The following program is sponsored by Ke Kula ‘o Kamehameha, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Hawaiʻi Community Foundation and Hawaiian Native Corporation.

Uncle Shad: The Kalaeloa Heritage Park is a story of relationships.

(Instrumental music) Amanda Hess: He would say over and over again, “You know, the work will always be here.

You’ve got to take care of the people.” Eric Matanane: He gave himself to the community.

In return, they gave themselves back to him.

and helped us with this project.

Uncle Shad taught us that relationships are the most important part of what we do in the Hawaiian culture, right?

Narrator: Uncle Shad Kane lived each day with purpose and passion a true man of aloha who dedicated his life to serving his community and ensuring that the stories of our home, our history, our culture live on for generations.

(Instrumental music) Uncle Shad Kane:I noticed, for me, as I get older, I suddenly realize how important our children become.

So the Heritage Park, for me, serves as that manner in which we can make certain that future generations of children will know who we were and who our ancestors were.

Narrator: Kalaeloa Heritage Park – a treasure in our midst – a journey back in time, to simpler times, when people learned how to work together and thrive – a lesson Uncle Shad lived each day.

Kawika Lauriano: You never felt like you don’t belong.

You never had that sense with him.

So with Uncle Shad, I mean, even from when I first started here, he would implement the relationships and understanding that a relationship can mean a variation of things: your relationship to the ʻāina, your relationship to your Akua, creator, whoever that may be a relationship with yourself and a relationship with others around you.

Narrator: Born and raised in Pearl City on Oʻahu, Shad Spearman Kane graduated from Kamehameha Schools in 1964 and served four years in the U.S.

Navy before joining the Honolulu Police Department, where he retired after 30 years – but not before carving a space in HPD history.

Eric Matanane: He combined what he loved as far as being a paniolo cowboy.

He loved it, he brought it into the police force.

He loved the police force, he did love it, ‘cause he was the first to actually bring the horses and they used to do the horse patrols.

Narrator: His life of service and love of learning guided each step of his way, far beyond his college degrees, establishing his role as a teacher, a guide, a force of nature capable of breaking down barriers and bridging what seemed like the largest divides.

Eric Matanane: If he didn't understand something, he'd bring all these experts here and get their variation of what was going on, or what their interpretation of the park was.

He made it an eclectic view.

It wasn't his view, it was a collaborative view.

He never said he was an expert.

He said he was a haumana, he always was learning.

Before I met him, I was very kūʻe.

I mean, I was very anti this, anti that.

In a way, I still am, but I'm more tolerant.

The people that I meet that are in the military, that are open and honest with the intention of helping, then I'm more open with them.

Narrator: That spirit of collaboration and Uncle Shad’s background in the military helped define the Kalaeloa Heritage Park as a place where both Hawaiian History and military history could coexist.

Kawika Lauriano: So there's a World War II Avenger plane crash here, and that plane was the tail end and ran into engine trouble and crashed actually right into the ancient Kualaka’i Trail.

The military had to access and kind of bulldoze their way, especially with all this brush, yeah, the kiawe brush and get to that plane.

Amanda Hess: Uncle Shad, he was very proud of his service as well as the connection he had with the Hawaiian culture.

It's really important, especially coming from a Navy background, but even military background, to hear from people who are from this area for like hundreds of years.It's an uncomfortable reality for sure.

But it is important, so that we can all own some of it and make it better.

He had such a way of balancing both worlds, military side, Hawaiʻi side, and really joining them together.

And he did some amazing work with AMVETS to get the Avenger crash documented and put on the map and to really help solidify the importance of the park and how he could weave the two worlds together.

Eric Matanane: When the military came, when they fenced off everything, all this wahi pana, or sacred places, what he taught me was, if you want to get to these sacred places and practice our culture on these sacred places, it's the relationships you have with these people.

Kawika Lauriano: I think it's just more of a way of learning to navigate through it, yeah.

