COURTESY PHOTO The Rev. Olin Pendleton, leader of Kokokahi Church, was active in the Kaneohe community. He also was a civil rights pioneer who loved helping the "poorest of the poor."

OLIN PENDLETON / COMMUNITY ACTIVIST

Kaneohe pastor was pioneer
in U.S. civil rights movement

See also: Obituaries

---

By Mary Adamski
madamski@starbulletin.com

The Rev. Olin Pendleton was best known here as a Kaneohe community activist instrumental in getting the city to establish Kaneohe District Park and the state Legislature to pass the Shoreline Protection Act.

But what few ever heard was his role in history as a participant in the civil rights movement, said Waimea Williams, a member of Kokokahi Church, which Pendleton continued to lead until his death last Friday. He was 92.

Pendleton was a minister in Norfolk, Va., from 1952 to 1962 during Martin Luther King Jr.'s efforts to end discrimination against blacks. He was pastor of Old First Church, the first integrated church in the South, said Williams, who edited Pendleton's autobiography. It came about when he invited black neighbors to his church. Many of the white members left, but he helped the mixed congregation to grow, although it was a matter of contention in his denomination's national conventions. Pendleton worked with King's Virginia organizing committee in the 1950s, Williams said.

Born in Seattle, Pendleton and wife Betsy first came to Hawaii in 1949 when he began four years of service at Church of the Crossroads. On their return in 1962, he founded Kokokahi Church at a cottage in Kaneohe under the sponsorship of the Hawaii Conference of Churches.

Pendleton became active in the Kaneohe Community Council and soon organized 17 other Oahu community groups into the Council of Presidents. The predecessor of the city's neighborhood board system gave grass-roots advocates clout to press for issues such as public right of way to Hawaii's beaches.

"I knew him in the mid-'70s when he put together the Council of Presidents," said the Rev. Bob Nakata, former state legislator.

"He was an amazing character, a very persistent personality," said Nakata, who served on the board of Pendleton's Kokokahi Tropical Hunger Mission, an agricultural education project which marked its 25th anniversary last year. The project brought about 20 trainees from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines for training in anti-famine agriculture and nutrition techniques. University of Hawaii instructors gave the trainees practical instruction on a 4-acre Kaneohe farm, and the students returned to their villages to teach what they had learned, said Williams.

"Helping the 'poorest of the poor' was his favorite phrase," said Nakata.

Pendleton is survived by his wife of 65 years, Elizabeth Henry Pendleton.

A memorial service will be held at 2:30 p.m. next Friday at Central Union Church. The family requests that aloha attire be worn and that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Kokokahi Tropical Hunger Mission, 47-004 Okana Place, Kaneohe, HI 96744.