Longtime Kalaupapa resident and tour guide Richard Marks,
decked with leis, joins Howard Crouch, founder of the
Damien-Sutton Society for Leprosy Aid, and Betty Campbell
at the grave of Joseph Dutton yesterday.
Star-Bulletin photo

Yesterday, he was presented a prestigious international award for opening outsiders' eyes to the life of a leprosy patient in the remote Molokai community, which has evolved in his time from a place of enforced banishment to a tranquil retirement village and national park.

Marks, 67, was presented the annual Damien-Dutton Award, which in the past has gone to Mother Teresa, for her work with the poor in India, and to President John F. Kennedy, who first proclaimed a World Leprosy Day to dramatize the efforts to eradicate the disease which has been a source of fear and dread for centuries.

"He has overcome adversity and gone on to change the face of our thoughts toward this disease," said Howard Crouch, president and founder of the Damien-Dutton Society for Leprosy Aid. The New York-based organization has about 25,000 members and has supported 60 leprosy projects around the world with contributions.

Crouch said Marks was also chosen because of his advocacy for patients rights and benefits. He was also a lobbyist to get National Park designation to preserve the peninsula as a historic site. He has spoken at sessions of the World Leprosy Congress.

The award, and the society, were named after Marks' and Crouch's shared heros, Father Damien DeVeuster and Brother Joseph Dutton, both of whom served patients at Kalaupapa.

Yesterday's ceremonies included a Mass, flower-laying at the graves of Damien, who died of the disease in 1889, and Dutton, who died in 1931 after 44 years service at the settlement. About 100 people attended a luau afterward.

Ten of Marks' grandchildren were at the peninsula for the celebration but, in a lingering echo of the days of quarantine, most were not allowed to attend the luau because they are under 16 years of age. Children are not allowed in the village of Kalaupapa - a restriction now imposed by the Patients Council.

Like all patients with children, Marks and his wife, Gloria, had to relinquish his sons and her daughters to be raised by family members outside.

"I was so afraid of coming here," Richard Marks told the crowd. He was diagnosed with the disease at age 19, but for the four years before that, Marks fled the islands as a merchant seaman after seeing several family members sent to Kalaupapa.

Marks made the most of his circumstances when he started his highly successful business, Damien Tours. His narrative, full of pithy criticism of government agencies' actions in the settlement and colorful recreations of history, grabs the visitor's absorbed attention leaving the airport, as he points out the first cemetery and announces that his brother, father, uncle and grandmother are buried there.

"In those days, when you came to Kalaupapa, you're pau, you're gone, like you're dead," recalled state House Speaker Joe Souki, a friend since childhood.

Marks thanked "all the people who have taken my grumbling, I've done a lot of grumbling over the years." He said the honors should be shared with "the patients who were here longer than me and saw the worst parts," and all the people who work at the settlement, from the staff of hospital, state and federal park workers to the many volunteers.

Crouch, who is retired as an administrator with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, began his personal support of leprosy programs as a young soldier when he visited a leprosarium where 250 patients were attended by nine nuns.

"My soul was changed, I vowed I would do something," Crouch said. It started with enlisting the help of other soldiers, who adopted the patients as a service project. It expanded to include his mother and her friends in New Jersey making gifts for the patients. He founded the Damien-Dutton Society, which branched out to help other projects and, in 1953, began presenting the award to give credit and raise awareness in the fight against the disease. He and one of the nuns, Sister Mary Augustine, collaborated on four books including two about Dutton.

"I tremble standing at this holy spot," said Crouch, on his first visit to St. Philomena's Church, which Father Damien built at Kalawao.

One of the commendation letters read at the luau said: "God love you for all you have done to help people to know and love all those afflicted with leprosy and to spread the devotion to Blessed Damien of Molokai. In helping so many people, you have touched the heart of God Himself who said: 'Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.'"

The crowd whooped and applauded when they heard the name of the author, Mother Teresa of Calcutta.