WAILUA – Lois Silva is a worker. At 80 years old, having recovered from two knee replacement surgeries, Silva is still going strong, hoping to work at McDonald’s in Kapaa. Working is what she does. It’s a skill she developed
WAILUA – Lois Silva is a worker.
At 80 years old, having recovered from two knee replacement surgeries, Silva is still going strong, hoping to work at McDonald’s in Kapaa.
Working is what she does. It’s a skill she developed early, ever since she was 13, and one that has led to a lifetime of memories.
Ask her about the actor Jack Lemmon and she’ll rattle off the star’s martini order. Clint Eastwood, he was a teetotaler.
She served Hollywood royalty at Coco Palms for 34 years back when her late husband Adam, known as the “King of the River” because of his keen navigation of his yellow boat, was driving movie stars around the island.
“He was a gopher because he knew the island after growing up here,” Silva remembered.
She met Adam in the early 50s, during a weekend vacation to Kauai with a girlfriend.
“He was girl watching at the Lihue airport with his friend,” Silva said. “They ended up following us around the island, but we didn’t mind.”
A week later when she’d returned to Oahu, the Kauai boy she’d known briefly, surprised her at her job.
“He grew on me,” Silva remembered.
Later, they married and Silva landed a job at Coco Palms pouring stiff ones and not so stiff ones for Hollywood’s biggest names. Three decades later and she can still feel like she’s behind the bar at Coco Palms, where she felt like her job was welcoming people home.
“It was amazing the people who came through those doors,” Silva said.
There was Lemmon, James Garner, Ricky Nelson, Raymond Burr, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra – she knew and served all of them and many others.
“Martini on the rocks with a lemon twist was Jack Lemmon’s favorite,” Silva remembered. “And Elvis would shut off the louvers in the back of the bar and sing to us.”
Eastwood was known to appreciate the resort’s non-alcoholic fruit punch.
“I had to give him the recipe,” Silva recalled.
One of Silva’s favorite celebrity guests was Burr.
“He would sit at the bar and talk to me for a couple hours a night while I worked,” Silva said. “He would tell me about the antiques he collected from around the world and how he loved ketchup on avocados.”
But there are bad memories at the legendary hotel, too. She was working a shift in 1968 when she heard emergency sirens wail. The sirens, she learned later, were responding to a car accident that took her 9-year-old son’s life. The brakes had failed on Adam’s vehicle. Silva said her husband never fully recovered from the pain of the loss. He died 25 years ago. She relishes her memories of camping trips to Hanalei Bay with her family of four children and camping in the park and cooking up chicken hakka.
“I miss the company,” Silva said.
But there are so many happy memories, too.
Remembering Sinatra as pleasant when he’d sit at the bar and shoot the breeze, she said he was a true giver.
“One night he requested I send drinks to a couple of sailors in the bar,” Silva said. “He insisted that if they wanted to send one back to him, not to.”
And then there was the time she served Rock ‘n roll hall of famer Ricky Nelson his first mai tai, which didn’t seem to please the musician’s palate.
“Not long after that, he asked for a Coke,” Silva said with a laugh.
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This is an ongoing feature that focuses on everyday people who reflect the spirit that makes Kauai the place it is today. If you know of somebody you’d like to see featured, email Lisa Ann Capozzi at lcapozzi@thegardenisland.com.
