LIHU‘E — As a Father’s Day gift, California visitor Helena Cunningham wants to do something her now-elderly father, who almost drowned in Nawiliwili Bay in 1968: Say thank you to his rescuer, then a teen-age surfer of Japanese descent. At
LIHU‘E — As a Father’s Day gift, California visitor Helena Cunningham wants to do something her now-elderly father, who almost drowned in Nawiliwili Bay in 1968: Say thank you to his rescuer, then a teen-age surfer of Japanese descent.
At the time, Jim Cunningham was a U.S. Merchant Marine, about 47 years old. He was swimming in the bay when strong currents pulled him out past a jetty at Nawiliwili Harbor as darkness approached.
Cunningham’s daughter said his father’s rescuer appeared “out of nowhere” aboard a surfboard, and together the two swam safely to shore.
Helena Cunningham, a resident of El Dorado Hills, a suburb of Sacramento, Ca., said his father, now an 83-year-old widower living in Sonoma, Ca., wants to express his gratitude to the person who saved his life, 36 years later. In an interview with the Garden Island, she said that should she find the local man, she was going to give “him a big hug, and thank you.” She, her husband, Mike, a tax accountant, and their seven-year-old daughter, Kyle, are visiting Kaua‘i from June 5-22.
“He (her father’s rescuer) must have been some angel watching out for our family, making sure our dad would come home safety,” said Helena Cunningham. She was ten years old and was living in San Francisco with her mother and sister when they got word her father nearly drowned off Kaua‘i. She estimates her father’s rescuer would be about 50 years old now, about three years younger than when her father was rescued. In April 1968, Jim Cunningham was a seaman aboard the S.S. Hawaiian Rancher, a Matson cargo ship docked in Nawiliwili Harbor. Cunningham was helping to mechanically load 10,000 tons of sugar into the ship. Late in the evening, Cunningham,
