<Begin Segment 5>

MN: And who sponsored these community dances?

KM: I don't know the details of that, but I would assume it was under the auspices of Alexander & Baldwin. Because Maui was such that... let me tell you a tale of my high school coach. Dee Shetanian was a... what you'd call a legend at San Jose University, San Jose State University. At San Jose State University he played football, he played baseball, and not just played, he was the player from San Jose State in that California area. He was of Armenian heritage, Armenian population in San Jose was the original settlers of San Jose. He was a legend of San Jose State in basically three sports, baseball, basketball and football. And somehow he came out to Maui High School to teach, he was my coach. And he would tell us that when he first came to Maui High School, football was played only on Sundays, and I've told this story on many other occasions. And Dee was very concerned because the only day that... no, no. It was played on Saturdays, that's right. The games were played on Saturdays, and because those days were not five day working, the Kahului stevedores or even the other families, Saturday was a full working day. And so Dee looked into it and he found out that one of the reasons, the basic reason why football was played on Saturdays was that "Mother" Baldwin -- you got to remember, Maui was under the control of the Baldwin family, the entire island. Although Baldwins are Puunene sugar plantation, and I think Paia, they also had control of Paia. But they were the patron, big patron of the island of Maui. Polo was their number one activity as I said last time, Bing Crosby would come, Wiley Post, I think Bing Crosby came with Wiley Post just before they died in a crash, Wiley Post died in an Alaskan plane crash. But he finally said, "We've got to have the families be able to watch the boys play." And so he approached Mother Baldwin for I don't know how long it took, but he convinced, finally convinced Mother Baldwin to acquiesce to the games being played on Sunday so that the families of the players can come and watch the games. And so after that, when my time came around, I was playing on Sundays.

And Dee Shetanian, after the war, moved back to San Jose and he retired as a California state school teacher in San Jose, but always kept his ties in Maui to the extent that every year he would come back to Maui for one or two months to have his, the excuse was to have his teeth checked by one of his ex-students. And I think Dr. Omura was his favorite student, and he would come back and keep in touch with his ex-students. I used to always drop by San Jose whenever I had to go to the West Coast, I would stop by San Jose and visit with him. And there were regular visitors dropping by if they stopped on the West Coast. After he died, oh about five years ago, he is buried in Maui Cemetery. His wish was that he would be buried in Maui. But he kept his ties with all the boys. And he was the one that had a lot of influence on his students, his charges. Whenever chance he had, he would encourage them to do, "You got to continue your education beyond high school." He wasn't involved only in sports, he was very much a part of our whole life.

MN: You know, when you look back on, say, Mr. Shetanian, were there other teachers at Maui High would encourage local kids to go beyond high school?

KM: Oh, yeah. As I said, my advisor on student government affairs was Stella Jones, Miss Stella Jones. After Maui High School, she moved over to Honolulu and taught for many years at McKinley High School. But during my time, she was my advisor. She always kept advising me that student government shouldn't only be the activities that I should be keeping engaged in. To begin with, she encouraged me to the extent that she said that... and I remember distinctly her advice that going to school doesn't mean you just attend classes. She said, "Think about your everyday life." You get involved in various aspects of life. When you are growing up, your primary object is just going to school. You would learn that once you get through with school, whatever you end up being your lifetime profession, there's a lot more activity than just your employment and whatever you do to earn a living. The other aspects of life beyond just your making a living are community activities, and there's endless various subjects things involved as, as a community. And I remember her distinct advice is that, "You only get back what you give." Her main -- and this was not only to me, I'm sure to most of the other students, the same advice she gave me. You only get back what you give if you participate. Don't participate in anything, that's your life. But if you get involved with other aspects of your community, you get whatever you put into it. And so her advice to the students was, "Don't just come to school to just get academic training." And so what she was referring to the fact that they went beyond academic, activity, you had service. There was one thing, a boys' and girls' service club, and service was very broad. Then there was home economics clubs, and one was the other YMCA, YWCA, all of these different activities. And I think it was the introductions to all of these on a college level, you get involved with the fraternities and whatnot. Although high school you didn't have fraternities, but you had these very different type of clubs that students who were involved in their particular field, economics club or business club or home economics. So she had a lot of influence other than just advisor to the participants of certain government.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.