The Poi Boys
had a symbiotic
relationship
Every few years, I'd ask Dave Donnelly if he knew how many words he'd written for his Star-Bulletin column since starting it in 1968. Well, over the years the two of us would either delve into, or argue about, virtually any kind of statistic. But Donnelly never wanted to pursue the answer to that one. I figured it must be some sort of superstition about numbers and streaks like ballplayers have, and always dropped the subject. But now it's time to add things up, Moose, and the answer is:
Donnelly wrote 5.25 million words about Hawaii, based on 35 years of writing five 600-word columns a week, with some time off for vacations.This man deserves 1,500 words, at least:
Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959. Honolulu's fourth-oldest radio station, KHON, became KPOI. Purchased from bankruptcy by New York radio exec H.G. "Jock" Fearnhead, the station was located at 1701 Ala Wai across from the canal. By then it had sunk to the bottom of the radio ratings. On May 9, KHON changed to "KAY-POI," one of the first stations to use a name, not the series of call letters issued by the FCC. A crew of young broadcast vets known as the "Poi Boys" came on and played the Top 40 hits mixed in with outrageous fun and games. KPOI turned into a radio circus. It hit No. 1 in the Hooper ratings by October ...
THE ORIGINAL Poi Boys were "Uncle" Tom Moffatt, Bob "The Beard" Lowrie, "Jumpin'" George West, Sam Sanford and me. I was also program director, responsible for the air personalities. They ranged from merely extroverted to outright nuts. My duties seemed the same as those of the chief animal keeper at the Honolulu Zoo ... Everyone handled two jobs except news director Tom Rounds. I did the "afternoon drive" show, supervised production and thought up the organized pilikia KPOI listeners had come to expect. My first failure was the incorrigible "morning man," Sanford. One day, the studio walls were left splattered with raw eggs during Sanford's shift. He was told to cool it, and he did for about three weeks, when his listeners attempted to reassemble a VW bug in the main studio. The consequences were doubly horrible: I handed Sanford his walking papers and took over the morning slot, which left me doing two shows a day ...
IN JUNE 1960, Dave Donnelly, recently discharged from the Navy and studying drama at UH, joined KPOI as the weekend newsman. He replaced Larry Cott, who left to write political commentary full time. Within a year Donnelly was reading the news on the "Ron Jacobs Show." Every morning for three hours we peered at each other through a soundproof window. I played records by "Ricky" Nelson, the Five Satins, Connie Francis -- all the golden oldies of the future. Donnelly reported on Hawaii newsmakers like Gov. William Quinn, Mayor Neal Blaisdell and new U.S. Sen. Hiram Fong. International headlines, which included named like Gagarin, Eichmann, Gromyko and DeGaulle, seemed to be coming from another worlds. It was 20 years before CNN began ... Rounds nicknamed Donnelly "The Moose" because "he was big and hulking -- like a moose." Later, when Donnelly morphed into a Poi Boy, he was issued a goofy jingle that ended with the words, "Moose, Moose, Moose." Donnelly pretty much despised the moniker. If I called him the "Moose" off the air, he would shut me up by calling me "Ronnie," which he knew I hated since elementary school ...
COURTESY TOM MOFFATT
Dave Donnelly joined the Poi Boys in 1960, reading the news.
Swingin' through the '60s
WHILE THE RECORDS played over the airwaves, Donnelly and I yakked over the intercom. It was the start of a dialogue that spanned five decades. We were compulsive, never-give-an-inch Virgos, both born in September 1937. I was older by nine days. And Donnelly never let me forget it. Neither of us admitted to being wrong more than three or four times over the years ... Ours was a symbiotic relationship; we exchanged information ... I was born two miles from KPOI in Waikiki, so Donnelly listened to my advice on the best places for saimin, manapua and other vital kamaaina info. Donnelly shared what he gleaned in his travels from his Keokuk, Iowa, birthplace to that famous intersection of Kalakaua Avenue and Kapiolani Boulevard. There, at Coco's restaurant, we often had breakfast. It had recently replaced Kau Kau Korner. Today it's the Hard Rock Cafe. ... I remember telling Donnelly that I thought Richard Nixon was OK. I was set straight with a short, impassioned U.S. history lesson during which I learned about John F. Kennedy ...Donnelly recalled with ease details that I had long forgotten. Recently, I told him that I couldn't remember anything about a crazy day in 1961 that had become legendary amongst KPOI insiders. I only knew that we took off one day to see a movie at the Kaimuki Theater. The rest was a blur. Donnelly e-mailed me later: "The movie was 'Gidget Goes Hawaiian' starring James Darren. For some reason you had a bottle of champagne. The manager threatened to throw us out, but he had second thoughts and let us in. The movie started and you popped the cork. Afterward we tooled in your red Corvette to visit that woman in Waikiki who'd been phoning the request line. You called the station during a particular tryst of fate and gave a blow-by-blow report, so to speak, to Rounds. He played it on the production room speakers, where some KPOI staffers listened in shock" ... I declined Ray Sweeney's invitation to speak at Donnelly's wake Thursday. Some of those early escapades make the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show look like a Boy Scout makahiki ...
