GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM University of Hawaii President Evan Dobelle placed a maile lei over a portrait of the late Gladys Brandt yesterday at the Kamehameha Schools Chapel, shortly before the start of services for the former Kamehameha educator and UH regent.

Brandt praised
as a cultural icon

A Kamehameha Schools
service honors the educator

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By Sally Apgar
sapgar@starbulletin.com

The hollow, mournful sounding of the conch shell, the traditional Hawaiian way of heralding a person of importance, called the beginning of services at Kamehameha Schools last night to commemorate the life of Gladys Kamakakuokalani Ainoa Brandt.

Brandt, who had lifelong ties to Kamehameha, was a revered kupuna and educator. She touched many lives, restored pride in Hawaiian language and traditions, and broke the kapu on standing hula at Kamehameha, which helped unleash a renaissance in Hawaiian culture.

Last night, about 150 students, alumni, teachers and staff attended the service in the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Memorial Chapel to honor Brandt, who died in her sleep earlier this month at 96.

"Sometimes the world is graced with select individuals who come to us and who by example transform an institution or they change the well-being of people. Gladys Brandt was such a person," Kamehameha Chief Executive Officer Hamilton McCubbin said at the service. "In her 96 years, by her example, by her deeds, by her vision, by her nurturing and by her mentoring, she transformed Hawaii."

Speaker Neil Hannahs, who first knew Brandt when he was a brash student and she was the strict disciplinarian head of the high school, said: "Mrs. Brandt prevailed over the obstacles that were placed in her path, whether here at Kamehameha or in the larger community. And somewhere along the journey of her life, the passionate and disciplined Mrs. Brandt became the wise and beloved Auntie Gladys."

The service at Kamehameha was the first in a series of cultural and religious ceremonies to be held over three days to commemorate Brandt.

Today, Brandt will be honored at the building bearing her name: the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.

Tonight, Brandt's ashes will be taken to Kawaiaha'o Church, where they will be received by the Hawaiian society Hale O Na Alii O Hawaii, who will guard over her for a 24-hour vigil during which anyone may pay final respects.

Tomorrow, all state flags will fly at half-staff from sunrise to sunset to honor Brandt.

At 6 p.m. tomorrow a Christian service will be held.

Brandt had strong ties to Kamehameha, which was founded in 1894 to educate children of Hawaiian ancestry. Her mother, Esther, was in Kamehameha's first graduating class of women, and her father, David, taught tailoring at Kamehameha's boys school. She was raised for several years as the hanai daughter of Ida May Pope, the first principal of Kamehameha's girls school. During that time, she was the only girl to attend the boys elementary school.

Brandt, like many others who joined the Hawaiian renaissance, also struggled with her heritage. As a child she tried to hide it and even rubbed lemon juice into her skin to make it whiter.

But Brandt became a proud rebel and the first native Hawaiian principal of the Kamehameha girls school in 1963. Brandt oversaw the merging of the boys and girls schools, and then became director of the high school division.

In 1997, Brandt joined four other influential community members to publish "Broken Trust," an essay that harshly criticized the financial mismanagement of the then-board of trustees of Kamehameha School/Bishop Estate. Within days of publication in the Star-Bulletin, the attorney general started an intensive investigation into the estate. In May 1999 the board was ousted.

In his speech, Hannahs quoted Brandt's own words that Hawaiians are no longer victims, but a people who can "shape our own destiny and future."

He continued in Brandt's words: "We stand with pride, having witnessed our language return from disuse and our cultural customs reborn from abuse. But the struggle is not yet over; indeed it has only begun."