HANALEI — Pancakes for a birthday was on the menu for Jennifer Relacion’s celebration yesterday. Relacion, the librarian at the Princeville Library, actually celebrated her birthday Thursday, but the birthday lei was still fresh, and the North Shore Lions annual
HANALEI — Pancakes for a birthday was on the menu for Jennifer Relacion’s celebration yesterday.
Relacion, the librarian at the Princeville Library, actually celebrated her birthday Thursday, but the birthday lei was still fresh, and the North Shore Lions annual pancake breakfast was too good to pass up.
Relacion was one of a steady stream of breakfast diners who appeared to know when the time was right to make appearances at the Hanalei School cafeteria, a beehive of activity because of the breakfast.
Phil and Sandi Sterker made the trip all the way from Kalaheo. Sandi, now an East Kaua‘i Lions Club member, was a former North Shore Lion. She took her turn chairing the popular event.
“Old habits are hard to break,” Phil said while waiting for Sandi to arrive after parking the car and Donna Schulze of Kilauea made it a point to be able to enjoy breakfast before heading to church.
“We have 28 members in the club, and it takes all 28, plus whatever else we can find,” said Lion Sam Calhoun, who was overseeing the silent auction featuring a wide variety of items contributed by local businesses and organizations.
Dawn Lundquist, a home portrait artist, was checking on the bidding for the portrait she contributed to the event.
Lundquist said she recently finished one project and is ready to take on more portraits of people’s homes.
The annual event is growing, and yesterday’s event featured an almost continuous stream of live entertainment kicked off by the Hanalei School ‘ukulele band under the direction of John Kaneholani.
Students in the band got to enjoy the offering of papaya, scrambled eggs, sausage and pancakes in the cafeteria that filled, emptied, and filled again as the breakfast diners continued to flow through the lines.
“It looks like we’re ahead of last year at this point,” said Lion Don McConnell, chairman for this year’s event. “We had our first diner at 6:45 this morning, an East Kaua‘i Lion who had a tee time of 8:30 at Princeville. So, even if the opening was at 7 a.m., we fed him.”
The steady flow of patrons kept Gary Pacheco and Wayne Tanji, pancake chefs, busy as Sterling Chisholm continued to refill the batter dispensers in the school’s kitchen.
“This year, we had several companies buy breakfast for their employees when we had a table outside the Princeville Foodland store,” Calhoun said. “Takeouts are big. The companies send down someone to pick up the employee breakfasts, and individuals can come down for takeouts as well.”
Leading to Hanalei School, banners touting the take out aspect of the event lined the highway outside of Kilauea town complete with a cell number to call ahead so the order would be complete by the time the diner reached Hanalei School.
“The church next door hasn’t even let out yet,” said McConnell, who served as greeter to instruct arriving diners of the proper lines to get into. “From the looks of things, looks like we’re going to feed about a thousand of our closest friends.”
Koko Kaneali‘i, an entertainer in his own right, served as emcee, guiding hula halau on and off the stage following the performance of the ukulele band.
Billed as a “Breakfast and Hula” event, several halau took their turns on the stage, punctuated by Kaneali‘i and Richard Texeira distributing door prizes, one of which included autographed posters by Dick Brewer, a well-known surfer and surfboard designer. Brewer, garbed in a North Shore Lions shirt, interrupted his chores to personally autograph posters of the lucky recipients.
“This is the best deal in town,” Calhoun said. “Where else can you get Gary Pacheco pancakes, and so inexpensive?”
• Dennis Fujimoto, photographer and staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@kauaipubco.com.
