You're at this big party and, except for the rest of the unattached-but-patrolling group of friends you came with, you really don't know anybody else at this shindig. You may meet
By Gary C.W. Chun
a stranger from across
a crowded room
Star-BulletinWelcome to the club! While not an uncommon dilemma, when it comes to the annual April Foolish Party on the decks of the Falls of Clyde, not only does the cost of your ticket benefit Make-A-Wish Hawaii and the Hawaii Maritime Center, you can eat, drink and boogie with other like-minded singles looking for ... someone.
Take Uli Frowein and Terri Needels for example. They met at the second party back on April 4, 1987 -- and a year later, to the day, they got married. So, OK, this is the best-case scenario, a happily wedded couple who is still happily wedded after a chance encounter at a party. And while it puts the April Foolish Party in a particularly good light as a place to meet singles, the rest was up to them.
Frowein, an international private banker for Bank of Hawaii since '92, and Needels, a psychologist in private practice, couldn't have come from more different backgrounds. The German-native Frowein was a regular visitor to Hawaii during the '80s, "just hanging out, windsurfing," he said during a conversation with the couple at the Outrigger Canoe Club early Monday evening.
"I then went back to Germany to take over the family business -- but I still had a lot of friends here, so I liked coming back here at least twice a year.
"I always considered Hawaii my second home -- it's like a fantasy world compared to Germany! Anyway, on one of the trips back here, I went to the party."
The modus operandi behind the party was for a bunch of young professional guys (dubbed the "Boys Bunch" with local attorney Brad Coates as its "chairman") to have an excuse to get crazy on a regular basis and, of course, to socialize with members of the female persuasion.
"Most of the guys back then were bachelors -- the yuppie crowd of Honolulu," said Frowein. "It's not a stiff kind of party at all, and most people who go already know each other.
"A party like this was amazing to me. Europeans usually never gather together at a party in such big numbers -- they're either very formal or small dinner parties. We're not that easygoing. Any party of this kind was a great experience for me!
"My version of meeting Terri was that, first, I wasn't looking for anybody. I already had a girlfriend back in Germany."
So there he was, quietly having a couple of beers, "feeling sort of like a tourist," while the friend he came to the party with ("Bunch" member Jay Sweet) was busily conversing with Diane, one of two women who came over to them.
Needels was the other woman of the two. She and Frowein noticed each other. "Oh great! Not another quiet, stoic guy ... some tourist just off the plane!" she remembers thinking.
"At first, I didn't want to talk to her," Frowein said. "Like most Europeans, I didn't know how to approach someone I didn't already know."
Needels was there at the behest of Coates, who was her next-door neighbor at the time, and occasional partygoer at his home. "I went because I wanted to support the (Make-A-Wish) foundation and to encourage Brad to have his parties held away from home! We weren't planning to stay long.
"So I was there with my roommate at the time, wandering around, and then she and Jay were having an extended conversation. I then saw a guy who I didn't want to meet coming toward me, so I struck up a conversation with Uli. Thankfully, that other guy kept walking past us!"
The icebreaker was what was on the T-shirt that Frowein was wearing. It had the Burton snowboard logo on it, one of the American sport items his father's company was importing at the time. They both liked skiing, windsurfing, tennis and were interested in foreign countries ... instant rapport!
"My first impressions of her was that her back and shoulders were huge!" said Frowein. (She was training for the Molokai-to-Oahu canoe race that year.)
The four newfound friends spent the next day sailing off Kailua Beach Park in Lanikai. The rapport blossomed into romance. "During that month's stay in Hawaii, we saw each other everyday," Frowein said. It was only when they were at the airport for Frowein's departure that it hit them that their relationship was the real deal. "It was horrible, heartbreaking," said Needels.
"When I went back to Germany, we had a long-distance relationship" (and "horrible phone bills" added Needels). "She would call me from a phone booth on the beach and give me the wind reports!" In return, Frowein continued to woo Needels with letters, postcards, photos and tapes of their favorite songs.
After meeting Needels, Frowein broke up with his German girlfriend. Terri came over to Germany later that year as part of an extended business trip that began at a psychologist convention in New York ("I felt, well, might as well keep going on to Europe!")
Her trip ended up being two weeks in June snowboarding on an Austrian glacier and mountain biking along the Danube. Then in October, by sheer coincidence, Frowein returned to Hawaii for an international pesticide convention. By Christmas of '87, "I decided to move back to Hawaii for good and leave my family and job," said Frowein. "I sold everything I had."
On the anniversary of their meeting, they got married at the Church of the Crossroads. "Both of us didn't have any family here (Terri's were in California), so it was just the two of us, with Jay and Diane as our best man and bridesmaid. It was relaxing, we had fun and we went to La Mer at the Halekulani afterward."
After a honeymoon kayaking off the north coast of Molokai, Frowein had to get a work permit, already getting his green card through his marriage. For four years, the couple lived at Needels' place, with Frowein familiarizing himself with the local ways through working with a local pest control company (he even helped with the termite treatment of the Falls of Clyde) and later, worked as a real estate appraiser for the Bank of Hawaii.
Because he's fluent in French, Frowein's business travels takes him throughout the South Pacific, including Tahiti, New Caledonia and Fiji.
Needels thinks their relationship has worked (they have a 7-year-old daughter now) because of "common lifestyles, interests and philosophies; we share the same values and commitment to this marriage.
"I think the writing and phone calls between us, and the physical distance as well at the beginning, was very good for us in retrospect," she said. "That way we really learned about the other person. And his moving here really showed me a sign of commitment from him."
"The only option I ever saw was to live in Hawaii," Frowein added.
"Even though it was difficult for him, overall it was easier for him to make the jump here rather than me going to Germany," Needels said.
Today more couples are going to the party. The crowd's getting older, they've got kids ... so while the party now provides an opportunity for catching-up between old friends, maybe the time is right for the younger members of our town's social circuit to reinvigorate this April Foolish event.
Maybe they could get as lucky as Uli and Terri did.
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