(instrumental music) Kalaʻi Miller: Aloha, I’m Kalaʻi Miller.

The Wilcox   Family has deep roots on the island of Kauaʻi.

Part of that legacy is preserved right here,   at the Grove Farm Museum in Līhuʻe.

Once a  thriving sugarcane operation, now visitors   can immerse themselves in the history of this  homestead that dates back to the mid-1800s.

Moises Madayao / Grove Farm Museum Curator:  We get a huge response from  the local communities saying,   I never know that Grove  Farm was there.

Or you know.

Maile Kennedy / Grove Farm  Museum Tour Coordinator:  Or, I seen it but I didn't want to go cuz that was  we thought it was a private, someone’s home.

Yeah.

Bob Barker / Pau Hana Years Host:  Today on Pau Hana Years, we’re going to visit  the Grove Farm Homestead that was once the   sight of the Grove Farm Plantation,  here on the Garden Isle of Kauaʻi.

(instrumental music) Maile Kennedy / Grove Farm  Museum Tour Coordinator:  The Wilcox family came to Hawaiʻi as  missionary teachers from Harwinton,   Connecticut, Lucy and Abner Wilcox.

They had  eight boys raised in the islands.

The unique   thing about the Wilcox Family was that they did  come as missionaries, but they didn't push so much   the Christianity is that they helped Hawaiians  learn how to read and write in their own language.

Grove Farm began as a grove of kukui  trees, which is how it gets its name.

Originally gifted from Princess Ruth to Judge  Hermann Widemann, who came from Germany.

Then had hired George Norton Wilcox as  a manager who leased the property from   him and was helping him to grow his sugar  plantation.

Then it became a very successful   plantation and today we are a nonprofit  that share the history of Grove Farm.

George himself never had children.

His brother,  Sam, and his wife, Emma had six children.

They   are the reason why Grove Farm still exists  today.

Miss Mabel and her sister Miss Elsie,   as we refer to them so lovingly, it was  their hope and dream that this place would be   preserved as it is because the sugar plantation  era is such a special part of Hawaiʻi's history.

Bob Barker / Pau Hana Years Host: Our hostess is Miss Mabel Wilcox.

Miss Mabel, how old is this home?

Mabel Wilcox / 1882 – 1978: Well it was standing here in 1854.

(instrumental music) Moises Madayao / Grove Farm Museum Curator:  Miss Elsie and Miss Mabel worked in tandem to  turn their home into a historic site museum.

Back then they looked at the collections that was  in the house.

And they knew that it shouldn't be   just for a private viewing, but to be shared to  the community.

When you look at great people,   when they're doing great deeds at that time,  they don't know they're doing great things.

Mabel Wilcox / 1882 – 1978: Well, I had taken a nurse’s   training at John Hopkins at Baltimore and  then I came back here and went into the   public health work on the island.

And I was in that for many years.

And I guess I was instrumental in getting some of  these hospitals done over and new hospitals built.

Moises Madayao / Grove Farm Museum Curator: It's just that when you're doing the right   things, your actions dictate what you look  like in the future.

But during that time,   they knew what they needed to preserve  was very important.

It just shows you   how forward thinking you would have  to be in order to do such things.

Maile Kennedy / Grove Farm  Museum Tour Coordinator:  The house originally was a thatched roof building,  four rooms, all connected by an outdoor lanai or   veranda.

It is a New England style.

But when Sam  and Emma Wilcox and their children began living   in the home, George Norton then started building  these other buildings.

So we have George's cottage   where he would reside so that his brother and his  nieces and nephews could live in the main home.

The addition the two story building was added  in 1914.

The property itself is about 80 acres.

Mabel Wilcox / 1882 – 1978: We had chickens, we had our   own eggs.

The chickens just ran wild  everywhere.

We had to hunt for the eggs.

And we had ducks.

We had turkeys.

Maile Kennedy / Grove Farm   Museum Tour Coordinator: And then we also have our   preserved Nāwiliwili Valley that protects the view  plane, seeing all the way out to Oʻahu sometimes.

Mabel Wilcox / 1882 – 1978: Well, it was just a small sugar plantation.

We never had a mill until fairly recently.

And all the cane was ground at the Lihue Mill.

