Aunty Irmgard, your face
is a first-class experience

Editor's note: Irmgard Farden Aluli, prolific composer of popular Hawaii tunes and member of the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame, died three years ago this week.

Arnold, do you want me dead?" The heavy voice broke through a deep sleep, and I had not a clue who was calling or what she was talking about. She repeated, "Why do you want me dead?" She said that she had read in the paper that I wanted her face on a coin and that you had to be dead to be on American money. I recognized her voice and she was laughing, too. Believe me, it was much better to get a healthy laugh than a scolding from Aunty.

I said, "Aunty, may I be dead a hundred years before God asks for your presence."

The occasion was the government announcement that each state, in its turn, would get to design the back of a quarter in new series of coins. The Star-Bulletin had asked readers to suggest designs. My idea of the perfect embodiment of Hawaii was a portrait of Aunty Irmgard Farden Aluli. While Aunty appreciated my love and thoughts, she thought it would be better to wait 50 years.

Sometime later we stopped by her house just as she was coming home from a luncheon where her musical group Puamana had been performing. She was dressed in a beautiful red floral muumuu. She sat in her wonderful koa rocker, leaned forward, and I began to shoot pictures. Then I found that I only had two pictures left on the roll of film. It was a short shoot but quite productive.

Two weeks later we dropped by to show her the two pictures. I kneeled on the floor and handed her the two pictures. She studied them carefully, frowned and said, "Arnold, you make me look old." I smiled back and said, "Aunty, you are old." She broke into laughter and pulled back her arm and slapped me ever so gently on my left cheek. We laughed and laughed.

I took one of the pictures and sent it off to have postcards made as a gift for Aunty Irmgard. She had entered the hospital and was quite seriously ill. The gods were good to us, and her life was spared. We took the postcards over to her house where she was recovering. We found her playing cards surrounded by 11 family members and friends. Aunty sat at a large table on her sun porch and wanted to get us each a plate of food. It was her house; she was the perfect hostess; and she wanted to feed us. She was pleased with the postcards. Later, I told her that we would still work on the coin deal but not for a couple of years. She laughed. I remember she said, "I can send these postcards out to the people who sent me flowers and cards. I won't have to put my return address on it because they will know who it is from."

Eventually, inevitably, the gods were lonely for good music and took Irmgard. It is doubtful that the state of Hawaii will get around to putting her portrait on a coin. So, as luck would have it, while recovering from a series of operations and illnesses, I watched a lot of television news. Up pops a reporter with a story about having your portrait put on a U.S. stamp. Now, don't get ahead of me here.

I dug around to find a copy of the photograph of Aunty Irmgard. Finally, one of the postcards showed up in the Farden family book. I sent it off and then was told that Photostamps.com was not doing any more adults or teenagers. I was devastated.

Not being one to avoid a good chance to grovel, I called the company producing these stamps. Halfway through my plea, the young man said, "Your stamps were accepted and they are in production now." I used up a couple of weeks of my blood pressure control medication waiting for the stamps. Today they arrived and my only regret is that Aunty Irmgard is not here to see them herself.

Well, Aunty Irmgard, it isn't the back of a quarter, but it is the front of a 37-cent United States Postage Stamp. Your portrait on this stamp can be used to send a letter filled with aloha, clean around the world. I know I promised you a quarter, Aunty, but hey, this is worth 12 cents more. I hope that somewhere up in the heavens where Hawaiian music is being played, you are having another laugh.