Termite TV - Life Stories

Betsy M. I was born on Oahu in Waialua, which is on the north shore, and I lived there for a number of years until I was in the second grade when we moved into Honolulu. Those were the days when Honolulu was very small. The tallest building was the Aloha Tower, and if the ships came in, we would go out in them, and, oh... (stutters) what is it? There was a boat that took you out, and you’d climb up this big rope ladder to visit with the people on board the ship, and that was great. You could come back in with them and you’d see Honolulu with just a few lights, and as you rounded the pier, the band would play, “Aloha, Oi”. Oh, it was wonderful, and they played all kinds of Hawaiian music and lei’s were passed out. Oh, it’s marvelous. I wish they had that boat day again. And later, when after I was married, I was married just before the war... no, I met the man I married just before the war started, and we were married in 1943. And so that means we’ve been married for fifty-seven years, which is rather unusual for people these days, and we came back from a tour of duty on the mainland. My husband had two tours on the far east, or in the... oh, in (stutters)... well, Guadalcanal and places like that and into the first flying and dropping bombs in Japan, which ended the war very quickly. And then we lived on the mainland, lived on Oahu, and I went to work for the blood bank, and I was there for over twenty-five years known as ‘Fangs, the Blood Lady’. And that was fun, because the greatest people in the world are the people who donate blood. That’s something that only you can do and so important. You can’t manufacture it. And so when I retired in 1952, we moved here, which is where I always wanted to live anyway, and it’s been the best thing we ever did. This is the greatest community to live in. Everybody pulls together and works together to have a better village, and it’s just worked beautifully. We have a group of teachers, for instance, who are retired who volunteer their services after school. The school buses drop the children off here, and they tutor them one on one, and that’s as volunteers. No money. Now we’re about to add on to this building. We built this building ourselves. We were given $65,000 by the county to buy materials with, but that’s all. And we built the building, and now we have extended it twice and are doing it again to put in a tech center where we’ll have eight computers to teach young people and older people how to use computers. Older people like this one! It’s hard to learn new tricks like that, but it’s fun, and we’re all learning. And pretty soon we’re going to build a covered court at the far end of the grounds here where you can play volleyball and basketball and tennis in the afternoon or night when it’s raining, and so that’ll be good. But the young people have been told that before the doors are going to be open and they can start running that, they have to help us building the bathrooms and the police substation and the storeroom, which is attached to it, and they’ve all said they were willing. And that should work out very well, because if they help build it, then they’ll help take care of it. That’s what’s happened with this building. We take care of it. We’re in partnership with the county, and the county thought at first, ‘Bad idea!’ Now they’re saying, ‘Oh, please, help us get other communities to do the same thing because its worked so well,’ and when a community center is run by the people, they feel...(voice off screen)....thank you, Colleen. They feel that it’s theirs and so they really take care of it. So all is well here, and we will expand. As time goes on you, you’ll have to come back and see what we’ve done. Okay? Thank you.