Maile Kennedy / Grove Farm  Museum Tour Coordinator:  Miss Mabel was the last living  resident of Grove Farm homestead.

She   passed away in 1978.

And we opened our  doors as a museum in October of 1980.

Harold Rosa / Grove Farm Museum Groundskeeper: Well this is Miss Mabel's Buick, the 1972   Buick that I used to drive her to Hanalei  like that to the beach house and stuff.

Paula Rosa / Grove Farm Museum Conservator: These are called the icebox cookies.

When   I started back here in 1972, I was  told it was Miss Mabel’s favorite.

Maile Kennedy / Grove Farm  Museum Tour Coordinator:  So, both Harold and Paula were fortunate  enough to work with Miss Mabel.

Harold Rosa / Grove Farm Museum Groundskeeper: Yeah I started here in 1972.

Met Miss   Mabel and she was asking questions like if I know  how to, you know, be able to take care of yards   and stuff.

I said yeah because our families, all  plantation workers and my mom used to do laundry   and housekeeping with the rich kind people.

And I  used to do the windows and yard.

She said oh okay,   you know what, I think you'll be the  first young blood we're going to hire.

So,   I was happy at that time.

Til to that day I stay  here yet, so.

I was 21 and now I'm 75.

(laugh) Bob Barker / Pau Hana Years Host: Miss Mabel, this magnificent stove   behind you.

That must date back.

Mabel Wilcox / 1882 – 1978: Yes, it’s quite an old stove.

I think we always had a wood stove of some kind.

Paula Rosa / Grove Farm Museum Conservator: The wood burning wooden stove, I would start   first thing in the morning, because it  takes an hour and a half to go ahead and   have hot boiling piping water.

And then  that's how I start baking my cookies.

Moises Madayao / Grove Farm Museum Curator: Miss Paula is very passionate about her job,   as well as the other employees.

She's not also  here as our conservator, and our cookie maker,   and a storyteller.

She's always here on  the weekends, just trying to make things   just right to preserve the history.

She's doing  flower arrangements.

She's doing multiple things,   because she believes in how this  museum should be taken care of.

So,   because she's connected to Miss Mabel, she kind of  understands how important the history needs to be   perpetuated.

And how accurate has it has  to be in order for us to do our jobs.

Paula Rosa / Grove Farm Museum Conservator: Working for Miss Mabel was a really an amazing   experience for me.

The reason why for is because  she's very humble, and very loving.

So, it's a lot   of family history here.

It's a lot of, working  here is more like a connection of a family.

(instrumental music) Moises Madayao / Grove Farm Museum Curator: The plantation story goes hand in hand with   the Hawaiʻi story.

When you kind of say  it out loud, the plantation lifestyle   sounds like a utopia.

But no society is  perfect.

But what you look at in hindsight,   is that we have multicultural people coming  together, as well as the native culture   as one people, on one island, trying  to go through the trials of life.

Maile Kennedy / Grove Farm  Museum Tour Coordinator:  It's important for the younger generation to  connect to their past.

We need to know where   we came from, in order to move forward.

I  think that what we really want visitors to   also take away is just a sense of connection  to whether it is your own personal past, or,   or the Wilcox's because they were  influential in so many ways on the   island of Kauaʻi.

And I think that you just  get that that sense of of community here.

Moises Madayao / Grove Farm Museum Curator:  I was born here on the island of Kauaʻi and I  was born in the 70s.

I know firsthand to live   in the plantation.

My father was actually working  at Koloa Mill, when he retired, and then I was   brought up in the plantation community.

And when  I was offered this job, I kind of had an idea what   it was, you know what I can do.

But it turned into  an actual passion where I believe I am here as a   steward to preserve the plantation history that  I grew up in, and to share it with the community,   the tourists, as well as our young to show them a  time and place where things where we actually made   things work, and we had to in order to survive.

Now, if I can pass that along through this museum,   which I believe we’re trying to do, it just  gives me that driving point to just keep going.

Kalaʻi Miller: Clothing.

For some, it’s something   they put a lot of thought into, for others not so  much.

For one Big Island-based fashion designer,   clothing is not only his livelihood, it’s  his passion.

A passion that has led him on   a journey to explore his Filipino culture and  bring all that he has gathered back to Hawaiʻi.

