‘A farmer at heart’

Dr. Glenn Hontz was a farmer at heart, said Cammie Matsumoto, Kauai Community College director of public relations and special projects.

“I know he’s still with us,” said Virginia Dunas, Hontz’s widow, Friday morning. “He’ll keep working to feed the island, feed its people, and work toward world peace.”

Hontz passed away on Wednesday.

“Glenn did many things over the years besides organizing the agricultural program at Kauai Community College aimed at decreasing Kauai’s dependency on imported food,” said Mary Mulhall. “I was his office manager for the small advertising business on Kauai — management and marketing. It was a very small office, and lots of fun because during that time, he actually put more energy into environmental causes than the business.”

Mulhall said Hontz was instrumental in getting recycling of materials other than aluminum started on Kauai. He also got the pilot green waste program started at Moloaa with Mark Freeman and Shakira Darcy Freeman and the County of Kauai, put together a statewide conference on Kauai’s environmental future, negotiated with all of the high schools on Kauai to get them to become recycling centers and worked with BFI into supplying the first recycling containers which, at that time, cost $20,000 each.

All of that “fun” came to an end after Hurricane Iniki swept over Kauai in 1992.

“This was a very successful business,” Dunas said. “The hurricane wiped out so many of his clients who advertised through his company, and during the rebuilding following the hurricane, there were so many more magazines and publications emerging to compete for the advertising dollar. Glenn let it go.”

He was contacted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and worked on Kauai teaching people about hurricane clips.

“We lived in Kokee for eight years following the hurricane,” Dunas said. “Glenn grew organic vegetables in raised beds and we could live on what he grew.”

Laurie Ho, Kauai County Farm Bureau president, said she wondered who lived “behind the high wooden fence.”

“I remember staying at the Hongwanji cabin up Kokee,” Ho said. “We hiked by Glenn and Virginia Dunas’ house, wondering who lives behind that high wooden fence.”

Dunas said Glenn held a degree from Columbia University. He taught at Columbia University and at the University of Hawaii at Manoa when they came to Hawaii in 1978. He attributes part of his success to his father who worked on the railroads in New York and rose to the level of Director of the Railroad.

“Glenn was still a youngster, and whenever his father had meetings with clients — big accounts like Alcoa — to resolve a railroad shipping problem, he would be dressed in a suit and seated next to them on a big table,” Dunas said. “When the discussions were done, his father would always ask him, ‘what do you think?’”

Matsumoto said she can only imagine the vastness of his repertoire of mentors from whom he learned and his experience relating to all phases of food production.

“He was a planner for Garden Grove, California where he started senior citizen gardens everywhere there was empty space,” Dunas said. “He formed a consortium of cities where neighboring cities would hook up by computers so they could track illegal activities of juvenile delinquents and other illegal activities.”

When he arrived at the Kauai Community College, he literally “pulled the farm out of the dirt.”

“There was this nut thing below the surface that wouldn’t go away,” Dunas said. “It was a lot of hard work. He didn’t have teachers — just a lot of growers who said they didn’t know a thing about teaching. But he worked with them in creating Powerpoints on computers, and slowly created instructors.”

Ho said when Glenn started working at Kauai Community College, he took up residence at “The Farm.”

“We were all engaged in promoting all forms of agriculture,” Ho said. “We had lots of meetings in the KCC dining room trying to crack the secret formula of marrying farmers and ranchers into the community by building a network of what we recognize, or now call ‘Farm to Table,’ and taking that informal system, or network, and trying to formalize it into a business model.”

Matsumoto said Glenn was instrumental in initiating the college’s aquaponics facility, bringing Bernie Tsao to the college to build the facility.

“Glenn garnered donations to support aquaponics and used some of the grant monies for it,” Matsumoto said. “He also covered tuitions for students who could not afford classes.”

Ho said he ran classes and used the term “vertical integration” a lot.

“Folks who attended his classes loved his zest and enthusiasm he had for agriculture and getting the farm products to the people,” Ho said. “He lectured, and took his students on field trips to see agriculture and getting the farm products to the people. Folks got to see hands-on operations and took notes on what they needed to grow their operations to enhance what they were presently growing — reaching for that ‘value added’ local product.”

Dunas estimated that he had reached more than 1,500 students.

“Glenn had a big influence on many lives here,” Mulhall said.

When he was admitted to the hospital, Monday, a doctor recognized him as “one of my teachers,” Dunas said.

He was in so much pain, the physicians ran a series of tests, discovering he had fractures in his hip in multiple locations.

Surgery was scheduled, and Glenn was looking forward to a good night’s sleep without pain following the surgery, she said.

“One day, the notion of producing our own food will be a given reality on Kauai. Perhaps Kauai will also be again an island whose livelihood is centered on agriculture. Perhaps Kauai will be one of the world’s largest producers of plant nutrients,” Matsumoto said. “When these happen, Dr. Hontz will be known as one of the most significant forerunners of these new and renewed realities. Without his perseverance, dedication, and love for the culture of farming, Kauai would not have advanced as far as it is. He has been a true and gifted mentor who has inspired so many, and we only look forward with excitement.”