Two authors are in town to share their stories and sign autographs for their books this weekend at two separate events. J. Arthur Rath, author of Lost Generations: A Boy, a School, a Princess, is scheduled to autograph copies of
Two authors are in town to share their stories and sign autographs for their books this weekend at two separate events.
J. Arthur Rath, author of Lost Generations: A Boy, a School, a Princess, is scheduled to autograph copies of his book tomorrow at noon at the Borders Books & Music near Kukui Grove Shopping Center, Lihu‘e.
Rear Adm. Stuart Franklin Platt, author of Letters From The Front Lines, is scheduled to appear Sunday from noon to 1 p.m., also at the Borders.
Honolulu-resident Rath is visiting Kaua‘i with the Kamehameha Alumni Glee Club. His book is partly a memoir of life in Hawai‘i during the 1930s and 1940s, and the role Kamehameha Schools played in turning his life around. It is also the story of his battle, together with other alumni, for the integrity of his beloved Kamehameha against the school’s trustees and the powerful Bishop Estate.
In his book Rath reminisces about campus life and his classmates, many of whom became lifelong friends and influential members of the Hawaiian community: Don Ho, Nona Beamer, Oswald Stender, Tom Hugo, William Fernandez. Years later he would join with these same friends to hold Kamehameha’s trustees accountable for their mismanagement of Bishop Estate’s vast financial holdings and ultimately their failure to carry out founder Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop’s mandate to educate Hawaiian children.
Rath draws on his many personal ties to the school and the estate to provide surprising revelations on the trustees and the Bishop Estate scandal, which made headlines daily throughout the mid-1990s. Rath is a 1949 Kamehameha Schools graduate, a retired public relations executive and a former adjunct professor at Syracuse University, who has written several specialized business books.
Part-time Hawai‘i resident Platt is on-island supporting his book, which features chapters from Sgt. Chris McCarthy (who was born in Honolulu) and his father Vice Adm. J.D. McCarthy (who served in Hawai‘i), a collection of letters, e-mails, and blog entries from American military personnel serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. These letters from United States Marines, Navy and army personnel provide an inside look at the ongoing conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan from the perspective of the men and women who are stationed on the front lines. Pulling no punches, these men and women share their frank and honest opinions about the day-to-day challenges of operating in conditions that are oftentimes brutal.
Included in the book is a gut-wrenching account of Staff Sergeant Bryan Catherman’s friendship with an Iraqi translator who was later killed and Travis Powell, a Portland firefighter who is also a flight medic in the National Guard and had to treat an Afghani who attempted to maim and kill U.S. soldiers. The book also features the letters of Karey-Keel Stidham, a Marine mother from Orcas Island who wrote letters not only to her son Tim, who was an airframe mechanic, but to other soldiers as well through the Adopt-a-Platoon program.
Platt received the Distinguished Service Medal for leadership in rebuilding the modern 600-ship U.S. Navy. He served under former president Ronald Reagan as the Navy’s first Competition Advocate General.