(bamboo instrumental) Iris Viacrusis/Designer and exhibit curator: My name is Iris.

I am the curator and owner of   this collection called Habi At   Baro.

(instrumental music) Habi is weaving and baro is clothing.

When you see the collection that there's   actually different clothings from  different parts of the Philippines.

When you talk about the Philippines,  a lot of times people would actually   have this mono thinking in regards to what  they have as an idea of the Philippines,   which is the modern Filipinos.

I'm  wearing a modern daytime barong,   but traditionally it would be made out of the  pineapple fiber.

So, this is one of a good   example, it actually have calado which is the  window lace work and on top of an embroidery.

This is the Filipino silk which is called jusi,  a lot of times they confuse the two.

But you   could see again, incredible artwork.

So, this is  actually mid-century, from the 50s and the 60s.

The love of textiles is basically what actually   opened this Pandora's box for  me.

Looking at the fibers,   looking at the fabrics looking at this design,  and that led my you know, curiosity to dig more.

Doing this collection is an Indiana Jones so  to speak.

Traveling the islands from a plane   to a boat to a little motorcycle, and then hiking  miles.

And going down ravines, valleys, crossing   over rivers.

There are, I would say, at least 25  different tribes that I actually got to visit.

And again, with the clothing, each particular  tribe would have their own particular colors,   their particular patterns on what it represents.

This is one of my prized possessions  in the collection, I actually have a   bolo or a knife of a headhunter.

So,  I also have his belt, which is made   out of large cowrie shells from the ocean.

These are people that actually in the north,   so a lot of the shells are actually trade  from the lowland coming up.

Because they   don't have shells up there.

So, it's again,  it's something that they take pride on.

The belt itself is more than 150  years-old, you would notice that   it's actually still have the original  rattan where the belt is attached to.

This is the pineapple fiber, or the piña.

Well, it is a type of organza or organdy.

Organdy is one of those transparent material.

So, it actually have a certain stiffness to it.

So, it's basically the leaves.

And they would  scrape it with this, you know, coconut shell,   where they would actually take the leaves and  actually just scrape it off.

And you'll see all   the fibers coming out.

And so, somebody would  actually take it.

So, this is one of the raw,   you could even see, you know, the stickiness  to it and things and they would wash this.

And then they would go ahead and hang it to  dry in the sun.

And once that's done, then   they would take it apart.

So, then you'll have  like these pieces, and somebody would knot this.

Imagining your hair knotting it together.

And  that's basically how tedious this work is.

And if   you feel this, there's actually a little knot in  between here where you can even feel it, but you   can feel it.

And so, it'll be in this form, almost  like a wool.

And then they we wind it in the   bobbin.

And this is what used to go in the shuttle  to actually go ahead and start the weaving.

This is from Mindanao.

Lake Cebu is in particular  where they are in South Cotabato, so you know,   this is the T’boli tribe.

This is basically  their garb.

These are the ladies.

They are   called the dream weavers.

Their patterns are  always derived from images from their dreams.

They believe that its actually ancestors  speaking to them.

In this case,   it'll have like the T'nalak, which  is the ikat weave with banana fibers.

The banana actually doesn't produce a good fruit.

So, its trunk is where the fibers are extracting   from and just like with the piña it has the  tedious things of scraping the materials,   harvesting the fibers, washing it, drying  it and separating it just like you would   do your hair.

Knotting it again and  then this in this particular process,   they actually had the ikat design which is the  tie dye-resists.

A lot of the dyes are natural   dyes.

So red is from noni, the black is from  the banyan, they actually have the turmeric,   the yellow.

They like bling.

The sequins on these  ones are actually created from the abalone shells.

I can't specify enough in regards to natural  resources, everything was harvested from the   bananas and all the different dyes that's used,  I actually went to one of their river to collect   the little clam shells where they would go ahead  and burn it to create the lime and to set the dye.

A lot of the things that they actually  use, and a lot of things that they do,   are reusable and renewable resources.

So,  fibers are all naturals.

Everything comes   from the elements.

So, this is actually made  out of banana fibers, which is the abaca.

One of my motto is actually wear Pinoy  be Pinoy.

There's a lot of Filipinos that   actually born and raised and say, oh, I don't  wear that and things and stuff.