But, at the end, it's preserving who we are and where we come from.

Eric Matanane: First time I came to the park, I was with Uncle Shad, and he told me that there's all these archeological sites here at this place.

It was all filled with kiawe, we couldn't see anything.

We climbed in, and then I saw that hale structure on the inside, and we was amazed at what we saw.

I didn't know.

You never knew.

So I was blown away because it was the first time I saw archeological sites in Kalaeloa.

Olivia Filoteo: I feel like there's more life in this park than there is out there.

I learn a lot more about our history that was stripped of us here.

It grounds us.

Kawika Lauriano: Culturally, we would label this as a heiau or a religious structure.

This was a living, thriving community.

It's important to see places like this because it shows how people were living.

So seeing these cultural sites on a coral landscape, water flowing through the sinkhole, subsistence-type of living, ocean resources, having relationships with people living inland, and also having a place to conduct their religious beliefs, yeah.

It pulls everything together about relationships, yeah, and identity, the mana, everything.

It pulls everything we talked about into one circular enclosure.

Eric Matanane: It's just been an enriched journey meeting Uncle Shad.

He's influenced me in a way where doing service and expecting nothing is what I've learned.

And that mana can only be produced in this modern lifestyle byvolunteering and doing community things.

(Instrumental music) Eric Matanane: His ability to gather people to actually do the volunteering work for this project was hard.

Everything in this park is volunteer.

Uncle Shad, and he influenced a lot of people.

He was a guy that never said no, so in turn, for a guy that never said no, a lot of people felt that they needed to help him too, and that's a lot of where community, the relationships that we talk about, pilina.

Amanda Hess: You know, a lot of the problems out there are just so, so big and, and, and I feel helpless a lot about most of it probably.

But that was also a really great thing about Uncle Shad.

It was like, just show up, do what you can do today.

Maybe you're pulling weeds, maybe you're watering, which ultimately Uncle Shad brings back to the relationships, and that's, that's exactly what happens.

Not isolating and dividing, but bringing people together.

Narrator: After decades of working to preserve the cultural and historical sites within Kalaeloa and ʻEwa Moku, Uncle Shad passed away in January 2026 at the age of 80.

Eric Matanane:What I learned from Uncle Shad —  if you care about somebody and they care about you, that's an unbreakable bond.

Kawika Lauriano: When I think about Uncle Shad, it’s—I wish I had more time, you know.

As a friend and to share, I wish I had more time.

Eric Matanane: You know what that kind of touched me about Uncle Shad, and at his service, when I got the thank you card from Auntie Val, and my, my thank you was like, “it was an incredible journey that you and Uncle Shed had.” You know, “it was actually wonderful that he actually found a true friend.” So, like, all these times, I think of him as a father figure, and like, and as an uncle and a mentor and a teacher.

But we're actually friends.

He thought of me as an equal.

I feel, I mean, I'm blown away by that simple fact, that, and that's the way his family and he thought of me.

Kawika Lauriano: Even though we know what his mission was, I don't think we ever asked him.

We never, we never asked, Uncle.

What do you?

Eric Matanane: We just knew.

Kawika Lauriano: Yeah.

We never asked, what do you expect of us?

Interviewer: So what do you believe he expected of you?

Kawika Lauriano: For one, to never let this place die, or be erased, I should say, that's number one.

And I, deep down, I would say, protect everything we can, what's left.

It's like the biggest shoe we can ever think to fill, and that mission is massive.

It's the size of ʻEwa Moku, the biggest moku on Oʻahu.

You know, so it's, it's big to fill, but we take it one day at a time.

Uncle Shad Kane: Our hope is that our visitors can take all of these relationships and make it theirs in an effort to understand the importance of the many relationships in their lives.

Life is a complex series of relationships.

The relationship between them and their creator, the relationship between them and the person sitting next to them, and the many relationships they will make in their lives.

One cannot succeed.

We all need each other.