[ IN APPRECIATION ]
Kekoa always
there to kokua
The periphery of politics was not the place to find Kekoa David Kaapu. If there was no election to enter or cause to lead, Kaapu would create one and step to the front. At the time of his death on Wednesday, the 66-year-old Harvard grad who grew up in a grass shack in Punaluu was preparing a legal challenge to the city's new bus fare system, claiming that senior citizens were being cheated out of a contract.
A Honolulu city councilman during the 1960s and again in the 1970s, Kaapu was considered destined for higher office. The fact that it didn't happen put no damper on the man whose uniform was shorts, a T-shirt, a plumeria behind his ear and a smile on his face. He would pass out flowers as he made his pitch for office; he must have run for election every two years and then some during the past two decades.
When the city solicited designs for the revamping of Aloha Tower, Kaapu submitted his idea. When the former owner of the Star-Bulletin announced that the newspaper would be shut down four years ago, Kaapu became a leader in the citizens' committee to save the paper. His far-fetched idea of having the city condemn the newspaper, turn it into an urban renewal project and have it taken over by a nonprofit group such as his Public Interest Policy and Economic Research Institute Inc. caused brows to wrinkle, but friends of the paper were grateful for his support. After the Star-Bulletin was saved in a more conventional way, Kaapu applied his urban-renewal theory to a failed effort to save the Columbia Inn, where he often gathered with newspaper folks at the Round Table.
Kaapu carried out all his projects with unbridled enthusiasm and joy, handing out plumerias to everyone, and he never had the slightest feeling of defeat. A unique face has been lost from the mosaic of Hawaii.
Lee Catterall
lcatterall@starbulletin.com