So, you know,   I'm hoping, again, that they will take pride  that there's people that actually created things,   for them to adorn themselves.

To  actually wear and know what it is,   you know, to pay homage to it rather than just  go ahead and dismissing it as another cloth.

It took a village to create this particular  piece.

A farmer would grow the pineapples,   and then somebody else would harvest it, and  then another family would wash it and dry it,   and then it gets handed to another family  to make the thread and then it goes to   the weaver.

From the weaver, it goes to the  embroider.

And that's when it goes the market   and to our hands to use.

And that's  why with that much love, you know,   that's one of the things that I, I always share.

It's not a piece of cloth, there's so much mana,   which is a synonymous word with the Hawaiians  where it's the same thing, it's a treasure, it's   a heritage, it's something that you hold dear in  your heart, because there's so many hands in it.

Kalaʻi Miller: Every week,   journalist Bob Sigall takes his readers back  in time through his newspaper column Rearview   Mirror.

The stories vary.

Factoids you may not  know about a famous person, or reminiscing about   your favorite restaurant that’s no longer  around.

For me it’s Ryan’s, Compadre’s and   the banana pie from Flamingo’s.

Fortunately  for Bob, there’s no shortage of memories.

Bob Sigall / Rearview Mirror Columnist One of my readers asked me whether there   were tunnels that connected Chinatown  in the early part of the last century,   and the water table is too high for any tunnels  to survive.

There are a couple buildings that   do have a basement, but there are no tunnels  that connect different buildings to downtown.

It's all by accident that I became a writer.

I was  a business consultant in Honolulu for 42 years.

And I was hired by HPU to be an adjunct professor  of marketing for their graduate business school.

I gave my students an assignment that required  them to go to two business networking meetings,   meet six business owners, and get one  to give them a tour of their business.

And the first semester one of my students reported  that Bank of Hawaiʻi, where I bank, was founded by   a parade of gold coins taken out of a competitor,  First Hawaiian Bank, by angry customers Castle and   Cooke, who were ticked off that a check  of theirs was, was bounced in the 1880s.

And I thought, you know, I bank there, and I've  never heard this story.

And then another student   reported that Meadow Gold was originally a butter  that Continental Creamery sold in 1901, and was   named in an employee contest, the winning answer  received $25.

And I grew up with Meadow Gold, and   I never heard that story.

So, it dawned on me  that every Hawaiʻi company had a great story.

And my friends at the gym convinced me  that I should put it together in a book.

They're named The Companies We Keep.

When book  three came out in 2010, the newspaper asked if   I would write a regular feature.

And I  gave them some ideas and they picked a   couple of of them and they called it Rearview  Mirror and it first began in April of 2011.

You know, sometimes I find things by accident,  like I'm looking through the newspaper archives,   online, and I find something on the same page that  interests me, and I end up writing about that.

Or I'm just driving around town, and I look at a  certain location, I wonder what was there before?

So frequently, I ask my readers if they have  input about things, or they ask me questions.

What I'm looking for when I'm choosing stories  is a wow factor.

Three things that blow my mind,   blow the reader's minds.

It's things that astonish  people.

And you know, sometimes that's hard to do,   you know, we know a lot about, let's say, McKinley  High School.

But the average person who went   to McKinley High School may not know that it  had five locations and three previous names.

One of my editors had a picture of an explosion  at Hanauma Bay in the 1950s, and asked me to look   into it.

And as far as I can recall, that's the  only time they gave me a topic.

And they were   actually building a trench through Hanauma Bay,  for the first Trans Pacific cable for telephone   service, to come ashore.

They blew a trench down  the middle of the bay, if you can imagine that.

Everybody knows Duke Kahanamoku.

But very few people know that he   almost died of the Spanish  flu during World War One.

So, I'm always looking for stories about  well-known people in Hawaiʻi, as well as companies   and churches and military bases, nonprofits,  schools, that give us some insight into,   you know, who we are as a people.

I'm blown away  that there's so many great stories about Hawaiʻi.

I did have a few rumors that I was  interested in getting to the bottom of   when I began my research.

So one is that  Tripler was painted pink accidentally.

There happened to be 200,000 gallons of pink  paint.

And they said, what do we do with it   and they decided to paint Tripler pink.

Not the case.

