WILLIAM D. "BILL" FLANDERS, co-founder of the Flanders Store for Men, who himself was known for wearing bright, colorful clothes, has died at 87. Clothes shop co-founder
believed in having funHe was best known for wearing
bright and colorful apparelWILLIAM D. 'BILL' FLANDERS / 1914-2001
By Rosemarie Bernardo
rbernardo@starbulletin.com"He loved to tease and have a good time," said his daughter Mari-jo Allen, who said her father's clothes sometimes bordered on "loud."
Flanders died in his Waimea home on the Big Island on Aug. 28.
Flanders' father, Walter, was an automobile Hall of Fame inventor of the Ford automobile assembly line.
Born March 26, 1914, in Miami, Flanders attended Menlo College and Stanford University. He married Josephine Buckley in 1937 in Menlo Park, Calif.
In the mid-1940s, Flanders and his wife moved to Oahu and opened the Flanders Store for Men with his brother, Walter. The store was located next to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in front of the Old Outrigger Canoe Club in Waikiki.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, Flanders and his brother served as volunteers to care for those injured.
In 1975, Flanders and his wife retired to the Big Island.
"He was a very attentive father ... always very supportive," Allen said. "He will be very missed."
In addition to his wife and daughter, Flanders is survived by a son, Drew Flanders; another daughter, Lorraine Urbic; seven grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; sister-in-law Muriel Flanders; nieces Alice Guild, Mary Philpotts McGrath, Judy Staub, Sydney Hudson Walker and nephew Joe Hudson; grandnieces and nephews; and great-grandnieces and nephews.
A memorial service is scheduled for Sept. 15 at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Waimea, Big Island.
Inurnment of ashes will follow at Waimea Catholic Cemetery at Church Row.