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Henry Walker
dies at 78

He made Amfac a $2-billion
corporation, but he always
helped the 'little guy'

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By Lori Tighe
Star-Bulletin

Henry Walker Jr. knew when the Puna sugar plantation closed in 1984, the town's primary source of income would dry up with it.

So he planted the seeds among his workers for financial independence. Walker, Amfac's venerable former chairman, gave each of the 350 plantation workers five acres to start their own farm.

The Big Island area now boasts more than 600 small farms growing produce worth over $30 million.

"He was a very compassionate man. He always liked the "little guy," said his daughter, Susan Kowen.

Walker, who transformed a sugar company laden with debt into one with assets worth billions, died of leukemia before sunset yesterday at Straub Hospital. He was 78.

A third generation kamaaina, Walker became president and then chairman of the company once run by his father. Amfac Inc. was a "Big Five" sugar company that began as a Honolulu dry-goods store in 1849.

After he became president in 1967, the Harvard-educated Walker turned Amfac from a $150 million company into one with $2 billion in annual revenues.

As Hawaii bid aloha to the sugar era, Walker pushed Amfac into hotels, restaurants and retail stores, including Liberty House, to survive. He retired as president in 1982 and was chairman until the corporation was purchased by JMB Realty in 1988.

Even as a top executive, Walker answered his own phone because he thought it was arrogant to do otherwise, Kowen said. "If you called Amfac and asked for him, you got 'Waaaakerrrr' on the other end," she said, imitating her father.

"He was a people man. He didn't have a bad bone in him. He got along with some tough hombres. They trusted him day in and day out for years and years," said long-time friend Allan Renton.

As a Navy lieutenant on board the battleship USS Missouri, Walker was 15 feet away from the World War II surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945.

The young lieutenant also kept President Harry Truman's wife, Bess, from falling into the Hudson River during Navy Day in New York City celebrating all the war's U.S. battleships. He was helping the President and his wife cross from a small boat to a raft when Bess Truman's legs began splitting between boat and raft.

"Her skirt began to ride up over her knees. I clenched her arm above her elbow," he told the Star-Bulletin two years ago. Heaving with all his might, Walker hoisted the first lady aboard the raft. "The president tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Well done, young man.' "

A half-century later, Walker donated $25,000 to bring the Missouri to Hawaii.

Walker is survived by his wife Nancy. They met on a blind date after Walker's presidential brush on Navy Day, and their marriage lasted 54 years. The couple had two children, Susan and Henry "Ren," and two grandchildren.

Services are pending.