near a window box of flowers she planted several years ago at her home in Kalaupapa. (Photo courtesy of Valerie Monson)
By Valerie Monson
Special to the Herald
KALAUPAPA — Nearly 30 years ago during my first visit to Kalaupapa, I walked by the Kalaupapa Hospital. A woman’s voice unexpectedly called out:
“Who are you?”
I looked up at the window and saw a pretty face with bright eyes and a big smile behind the screen.
“My name is Valerie and I’m a reporter with The Maui News,” I replied, walking up to the window.
“Oh! Maui! I’m from Lahaina.”
And that’s how I got to know Elizabeth Kahihikolo in that first week of March, 1989. She invited me to come into her room where we talked story. She had been in the hospital for only a short time and was preparing to go home.
Last month, after 62 years at Kalaupapa, Elizabeth died. An illness that became serious sent her to Queen’s Medical Center a few weeks earlier. Days before her death, she returned to Kalaupapa where her many friends filed through the former hospital (now a care home) to tell her how much they loved her. She died on Feb. 16 at age 84.
“It’s sad that she’s gone,” said Maile Antone, who recently retired after 20 years as a homemaker at the Kalaupapa Care Home where she often spent time with Elizabeth. “She was a fun-loving person who loved life. She always thought about other people more than herself and wanted to make their lives better. She was a good lady.”
Elizabeth Seabury overcame a difficult childhood to become a good lady. While just a toddler in Kilauea Village in Lahaina, her mother was suddenly taken from the family and sent to Kalaupapa because she had been diagnosed with leprosy. When Elizabeth was 10, her sister Gertrude, a year older, followed.
Five years later, a school nurse noticed a white spot on Elizabeth’s knee. It was the same nurse who had taken Gertrude to Malulani Hospital in Wailuku when she showed symptoms of the disease.
“I was in school and they took me to the hospital,” said Elizabeth. “They checked that white spot and I never went home. I cried and I cried. That white spot.”
The year was 1949 when Hale Mohalu had opened in Pearl City as an alternative to Kalaupapa for people with leprosy to be treated. Medicine had been discovered that cured many individuals and helped others. Elizabeth chose to stay on Oahu rather than go to Kalaupapa “because they had school at Hale Mohalu.”
Kalaupapa reunion
She made her first visit to Kalaupapa in 1951 where she and Gertrude reunited “with a big hug.” But there would be no reunion with her mother who had died 10 years earlier. An aunt also died at Kalaupapa.
Elizabeth would eventually move to Kalaupapa in 1956. She was a janitor at the main office and had a knack for arts and crafts: she enjoyed crochet, sewing, weaving rugs and “making all kinds of animals” out of clay.
And she became her sister’s best friend. Gertrude, older and outspoken, always kept an eye out for Elizabeth and often decided for her. Although quieter and more easy going, Elizabeth would sometimes turn the philosopher.
“One day I was saying that I was thinking of our brother,” Gertrude said. “And she (Elizabeth) tells me ‘Maybe that’s because he’s thinking of you, too.’”
Both sisters married and had children, but they remained close for the rest of their lives and comforted one another after the deaths of their husbands. They were both competitive — Gertrude especially in cribbage and Elizabeth playing Sakura — and proud of each other. Elizabeth used to brag about Gertrude’s skill at gathering salt from the Kalaupapa salt ponds. Even after Gertrude had a leg amputated and would cross the slippery ocean rocks on crutches, she would fill the bags with salt she had collected and tie them across her chest for the precarious walk back to her vehicle.
“She still carries the bags loaded!” Elizabeth boasted to her sister’s delight.
While Gertrude was wiry and athletic, Elizabeth was feminine and elegant, nearly always dressing in colorful muumuu with an assortment of bracelets and styled hair. She loved watching Elvis Presley movies and videos of Merrie Monarch festivals. She liked red wine and flowers.
When Gertrude died in late 2010, the fear was that Elizabeth, so dependent on her sister, would crumble. After her initial grief, she surprised everyone by rising up.
“She just kind of became her own person,” said Cheri Shimose-Eng, the retired director of nursing at Hale Mohalu at Leahi Hospital on Oahu. “She would make her own decisions. We always thought of Elizabeth as shy, but she was very strong and assertive when she wanted to be.”
Kind of like that woman who boldly called out to a stranger walking by her room so many years ago. Aloha, Elizabeth.
Valerie Monson is a Maui writer and long-time chronicler of the people of Kalaupapa.
