Hawaii
Recalling win of Chaminade
over VirginiaIT'S been a time of anniversaries. For starters, I was at Blaisdell Arena years ago when Chaminade beat Virginia, a basketball power featuring Ralph Sampson, who was here for the anniversary get-together. I was there with Dick Boyd, Dick Bender and other pals of Chaminade athletic director Mike Vasconcellos, and nobody could believe it when the Silverswords won. "They'll print up T-shirts reading 'I was there ...' " somebody suggested, "and sell 100,000 of them." In reality, the arena wasn't even full, as I recall. Still, it was a day Mike, coach Merv Lopes and the Chaminade players, will never forget ...
I GOT a call Friday from radio and TV broadcaster Don Robbs reminding me of where I was on that day 39 years ago. It was the day President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and Robbs and I were together at K-POI. I was hosting the morning show and he was my newsman who alerted me on the intercom, "Give me a 'bulletin.' Somebody's just shot the president." It was a harrowing time neither of us will ever forget. It came to mind years later when we were together watching Monday Night Football and a crawl along the bottom of the screen announced that Beatle John Lennon had been shot and killed. We agreed that perhaps we should stop getting together ...
Asking for Trouble
IF you can't find a copy of Sheridan Morley's just released memoirs, "Asking for Trouble," at your favorite bookstore, you can order it from Amazon.com. It is riotously funny, yet full of self-deprecating humor, and contains quite a bit about Hawaii, the place where he'd love to retire one day, though that seems an unlikely occurrence to me. I've known Sheridan since the Kennedy assassination threw us together in a hastily rehearsed and produced "The Man Who Came to Dinner" at the East-West Center Theater, substituting for the much-rehearsed political musical farce, "Of Thee I Sing," suddenly deemed inappropriate. Both Sheridan and I were in that show, and I was shocked and surprised to see that in his memoirs he named me, aside from his first wife Margaret, as one of the two best friends he had from his Hawaii days, describing me as "for thirty or so years the diarist on the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and a man after my own heart -- large, bearded, gregarious and a compulsive gossip, as befits his journalism." He goes on and then mentions, again by way of a story, his other good friend, Bette Midler. Not bad company ...
Golden Anniversary
IT was on Nov. 25, 1952, that Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" opened at the St. Martin's Theater in London. Yesterday was the anniversary, and someone actually counted up the fact that it was Performance No. 20,807. Queen Elizabeth, herself celebrating her Golden Jubilee year, booked "The Royal Box" to see the other 50th anniversary celebrant -- for the first time ... And pity the two British producers who plunked down $10,000 for the film rights, with the proviso the movie couldn't be made until six months after the play closed in London. They're now dead, but the play lives on ...
Dave Donnelly has been writing on happenings
in Hawaii for the Star-Bulletin since 1968.
The Week That Was recalls items from Dave's 30 years of columns.Contact Dave by e-mail: ddonnelly@starbulletin.com