Tripler was painted pink to   hide the red dirt of Moanalua Ridge that  was expected to blow on a white hospital.

The chief architect and chief  engineer loved hearing the   rumors go around.

And it wasn't  until they were both fairly elderly,   that their families convinced them to  come forward and set the record straight.

One of my readers asked me about Holmes  Hall and what its history was.

It's the   Engineering Department at the University of  Hawaiʻi.

And I looked into it and it turns   out that Jasper Holmes was the first dean of  engineering for the University of Hawaiʻi.

Jasper Holmes was a codebreaker during  World War Two at Pearl Harbor.

We were   listening to the Japanese radio broadcasts  and we were decoding them at Pearl Harbor   and we found out for instance that the  Battle of Midway was going to take place.

This is in the first six months of the war.

And because of that information, we were able   to increase our presence at Midway, beat the  Japanese in the first major battle of the war.

Jasper Holmes played a key role in that  codebreaking process.

He also wrote some   books after the war that a friend of his gave  to Gene Roddenberry who was the producer of   Star Trek.

And he said a number of his  stories ended up being borrowed by Gene   Roddenberry and influenced battle scenes and  other storylines in the Star Trek original   television series.

I love hearing that, you  know, some local guy had a role in things   that took place way beyond Hawaiʻi, such as the  development of Star Trek as a television series.

I invited my readers to write  about the top 10 gone but not   forgotten Oʻahu restaurants from the past.

And the number one restaurant was The Willows.

And  it was actually by you know, several percentage   points above the next one which are places  like Like Like Drive Inn and Columbia Inn and   Flamingo Restaurant, and Le Bistro.

So many places  that, that fondly were remembered by my readers.

Whenever I write about restaurants or cafes,  or bars and nightclubs, that's when I get the   most response because, you know, all of us, you  know, patronized these places all of the time.

Spencecliff was one of the major chains in  Hawaiʻi 50 years ago, we they had over 50   restaurants at one point like the Tahitian Lanai,  or Kelly's Coffee Shop or Popo's or Tiki Tops,   The Gourmet.

And they had restaurants in  Waikīkī.

They had restaurants downtown.

One of the stories I like about Tahitian  Lanai is that Ron Jacobs organized a party   for everyone that had been fired by Henry J.  Kaiser.

And Henry Kaiser came to this party,   bought everyone a round of drinks, apologized,  you know, for having to cut back on the   staff at his radio and TV station.

He told them that someday, he hoped,   he would have chance to hire them back again.

I  thought it was really nice of him to go to this   event.

You had to have a card.

It was a pink  card because Henry's favorite color was pink.

Spence and Cliff Weaver sold it to a Japanese  firm in the 1990s.

And one after another,   they closed until Fisherman's Wharf  was the last restaurant remaining.

I tend to think that my readers are probably over  50.

And some of them are probably in their 80s,   or 90s.

And the types of things I write  about are hitting this period in their life,   when they probably had a car available to them,  and a driver's license, and a few dollars in   their wallet or their purse.

And they were going  out to places like Scotty's Drive In and Rainbow   Rollerland.

And they were buying, you know, five  hamburgers for a dollar at Kapiolani Drive In,   which became Wailana Coffee House.

And they  have these memories of things that you know,   sometimes are long gone in Hawaiʻi.

And so that's, I think, my sweet spot,   the types of things that were available  when my readers were in their teens and 20s.

A lot of what I've been writing about recently  has been first person experiences.

Like I wrote   about people working in the school cafeteria when  they were kids, or eating the cafeteria food.

And   it's not necessarily the kinds of things that a  historian would write about.

But it's interesting   to me, because it's first-person account of some  of these things.

And I hope 100 years from now,   that what I've done is preserved some  of these stories, so that we have,   you know, a treasure trove of people's  firsthand experiences to deal with so that,   you know, in the year 2200,  we can look back on this era,   and have a good sense of what it was like  for us to be here in Hawaiʻi at this time.

Kalaʻi Miller:  Mahalo for joining us.

PBS Hawaiʻi  continues the tradition of storytelling,   thanks to your generosity.

If you’d like to  support our mission, please visit pbshawaii.org   and click on the donate button.

For Home  is Here, I’m Kalaʻi Miller.

A hui hou.

(instrumental music)