NEWS FROM PAGES PAST
50 years ago — July 23, 1971
A PRIEST AND HIS PLANE—Looking over his new “baby,” a 1967 Cessna 180 on floats, with all the pride and love of a father is Father Raymond Churchill, formerly of Sacred Heart Church in Waianae. Father Churchill is currently working in the Diocese of Juneau for Bishop Hurley. He flies supplies to the many inaccessible places where there are church missions and personnel and he himself flies to many of them weekly to offer Mass and administer the Sacraments. According to reports this new plan is the “ultimate of class” among the bush pilots in Father Churchill’s area in Alaska. His residence is Holy Name Church in Ketchikan.
25 years ago — July 26, 1996
Kauai’s oldest church will soon dedicate newest
Down a winding country road in Koloa near Kauai’s southern tip, construction workers are putting final touches on St. Raphael’s new cruciform church/parish center structure.
The pastor, Sacred Hearts Father Felix Vandebroek, has scheduled the blessing and dedication of the new building for Oct. 27.
He described the structure, with an expansive grassy area in its center, as having an “open arms” design in the spirit of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome which has a vast central courtyard.
The new building will replace the parish social hall, kitchen and classrooms lost to Hurricane Iniki in 1992. …
Still standing, a few years from the new building, is the 140-year-old, more traditionally shaped parish church which will still be used for daily Mass and as a sacramental Chapel.
10 years ago – July 22, 2011
‘We are not ashamed anymore’
Piolani Motta knows there are others like her, with a past buried in the unsettled soil of Kalaupapa.
It’s been a 30-year adventure trying to uncover it, one that has made her a regular visitor to Kalaupapa, and also a familiar face at the state archives and other places of records.
Motta’s mother was born in the leprosy settlement of Kalaupapa, Molokai, a fact her mother wasn’t particularly proud of. Being born to segregated Hansen’s disease patients had only led to a c
hildhood in Oahu orphanages. So she never told her daughter. Motta only discovered her mother’s birthplace when applying for a passport in the 1970s.
