LIHU‘E — She smoked until she was 80, eats bacon at every opportunity (“I like it crispy”) and is known to enjoy the occasional Bombay Sapphire martini. Anna Sloggett is no goody-two shoes. Last month Sloggett celebrated another birthday. At
LIHU‘E — She smoked until she was 80, eats bacon at every opportunity (“I like it crispy”) and is known to enjoy the occasional Bombay Sapphire martini. Anna Sloggett is no goody-two shoes.
Last month Sloggett celebrated another birthday. At 103 she still swims 10 lengths in her pool daily, (“I float,” she said. “The breast stroke is so old fashioned”); plays Bridge twice a week; Majong once a week and was on the golf course last year.
“I told Mary B. ‘If you can get me on the green, I can put,” she said.
Sloggett radiates with humor.
Of the smoking she admitted, “I miss it.”
“She French inhaled,” son David Penhallow added with a hint of pride. “And she cooks her own meals and makes her bed everyday.”
“That’s why I’m so young,” Sloggett said.
Of her time as a third grade teacher at Kapa‘a Elementary School, she said, “the kids called it the turd grade.”
Back then classes were 35 to 40 students per teacher which meant “a lot of discipline,” she said. “I didn’t have a problem with discipline. The kids wanted to learn.”
Sloggett was well known for her excursions with students outside the classroom.
“They didn’t do that back then,” she said of the field trips.
Not one to follow the rules, Sloggett is something of a trail blazer. Having raised two children as a single mom working full time in the ’40s, Sloggett admits she has always been the kind of woman who says what she thinks.
That said, her delivery is rye and her charm irresistible. Take for instance her brush with the law at the tender age of 91.
“A policeman was following me,” she said. “When I pulled into my driveway he asked, ‘Why didn’t you stop?’ I said, ‘I thought you’d like to see my pretty flowers officer.’”
“Did he give you a ticket, Mother?” Her son asked.
“No,” she said, clearly triumphant.
Sloggett was born on Kaua‘i. Her mother took a steamer here after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 demolished their family home. Sloggett was reared in California but was destined to return at 13 to her birth place to live with an aunt after the death of her mother. She’s a graduate of Kaua‘i High School.
After attending college on the Mainland, she settled in the Hawaiian Islands where she taught for 31 years. At her 100th birthday party at Kilohana Plantation hundreds of friends and past students shared memories of Sloggett’s influence. The overarching theme was her generosity.
“What people remember is how loving she was as a teacher,” Penhallow said.
In 2003 Women In Theatre created the Anna Sloggett Award.
“It’s given to a woman in our community who has given a lot,” said WIT co-founder, Roberta Cable. “We’re recognizing a feeling they’ve created in the community.”
Besides swimming daily, playing cards and participating in a few domestic rituals, the constant that has been her legacy remains:
“Everyday I try to do something for someone else,” she said.
