Samuel W. Wilcox II

Banker and Grove Farm Plantation executive Samuel W. “Sam” Wilcox II (1910-1975), the son of Charles Henry and Marion Wilcox, was born at Koloa, Kauai into a family long-prominent in the affairs of Kauai.

 Among them were his great-grandparents, American Protestant missionary teachers Abner and Lucy Wilcox, who arrived at the Waioli Mission Station in 1846 and served there until 1869.

 Sam Wilcox’s grandfather and namesake, Samuel Whitney Wilcox, was a deputy sheriff at Hanalei prior to becoming Kauai Sheriff in 1872, a post he held for 25 years.

 Sugar pioneer and Grove Farm Plantation owner and philanthropist, George Norton Wilcox, was Sam’s grand-uncle.

In 1938, his two aunts, Elsie and Mabel Wilcox, and his uncle, Gaylord Wilcox, with funding from a trust created by their uncle, George Norton Wilcox, established Lihue’s G. N. Wilcox Memorial Hospital (now Wilcox Memorial Hospital), Kauai’s first general hospital.

Following his graduation from Princeton, Sam Wilcox was employed by Oahu Sugar Co. for a spell and then entered banking with Bishop Trust Company, Honolulu.  

From there, he moved on to a long career with Bishop National Bank — now First Hawaiian Bank — opening the bank’s Lihue branch as bank manager in 1942.

Sam Wilcox was president of Grove Farm in 1973, when Grove Farm shut down its failing sugar operations and leased its 10,000 acres of sugarcane growing lands to McBryde Sugar Co. and Lihue Plantation Co., effective Jan. 1, 1974.

While Sam Wilcox was president, Grove Farm also gifted 200 acres of prime sugar land in Puhi to the University of Hawaii upon which to build Kauai Community College.

The Samuel W. Wilcox II Learning Resource Center on the college’s campus is named in his honor.

For many years, Sam Wilcox was also president of the board of directors of G. N. Wilcox Hospital.

He and his wife, Edith, had three daughters: Deborah, Pamela and Judith.