GARY KUBOTA / GKUBOTA@STARBULLETIN.COM
The Paia post office was renamed yesterday as the Patsy Takemoto Mink Post Office Building. Husband John Mink placed a lei on a plaque with relative Rose Ohashi as Mink's daughter Gwendolyn watched.
Mink’s efforts
recalled at dedication
WAILUKU >> More than 100 people, from classmates to congressmen, remembered U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink yesterday in a ceremony dedicating a Maui post office in her honor.
"I think it's wonderful," said her daughter Gwendolyn Mink, a professor of government and women's studies at Smith College in Massachusetts. "These are her roots."
Mink, the first woman of color elected to Congress and the primary force behind Title IX legislation opening school athletics to women, was born Dec. 6, 1927, on Maui and raised in the sugar plantation village of Hamakuapoko, about three miles east of Paia.
The Patsy Takemoto Mink Post Office Building is along Baldwin Avenue in Paia, which was once a sugar plantation town but now is full of visitor boutiques.
Mink, a Japanese American, graduated from Maui High School in 1944, during an era when job opportunities were limited for minorities and women in Hawaii's agricultural economy.
Retired Family Court Judge Harriette Holt, a high school classmate of Mink's, recalled society then regarded the "proper jobs" for women to be limited to secretaries, nurses and teachers.
"That was as far as you could go up," Holt said.
Mink suffered early disappointment when she was rejected from entering medical school because she was a woman.
She received a law degree from the University of Chicago and was the first Asian-American woman to be admitted to the Hawaii bar in 1953.
Gwendolyn Mink said her mother was an early supporter of civil rights and successfully helped organize the desegregation of student housing when she briefly attended the University of Nebraska.
Martha Martin, a Maui resident, said Mink came out early in opposition to the Vietnam War, despite the lack of support among many Democrats.
"I admired her dedication and truth," Martin said.
