Isn't it time we switched statues of our last queen, Liliuokalani, with a Belgian Catholic priest sculpted in all his final days of disfiguring Hansen's disease? Queen ought to assume her rightful place at Capitol
Liliuokalani should be in front of the building, surveying her kingdom
Doesn't a stately Hawaiian queen belong in front of our Capitol building instead of being hidden around the back, as though she were someone of lesser importance than an deserving, nevertheless, foreign priest and a hideous statue of him, to boot?
Granted, Father Damien earned a place of honor in our early history and I do not mean to count him down, in any sense. But when tourists come here, they must wonder who that lady is behind the Capitol! I have often heard them say so and when they ask me, I proudly tell them who she is.
Didn't our last queen endure enough indignities in her tortured life to deserve in death a more prominent place in our city? Shouldn't she be in front of our state Capitol instead of behind? So I recommend the switch, to make everybody happy, especially those of us who would like to see her standing there in all her royal majesty beneath the Hawaiian flag.
I say this as a citizen born 82 years ago in Honolulu who proudly recalls the day in my early childhood when I witnessed the traditional funeral of our last queen.
A Hawaiian flag unfurls itself from my high balcony in Lanikai and although I am not of Hawaiian blood, I am Hawaiian at heart. I learned Hawaiian from the large Beckley family down the lane from my home in Kaimuki. I learned to sit down on the large lauhala mat and eat poi, raw fish and eel, octopus, dried shrimp and anything else they passed around to me. I was their hanai keiki.
The head of the family was Fred Beckley, the first professor of Hawaiian language at the then budding University of Hawaii, called the College of Hawaii.
From this friendly family with 10 kids I learned the legends of our islands, which I put into my first book, "Favorite Island Legends" 20 years later, published by Tongg Publishing Co.
It is now out of print but copyrighted by Mutual Publishing Co. and probably will be reprinted. It is in all public and private schools, and used by many in all the libraries, including the University of Hawaii's Hawaiiana section.
The kupuna (grandma) of that family had long gray hair, would dramatically look up into the heavens and predict things to come, such as Queen Liliuokalani's death.
I attended the funeral as a tot, holding my mother's long gloved hand which she squeezed in mine to say: "Never forget this day, child. This is the last queen of your land." And I never did.
The body lay in state at Kawaiahao Church before being taken to Iolani Palace and then a funeral cortege was pulled by stevedores up to Nuuanu Valley for burial in the Royal Mausoleum.
My dad marched in the parade as a government official and my mother and I watched as the cortege left Iolani Palace. There were wailing Hawaiian women dressed in rustling black taffeta with real feather leis of the o'o bird. Men carried royal kahilis and wore feather capes as they escorted the queen's body.
It was a day I have never forgotten and so today I plead for a switch of Father Damien and our beloved Queen Liliuokalani.
Peggy Hickok Hodge is an author, freelance writer and former Star-Bulletin staff member. She lives in Lanikai. The opinions in View Point columns are the authors' and are not necessarily shared by the Star-Bulletin.