Spirit of Aloha | Message of Aloha | January/February 2002

This Place

Celebrating a Rural Lifestyle

Fred Reyes, Island Air senior ramp agent, helps keep the spirit of community and a sense of place strong on Moloka'i

In 2002 especially, the sun rises on the new year with profound hope and a strong sense of renewal. At Aloha Airlines, we bow to the old and embrace the new with deep gratitude for the resilience of the human spirit. In family, business, music, the arts and all aspects of our lives, we celebrate our strengthened bonds and know that they will carry us forward in the year ahead.

We thank you, our passengers, for your loyal support, and we promise you continued excellence. We thank our employees, the core of our company, for your tireless work and commitment. And we are thankful for our Island home. Beneath our feet and beyond the shore, these Islands, each one different from the next, continue to delight and humble us.

Some people call this a sense of place. Fred Reyes, senior ramp agent for Island Air at Moloka'i Airport (officially Ho'olehua Airport), calls it Aloha 'aina, and he has written about it in a song by that name. At least a fifth-generation Molokaian, Fred is among the residents who rejoice in the absence of stoplights and cherish their links to their ancestors through a rural lifestyle of fishing, surfing and paddling. Nowhere will you find a stronger sense of place than on Moloka'i, an island that has remained remarkably free of the velocity and stresses of modern life.

"I like it just the way it is," he says. "No stoplights. