Fun at Waikiki

In July 1983 we moved from Japan to Hawaii. How fortunate we were to have four wonderful and interesting places to live in a row; Virginia, Germany, Japan and Hawaii.

Peter A. was fourteen-and-a-half and Leif was eight-and-a-half.

When we arrived, we had to wait for quarters (for you civilians, that's a dwelling, place to live) and lived for a few weeks in the Hilton Hawaiian Village right on Waikiki. Our room was on the eleventh floor, which was fine until the Great Oahu Blackout of July 13th, when we discovered that walking up and down that many flights of stairs was no fun and quite exhausting, plus no air conditioning, no water (it all has to be pumped up there) and no restaurants open weren't much fun, either. I've written about the blackout before.

What WAS fun about it was that in the evening, everyone was out walking and being sociable because there really wasn't much else to do, and although some parts of the island didn't get power back for two or three days, we only went without for a day.

The rest of the time we stayed at the Hilton, there was a lot to enjoy. Waikiki is beautiful but as beaches go it's not even in competition for the best of Hawaii. That didn't keep us from enjoying it, as the boys are doing in this photo. They had a good time setting it up as a kind of trick photo. Leif is nowhere near as little as he looks here.

We enjoyed trying out lots of restaurants, and the boys were quite fascinated with a fancy drink that had dry ice in it so that it was pouring out mist all over the place. We explored the shopping centers, which were quite a hit after spending six years in foreign countries where the shopping was lots of fun and often exotic, but where they couldn't read the labels. They especially liked the Ala Moana Shopping Center and the Longs Drug stores, which stocked plenty of things like toys.

We also found the video game parlors, where we spent a lot of amusing hours together, and took a spectacular (and somewhat hair raising) helicopter tour over the island.

There was a parrot in one of the hotel lobbies that talked . . . when it was in the mood. When we were going or coming from the hotel, the boys liked to stop by the parrot's perch and see if they could get it to talk. Once in a while, they did.

It was a happy time for us. I hope Leif remembered it.

Leif - Honolulu, Hawaii - April 1984 - Age 9

These photos were taken after Leif came home from a soccer game in April 1984 when he was nine years old. Unfortunately, I made no notes on the back of them, but he looks really contented, so I think they must have won. Like most kids he loved to win and took losing hard. He's flopped on our living room rug here, looking relaxed and then acting silly.

It's hard for me to realize that I now have a grandson who will soon be nine, and although I never thought that Marcus looked like his Uncle Leif, I do see some resemblance in these two photos.

I wonder, if I could ask Leif now, what he would say the happiest years of his childhood were. I suspect that they were the three years in Hawaii. Those were good years for all of us, although I wore myself out working on my master's degree at the University of Hawaii, determined to finish it before we were moved again.

How I wish I could go back, just for a few days, with my boys and Peter W., have a Sunday breakfast on the lanai, go to Bellows Beach, head down to Waikiki for a movie and video games at one of the game parlors, dinner at It's Greek to Me  . . . those are fond memories. We were so fortunate to be able to do those things together!

Leif's Sixth Home - Honolulu, Hawaii - Summer 1983 to Summer 1986

In the summer of 1983 we moved from Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii, where we lived in the army housing area at Red Hill, on the outside edge of Aliamanu Crater. We lived in one half of a two-story duplex. Our lanai overlooked Pearl Harbor, which was beautiful with the lights of Pearl City and Aiea at night. We spent a lot of happy hours on that lanai.

Leif attended Red Hill Elementary School for third, fourth and fifth grades. He had a black leather Members Only jacket his dad brought him from Korea, and a cloth one, too. He loved wearing them and wore them even in the 90-some degree Hawaiian heat. He played soccer all three years and began judo classes there. His best friends were Joey and Michael. With Joey he usually played GI Joe stuff and he and Michael did creative things. Michael was a talented young artist.

As a family, we loved going to the beaches, especially Bellows Beach. The routine was to go there for the afternoon, swim, walk on the beach, and then go to Bueno Nalo Mexican Restaurant for quesadillas and to Dave's Ice Cream for coconut ice cream. In those days, Bueno Nalo was near Bellows, by the shore. (Later it moved to Waimanalo.) We loved those trips together and always had a good time.

Another favorite family outing was to go to Waikiki, park at Fort DeRussy, by the Hale Koa Hotel, then go to "It's Greek to Me" restaurant and have Greek food, then to a movie at the huge theater where they had a pipe organ playing before the movies started. After that we would go to a video parlor at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center and play video games, and end the evening with a walk on Waikiki beach. How I wish we could go back and have one of those magical, balmy evenings together with our two sons!

Sometimes we would go to the International Marketplace, or a Thai restaurant, or somewhere else. We visited several of the other Hawaiian islands; The Big Island of Hawaii, Maui, Kauai.

When Peter A. was 16, the summer of 1984, he was an AFS exchange student to Greece, and while he was away, Leif and I took a trip to the US mainland and made the rounds visiting relatives. He had a terrific memory and for the rest of his life he talked about that trip when he was ten years old and was impressed by the flight attendant on one United flight who had such a sense of humor. One of the jokes Leif loved to tell was this one, "Tonight's movie is 'Gone With the Wind.' Just stick your head out the window and you'll get the picture.'

For some reason, I apparently felt it was interesting enough to actually take a ohoto of our living room and computer room (and extra bedroom we used as a computer room and den upstairs) in these quarters. I wish had done this with all our homes. We were lucky enough to have a personal computer at home. In the early 1980s it was not yet common for families to have them. We all used it. I used it heavily for school work (writing papers) as I was in graduate school at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I still enjoyed playing computer games (and still do today), and so did the boys.

Peter W. would have been happy to get an extended tour of duty in Hawaii and retire there, and i think the boys would have love that, but it was not to be. However, we will always be grateful for the three wonderful years we spent there together.
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The photo of Leif was taken in Hawaii in 1984 when he was nine years old.

Leif at Waikiki - Honolulu, Hawaii - June 1980

Yesterday we took our granddaughters, Madeleine and Aly, to the beach and took turns in the water with them while the other stayed with all the belongings on the beach. While it was my turn to sit there I was musing on how pleasant it was to be there, how much like it was when we took our two boys to beaches years ago. I remembered how much fun it was, how I was content to be with them, happy just being together. The girls loved the beach, spent most of their time diving for shells, and didn't want to leave. We finally persuaded them to leave the water when the sun went down. I spent most of the time in the water with them, but that time sitting watching them with "Grandpa Peter" brought back so many happy memories and a few tears, thinking that those times will never come again, and a great sense of gratitude that we can experience this with our granddaughters.

This photo of Leif when he was five-and-a-half was taken on the beach at Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii, in June 1980 when we were stopping in Hawaii on our way to Japan, the summer we moved from Germany all the way to Hawaii. How small he looks, though he was big for his age.