IN 1962, I headed for California to set up KPOI's two sister stations. Co-owner Fin Hollinger lined up talented composer-arranger Russ Garcia to record music tracks for new station jingles. Talk about doing things by committee! I was in San Bernardino where program director Bill Watson and I wrote lyrics for two dozen jingles. Off they went to Garcia, who composed music to fit our words. Donnelly and Rounds rewrote the lines for KPOI, also to match the rhyme scheme. Same deal with the Fresno station ...
I was excited to be going to the recording sessions in Munich, Germany, Garcia's expatriate home. The first KPOI lyric began, "Ach der himmel, it's Fred Kimmel." Well, the singers didn't speak English. They sang everything phonetically. I had no idea that the opening phrase translated roughly into, "Good God!" a phrase not acceptable for broadcast in Germany 40 years ago, I learned. The jingles made little sense when played back in America. Rounds and Donnelly thought the outcome was hilarious. They yelled "Good God!" in German at me for the next few years ...
COURTESY TOM MOFFATT
Dave Donnelly zips around his Honolulu on a bike in the '60s.
'The Moose' in print
WHEN Donnelly began his column in 1968, before fax machines and e-mail, I regularly received clips from friends back home. During my mid-1990s California tour, the Star-Bulletin came online. I could read Donnelly's daily column easier than if I lived out beyond Haleiwa. The bad news was that I'd usually end up wanting to head for LAX to fly back home. Here's how I avoided that. I made telephone friends with receptionists at a Honolulu firm that played authentic Hawaiian music on hold. When reading a Donnelly item brought on waves of homesickness, I called the company. If I was lucky, Gabby Pahinui, the Beamer Brothers or Sunday Manoa music came on the phone and chilled me out. Of course, people at our offices in North Hollywood wondered what long-winded person I was "talking" to ... Over the years I fed Donnelly many items about other people and events. He was always generous in mentioning me in his column. He loved to needle me about my fanatic loyalty to the football team formerly known as the Los Angeles Rams. Sometimes he ran a picture of me wearing a vintage 1965 Rams hat. It became a favorite of mine. Donnelly remembered that, and when he cleaned out his desk at the old Star-Bulletin offices, he sent me the only copy of the photo ...THE NICEST ACT of hospitality when I returned to Honolulu in 1976 happened within days of my arrival back home. Donnelly invited me to lunch and emphasized that someone else was picking up the check. But he refused to tell me where or with whom we'd be dining. He even offered to pick me up. He insisted that I violate my personal code and actually wear shoes, not rubber slippers, to work that day. At noon, Donnelly fetched me at KKUA, and we headed downtown, an area I hardly recognized after a 12-year absence. He drove into a taller building than I'd ever seen in Hawaii. We rode an elevator to the penthouse and were seated in what seemed to be a private dining room. It was the executive dining room at First Hawaiian Bank. We were joined by an old buddy from drag-racing days at Sandy Beach, Walter Dods, and my soul brother from Roosevelt High School, Wesley Park. Both men are models of modesty, but Donnelly told me how well these local boys had done over the years. Donnelly knew I was blown away, and he seemed to relish the encounter as much as I did ...
Dialing for Donnelly
Since I learned of Dave Donnelly's death on Jan. 24, I haven't come to grips with the fact the Moose is gone. I received the news an hour after he passed away in the same hospital where I was born. The first Super Bowl came and went without me yakking about it with Donnelly on the phone, which we always did if we were both in town. A program about Shakespeare came on KHET last night, and I started to call the Moose. ... Running out of fellow phone freak friends. My metabolism and former morning deejay habits wake me up earlier than the roosters up on this hill in Kaneohe. I read that Warren Beatty maintains friendships with people in every time zone so he can pick up the phone and call someone no matter the time of day. All my long-distance phone friends live on the mainland. Those on the West Coast have been awakened by me at 5 o'clock, our time, much too often after I convinced myself they were awake ...THE ONE PERSON I could count on locally to answer and be ready to rap was Dave Donnelly. We spent hundreds of hours on the phone over the years discussing, and arguing about, every topic under the sun. I did upset him more than once with a sunrise call after he'd been out late the night before. I'd be quickly forgiven. ... We used e-mail rarely -- if Donnelly wanted to send me a fact that proved his point, or when he insisted I put item information in writing. In this computer, sitting unsent, is my last e-mail to Donnelly, the subject of which is "Pisa Tinoisamoa's Fantastic Stats" ...
DAMN, I MISS the Moose, even though he was too penurious to replace his cheap phone, which has been broken for at least four years. It seemed to cut out at the most crucial times. Then again, I never kept my promise to buy him a replacement phone at Radio Shack. Well, wherever Donnelly is now, I know that he's finally made a good connection ...
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