CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Anita Malama wears several hats for the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii, one of many groups for which volunteers.
Great-grandma
keeps energy up
for volunteering
Her cell phone is always on, and she carries her appointment calendar wherever she goes.
Yet Anita Malama hasn't had a full-time paying job in 40 years.
She's too busy volunteering her time to bother getting paid for it.
On any given day, Malama could be helping out at the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii's Charles C. Spalding Clubhouse, coaching soccer, attending a Parent Teachers Association meeting, feeding the homeless at Harris United Methodist Church or rounding up plumerias for leis and sewing malo at the last minute for Duke Kahanamoku's 113th-birthday celebration in Waikiki.
On a recent day at Spalding Clubhouse, Malama was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt and a visor, one of her many hats.
The energetic great-grandmother, who turns 64 next Monday, was awarded custody in 1994 of four of her grandchildren, three boys and a girl, whose ages now range from 10 to 17. She also cares for her 2-year-old great-granddaughter. In addition, she's a caregiver for her mother-in-law, who has emphysema and lives in Malama's home.
"I've thought about going to work, but who's going to take care of them?" said Malama, who retired in 1994 after nearly 20 years at her part-time job as softball coach at McKinley High School. "The (grandchildren are) young, and at the time I got them, they were really young. The baby (who's now 10) was 1, and my granddaughter was in the third grade. For me to go out and look for a job, and find a sitter for them ... with this day and age, you really have to be one step ahead of the teenagers. It's really hard. So I just do whatever we can do."
That means immersing herself in many of her grandchildren's activities -- and then some.
She's president of the parents' advisory board for Spalding Clubhouse; chairwoman of Spalding's main fund-raiser, "Go for the Gold," which raised $7,000 earlier this month; a PTA member at Kaimuki High School, Ala Wai Elementary School and Kamehameha Schools; and coordinator of her church's bazaar. She also has been a coach, referee and team mother in the American Youth Soccer Organization and plans to become involved again next year after taking this season off.
"My children are in all these activities, and in order for me to know who all my children's friends are, I get involved in these," Malama said. "In any organization you need parental support, and this is why I'm there for them."
Malama has been helping out at Spalding Clubhouse for about 30 years. It started when her son and daughter, both now grown, began going there after school. It continued with her nieces and nephews, and now her grandchildren. The clubhouse, behind Washington Intermediate School, offers a learning center, computer room, art room, teen center, basketball gym, game room and playing field for different types of sports. It costs $10 a year per child to join.
"I enjoy doing it because my kids are in it, and I like to see the kids have something," Malama said. "I feel good when everybody has fun and everybody gets involved. It's like a family thing, and I have a very good support. My husband, Moki, is very understanding. Whenever we have to go somewhere, he's there."
Ron Fitzgerald, Spalding's athletic director, said Malama has been a tremendous asset to the club.
"A lot of the parents are so busy, you never meet a lot of them," Fitzgerald said. "She's there to be the surrogate grandmother to a lot of these kids here and to serve on the board. She's done it all, from coaching to fund raising. She's just a tremendous asset to the community."
Malama said the satisfaction she derives from helping her grandchildren far outweighs the amount of time she sacrifices.
"My children's schedule is my time, and God's been with me," Malama said. "Whenever I do something, this is my way to show that I love to do things. And I have the strength from God to do it. I believe if it wasn't meant for me to help people, I wouldn't have the strength to do it."
