LIHUE — A storyteller, public servant, family man and instructor whose mind was a trap for details. Friends and family reflected on the life of Donald Bruce Cataluna on Monday after the retired sugar industry executive and Kauai native passed
LIHUE — A storyteller, public servant, family man and instructor whose mind was a trap for details.
Friends and family reflected on the life of Donald Bruce Cataluna on Monday after the retired sugar industry executive and Kauai native passed away Saturday from natural causes.
They remembered a dedicated man who worked his way up to as a plant manager during a time when native Hawaiians didn’t earn higher up positions easily, and a man whose ability to remember details enabled him to engross others with his stories.
He was 77.
“He just really believed in education, the power of education and opportunity because that changed the course of his life,” said Lee Cataluna, the eldest of Donald’s two daughters. “He believed in growing things and growing people — what you put in is what you get out.”
Born in Koloa, Cataluna graduated from Kauai High School in 1955. After earning his degree at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, he worked for C. Brewer & Co. at Wailuku Sugar on Maui and Hutchinson Sugar in Naalehu and Kau Agribusiness on the Big Island.
It was a career that took him to many different places, on all the islands, including as manager of Olokele Sugar on Kauai’s Westside.
After retiring, Cataluna started a second career on his home island.
He worked as project manager and grant administrator for the County of Kauai and taught business, economics and management classes at Kauai Community College as well as agricultural classes at the Kauai Community Correctional Center.
“He was very clearly a great leader and manager, and he told wonderful stories and gave inspiring speeches about leadership,” said JoAnn Yukimura, whose relationship with Cataluna stretches back to the early 1990s when he was a manager and she was the mayor. “And he just knew the island and community very well and always acted to strengthen and help the community.”
Keith Smith worked with Cataluna at the Wailuku Sugar Company. He remembered his old supervisor as a pioneer.
“Don was a trailblazer in the sugar industry,” he wrote in an email. “In those days the plantation managers were all Caucasian and Don and another man Herbert Gomez were the first plantation managers of Hawaiian ancestry. It may not seem like much today, but it was a big deal then.”
As an instructor, Cataluna wrote countless letters of recommendations for students. Lee remembers the time her father read about a Kauai high school student who went to play football in the Midwest, and the young student was having a hard time adapting to the cold climate. Cataluna sent him a jacket.
One of his work mottos was, “A good farmer has dirt on his boots,” and Cataluna loved to tell stories — tales that never changed with each telling as his mind was a stickler for details.
“I love him very much, he was a little pistol. He was a really cool guy, super smart, he had a memory that, it was so good, it was really hard to talk to him because he would remember every little detail,” said Lee, who began recording her father’s stories as a way to preserve them. “My years as a teenager were difficult. He’d catch every little inconsistency.”
He was also a member of the Kauai Police Commission, and served as a trustee for Kauai and Niihau for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, where he focused on improving educational opportunities for Native Hawaiians. He was elected in 2000, 2004 and 2008 and served until his retirement in 2012, according to a biography.
He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, daughter Lee and her husband Jim Kelly, daughter Malia Blake and her husband Kawika, and grandchildren Kainoa Kelly, Makalapua Blake, and Dallas Blake.
Services are private.
“He has a long history of being a leader,” Yukimura said.
• Tom Hasslinger, managing editor, can be reached at 245-0427 or thasslinger@thegardenisland.com.
