Sister Maureen Keleher
St. Francis sister hailed
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
as visionary
Star-BulletinSISTER Maureen Keleher believed deeply in the motto of St. Francis of Assisi: "It is in giving that we receive." Keleher was chief operating officer for St. Francis Medical Center from 1953 to 1988, founding Hawaii's first hospice program and advancing plans for St. Francis Medical Center West in Ewa.
Born in Providence, R.I., she earned a nursing degree from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and later, a master's degree in sociology from the University of Hawaii.
Under Keleher's leadership, St. Francis became a leader in organ transplants. The state's first heart transplant was done at St. Francis.
The Liliha Street hospital also has been at the forefront of kidney dialysis, substance abuse treatment for women, cancer rehabilitation and senior citizens care.
But Keleher's true legacy was her pioneering effort in the late 1970s to bring to Hawaii the concept of hospice care -- where terminally ill patients are cared for in their homes, or a setting outside the traditional hospital, with as little pain as possible.
When the 12-bed, Sister Maureen Keleher Hospice Center opened in Nuuanu in 1988, it was the only freestanding hospice in the state. A decade later, there were eight facilities statewide handling close to 1,500 patients.
When Keleher died on Thanksgiving morning in 1995 after a long illness, she was hailed as a visionary of the hospital community.
But for Keleher, the hospital business was not about the number of beds her facilities could accommodate or being the first to put in the latest medical gadgetry.
"The quality of health care service is more than diagnosis and treatment," Keleher wrote in 1977. "It encompasses the reaching out and touching of patients as individuals, and, at the same time, keenly understanding them as people."
Promoter known as
By Bill Kwon
‘Shogun of Sports’
Star-BulletinWHEN it comes to bringing big-time sports to Hawaii, nobody comes close to matching what promoter Mackay Yanagisawa has accomplished.
Yanagisawa is best known as the founder of the Hula Bowl -- the nation's top college all-star football game. But he also was instrumental in convincing the NCAA that Hawaii should also host the Aloha Bowl, a postseason holiday game played on Christmas Day.
Yanagisawa also was instrumental in landing the Pro Bowl -- the National Football League's postseason all-star game -- in 1980 in his final year as general manager of Aloha Stadium.
Known as the "Shogun of Sports," Yanagisawa wore many hats, including that as stadium manager of the 50,000-seat Halawa facility, which opened in 1975, and the old Honolulu Stadium, which he managed from 1955 through its closing 20 years later.
The idea of the Hula Bowl, which began in 1947, came to Yanagisawa as a way of filling Sunday dates at the Honolulu Stadium, when he was an assistant manager.
And until the Hula Bowl got its first television contract in 1969, Yanagisawa used his own money, including mortgaging his home, to keep the game afloat.
A sports fan first, Yanagisawa had always wanted to see Notre Dame play. That was the main reason why he came up with the idea of the Aloha Bowl, according to Yanagisawa, now 86 years old.
Business runs deep in family
By Pat Omandam
Star-BulletinA businessman, a church leader and founder of the YMCA in Honolulu, Joseph Ballard Atherton started a family tradition of civic leadership and philanthropy that continued throughout the 20th century.
Born in 1837 in Boston, Atherton was a frail young man in December 1858 when he sailed to Hawaii in hopes of better health.
A few years later, Atherton and Joseph P. Cooke took over active direction of the business. When Castle died in 1894, Atherton became senior member and later president of the firm, a position he held until his death in 1903.
During his career, Castle & Cooke became active in the sugar industry, and Atherton helped incorporate the Ewa Plantation Co.
A director of several other businesses, Atherton also helped found the newspaper Hawaiian Star in 1893, which family members later merged with the Evening Bulletin in 1912 to create the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
His son, Frank Cooke Atherton (1877-1945), was a director of Hawaiian Electric Co. for 37 years. His grandson, J. Ballard Atherton, served as president of Hawaiian Telephone Co. until he died in 1962.
The Atherton family continued to have close ties to the Star-Bulletin for more than half this century. J. Ballard and Alexander S. Atherton joined a group led by businessman Chinn Ho to buy the Star-Bulletin from the Wallace Farrington Estate in 1961. Alexander Atherton later served as president of the afternoon newspaper.
