TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Coming clean with a
100-year-old
company’s historyYoung Laundry & Drycleaning continued its diamond jubilee celebration of 100 years in business yesterday with a combined tribute to "Mele Kalikimaka" songwriter R. Alexander Anderson and employee Christmas party.
Anderson was the grandson of Young Laundry founder and early Hawaii mover-and-shaker Alexander Young.
Young Laundry owner and President Mike Drace said that during research into the company's beginnings he found that "We were related to 'Mele Kalikimaka,' so doing a combination Christmas party and 100 year birthday came to us as a good idea."
Drace took his research to Diamond Head Theater where he found a gray tuxedo with tails and top hat which look similar to one worn by Alexander Young in an old photograph.
The chicken-skin part is that Drace has been told and agrees that he looks a little bit like Young.
FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
Peni Uta, left, Pamela Anderson, and Mike Drace sang "Mele Kalikimaka" during the Young Laundry ChristmasParty yesterday. Anderson is the daughter of R. Alexander Anderson, who wrote the song. Drace is Young Laundry owner and president.
Anderson's daughter Pam, now 70, was also on hand for the merriment. She regularly responds to "Baywatch" cast member Pamela Anderson references with, "I'm the original."
Her lyrical father worked his way up through the family business and became president and chairman of the board of the Von Hamm-Young Co., parent company of Young Laundry. Von Hamm-Young was later renamed The Hawaii Corp., and outside investors later gained a controlling interest in the company "and unfortunately it went bankrupt," she said.
R. Alexander Anderson's love of music blossomed while attending Punahou, for which he wrote his first song, "Go Punahou." He then graduated from Cornell and "went off to World War I and flew with the British," Anderson said. He was captured by the Germans, escaped, got back to Honolulu and wrote his story for the old McClure's magazine. He was interviewed by Hollywood executives who took one of his chapter titles and made the movie "Dawn Patrol."
"He never got anything from it, he was a giver," Anderson said.
After he got into business, music was still her father's hobby. People would ask him to write songs, like the colleague at Von Hamm-Young who observed out loud that there was a dearth of hapa-haole Christmas songs. That spawned "Mele Kalikimaka." He also wrote "Christmas in Hawaii" and "The Merriest Hawaiian Christmas," "Lovely Hula Hands," and other songs.
His story has been chronicled in a book by Scott C.S. Stone called, "From a Joyful Heart: The Life and Music of R. Alexander Anderson," published this year.
Picking up where the Young and Alexander families left off, The Hawaii Corp. sold Young Laundry before its bankruptcy filing, Drace said.
It was sold to the then-general manager who flipped it in 11 months, selling it to David Applebaum, "who kept it until eight years ago when I bought it," Drace said.
Young Laundry & Drycleaning employees honored the songwriter and celebrated their history during yesterday's party with a song contest in which four departments competed to present the best rendition of "Mele Kalikimaka."
The retail store counter staffers won the honor of having their accomplishment recorded on a perpetual plaque. "We have a wall where we have some memorabilia from the early days. The plaque will go there," Drace said.
"The runners-up were the truck drivers who actually may have a future in singing," said Drace.
The company's history came full circle as Drace and the founder's great-granddaughter met for the first time.
"Pam Anderson is really a delightful lady. I really enjoyed meeting her," Drace said.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com
