Kauai’s Faye family WAIMEA, Kauai >> Chris Faye likes to tell a story about her great-grandfather Hans Peter Faye coming to Kauai from Norway in 1880 at the age of 21 and how his father insisted he bring with him a business suit.
is steeped in sugar
Success sprang from a humble start
SWEET SUCCESS
Anthony Sommer / asommer@starbulletin.com
Since he planned to work in the red dirt sugar fields, Faye thought the idea of bringing a suit rather silly but he agreed to humor his father.
Four years later, Faye wore the suit for the first and only time when he went to entrepreneur Paul Isenberg for a loan. Isenberg was so impressed with how well dressed Faye was, he gave him the money.
With the loan from Isenberg and a lease from his uncle, sugar pioneer Valdemar Knudsen, Faye founded H.P. Faye & Co., a sugar plantation in Mana, the westernmost town in Kauai. Faye later gained a majority interest in the Waimea Sugar Mill, which was founded in 1884 and closed in 1969.
Today, the youngest Fayes (a French name pronounced fie-ah) are H.P. Faye's great-great-great grandchildren. At the time of statehood in 1959, H.P. Faye & Co. was incorporated as Kikiaola Land Co., and it is still owned by about 100 of the founder's descendants. And it is the only land-development company headquartered in West Kauai.
"Many family companies end when the grandchildren take control and sell them off. Our family is very determined never to do that," said Linda Collins, a granddaughter of H.P. Faye and president of Kikiaola Land Co. "In everything we do, we try to honor the tradition of our family and the history of West Kauai."
In addition to operating his own businesses, in 1898 H.P. Faye helped merge three existing plantations into Kekaha Sugar Co. He was the first manager of Kekaha Sugar Co. from 1898 until his death in 1928.His son, Lindsay Faye Sr. managed the Kekaha Sugar Co. from 1939 to 1963. Amfac later acquired Kekaha Sugar Co., and Lindsay "Tony" Faye Jr., who came up through the ranks at Amfac, managed the company twice before his retirement in 1992. Tony Faye still keeps close eye on the sugar industry around the world.
Amfac closed both the Kekaha Sugar Co. and its Lihue Plantation on Kauai last November.
"I think the biggest difference between our family and other families whose names are identified with the sugar industry is that the Fayes didn't own the companies they managed.
"They were hired because they had the talent and the ability," said Chris Faye, Tony Faye's daughter, an acknowledged expert on West Kauai history, an artist (she designed the Amfac logo) and tour manager for Gay & Robinson, the only surviving sugar company on Kauai.
Chris Faye also notes her family has one of the most thoroughly documented histories among Hawaii sugar families. H.P. Faye brought a camera with him from Norway and was an obsessive photographer. Lindsay Faye Sr. constantly hired photographers to record life on the Kekaha Plantation. Many of the Faye family photographs are in both the Kauai Museum and the Bishop Museum.Kikiaola Land Co.'s major business venture is Waimea Plantation Cottages, the only resort in West Kauai and a vacation rental project that is unique in all of Hawaii.
The 54 cottages are a combination of workers' homes already on the Waimea Sugar property and others moved from the Kekaha and Mana sugar camps. All have been refurbished and brought up to current codes.
While serving as comfortable visitor accommodations, they also represent the complete range of plantation architecture styles from the 1880s to the 1950s.
The most prized building is the resort's headquarters, which is H.P. Faye's original plantation manager's home brought by truck from Mana in 1990. Not surprisingly, it contains a Faye family photograph museum.
