PO‘IPU —Sunday is Easter, but Cathy Veatch of the Marriott’s Waiohai Beach Club still clings to the memories of Christmas. Associates of the Waiohai prepared 21 Easter baskets for children and 25 Easter gift boxes for the homeless Tuesday morning.
PO‘IPU —Sunday is Easter, but Cathy Veatch of the Marriott’s Waiohai Beach Club still clings to the memories of Christmas.
Associates of the Waiohai prepared 21 Easter baskets for children and 25 Easter gift boxes for the homeless Tuesday morning. But things didn’t stop there as the Waiohai associates were preparing more than 21 individually crafted quilts for victims of the Japan tsunami disaster.
“The children were hopping up and down and there was excitement everywhere,” said Clayton Sui of the Reach Kaua‘i church and the Prison Ministry program. “A lot of these Easter baskets will be earmarked for children of inmates, and the boxes will be distributed to the homeless people.”
Veatch said unlike the Christmas Stocking program where Waiohai associates “adopted” a needy child, she went out and purchased all of the items for the Easter baskets. Each associate was given an oversized clear plastic egg to decorate and personalize. These were placed inside the basket as a finishing touch.
“We remembered how grateful the children were at Christmas and decided we wanted to do it for Easter as well,” Veatch said.
The gift boxes contain blankets, towels, toiletries and other necessities to help make living a little more comfortable.
But the spirit of giving did not stop there as Veatch and the Waiohai associates were also packing boxes with quilts they made for the victims of the Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster.
“It’s winter there,” Sui said. “It’s cold and a lot of people don’t have anything because they lost everything in the disaster.”
Veatch said she was like all the other people who were glued to the television, tears rolling down her cheeks as she watched survivors of the disaster cope in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
“A lot of people don’t even have blankets,” Veatch, a quilter who contributes a special quilt for the associates’ Christmas program, said. “They’re sleeping on floors without any covering. I kept trying to think of something we could do to help.”
The search led her to Quilters Newsletter which is coordinating an effort to collect quilts for shipment to the Japan disaster victims with the help of the military, May 1.
“These quilts will be FedEx-ed to Colorado where everything is being collected,” said Jenni Saguid. “From there, everything goes on a military flight to Japan.”
Veatch said she had offers to help from everyone in the Po‘ipu resort — the ladies who could quilt offered to make quilts and the associates who could not quilt offered money to help purchase the materials for the quilts.
As a finishing touch, each quilt bears a sticker sharing the aloha of the Waiohai resort and the name of the quilter.
“It’s not much when you see how much suffering there is,” Veatch said. “But this is how we can help.”
That feeling of aloha extends to the public with an invitation to view the annual May 1 festivities with the associates of the Waiohai.
Sandra Muragin and Troy Lazaro invites the public to enjoy two days of celebration on April 30 and May 1 at the Waiohai property starting with a lei contest from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the resort’s lobby.
On April 30, the Waiohai will also host a craft fair from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. which will be joined by an Associate Bake Sale Fundraiser featuring baked goods and other items contributed by Waiohai associates.
The day will be highlighted by the Waiohai May Day show featuring the Waiohai Royal Court with ho‘okupu of kahiko and ‘auana hula.
Chair massages, demonstrations of Hawaiian salt making and poi as well as lei making and hula ‘auana classes surround the program.
• Dennis Fujimoto, photographer and staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@ thegardeisland.com.
