By the end of this calendar year, best guess is that more than eight-and-a-half million people will have visited one or more of these islands. Traditionally, these malihini are welcomed, warmly and genuinely. But government officials and industry leaders are starting to wonder: How many more visitors can we accommodate? Years ago, my former…
Hawaii has always attracted celebrities. Back in the 1970s, it was quite common for some of the celebrity visitors to pay courtesy calls on Honolulu’s mayor at that time, Frank Fasi. For those of us who had reason to meet with the mayor several times a day, it meant we never knew who might be…
During most of the 1970s, I was in the Honolulu municipal government as head of the Office of Information and Complaint. I was appointed to the job by the mayor at that time, Frank Fasi. He was an Italian from East Hartford, Connecticut, who came through Honolulu en route to the South Pacific as a…
There used to be a daily train from Washington to Montreal—the original one, the Montrealer, was operated by the Boston and Maine Railroad and then by Amtrak beginning in 1972. The Montrealer was a popular train, especially in winter months with skiers traveling north in search of powder. In fact, there was even a…