LIHU‘E — To island residents, a potluck gathering at a county neighborhood center is a commonplace happening. But for Helen Kenney, who spent most of her adult life on the Eastside (that’s the East Coast of the U.S. Mainland) after
LIHU‘E — To island residents, a potluck gathering at a county neighborhood center is a commonplace happening.
But for Helen Kenney, who spent most of her adult life on the Eastside (that’s the East Coast of the U.S. Mainland) after spending nearly all her grade-school life on Kaua‘i’s Westside, the experience at Kekaha Neighborhood Center last month was so moving she is now considering moving back, she said.
Some of her Kaua‘i friends and classmates heard she was coming to town, so hastily organized a get-together at Kekaha Neighborhood Center that turned into an eight-hour laugh-fest of fun, music, food, drinks, more food, more drinks and more music.
“I cried like a baby,” she said.
As important as the renewal of acquaintances was to Kenney, she said it was more important to her to witness firsthand how the aloha spirit lives on.
“The aloha spirit is alive and well.”
Her experience after 46 years away from Kaua‘i is that the place has changed some, but the people haven’t.
“It was like I was always here. The aloha spirit is alive,” said Kenney, wishing to publicly give thanks to the friends who organized the get-together. “It was fun.”
“We sang. We wanted to be nuns together at St. Theresa’s,” she said of her female classmates at the Catholic grade school in Kekaha.
“I need the people to know they were fantastic, the way they received me, and I want to thank them,” she said of her friends and family.
She took turns staying with various brothers and sisters on the island, including Patrick and Gregory Kenney, who both live in Kekaha. Brothers in-law David Callahan and Lodiring Raposas fed her so much fish that she almost — not quite — got tired of eating it, she said.
When she expressed an interest in eating laulau, brother Gregory Kenney one-upped her, inviting her over for some sibling bonding and to join forces in making their own laulau.
Originally from Kaua‘i, Helen Kenney attended St. Theresa’s and Waimea High before graduating from Radford High on O‘ahu, beginning her 46-year journey away from her home. She currently works for a company doing business with the federal government in Washington, D.C.
“Of course, I was humbug, kolohe, at school,” said Kenney, adding that her friends came to see if she is still humbug and kolohe. She is “the same,” she said, and they agreed.
She also invited any of her Kaua‘i friends to look her up if they get to Virginia, and she’ll show them the same hospitality she enjoyed when she was here last month.
At the neighborhood center, foods of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Japan and Hawai‘i were featured, including ahi poke, pasteles, and myriad desserts, she said.
She visited Salt Pond Beach Park, and other areas of the island she had not seen in nearly a half-century. “I forgot how beautiful this place is.”
Possessing government clearances that could be useful for getting a job at the U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands near Kekaha, Kenney, 62, said she is contemplating coming home.
While here, she took pictures of chickens, rainbows, plate dinners and many other things, prompting her friends and family members to ask: “What, no more rainbows or chickens in Virginia?”
