Hali`a of Hawai`i: A Legacy of Language

This memoir takes us adventuring on sailing ships through "flying boats" to jet airplanes, exploring the author's Hawaii vignettes, "Letters from Dacca," travel stories, and stories of her sea captain father--his own nautical story embedded at book's end. We learn how life events led to rediscovery of the Hawaiian language, the author's blood legacy, and how she accomplished her own legacy of important work. We gallop, sail and swim near Lanikai with a young girl at an earlier, more gentle time on Oahu. We learn of work, romance, marriage and the beginning of life as a family. We watch with that young mother the bombing of Pearl Harbor, how she shields her baby from strafing while wondering if her engineer husband at dockside is alive. Halia, A Legacy of Language is an account of a pono (good, beneficial) life of trust in its many decades as they unfolded, bringing the author important work to be done in Hawaii that became entwined with her passion for learning and correctly translating the Hawaiian language, especially relating to land deeds and rights to the aina, the land, for people of Hawaiian heritage. We share the joy of an inquiring mind expanding and questioning with the opportunities that came for travel and residency abroad, and resultant contrast and comparison with home and different cultural ways in Hawaii. The individuality of "Aunty Halia's" life olelo (story) reflects the experiences of one daughter of Hawaii, but by its very individuality offers a universal connection with people, their sensibilities, and places around the globe. All of these parts merge in the telling of the serendipity of a journey as exciting and challenging as the journeys that brought her master mariner father to Hawaii at an earlier time.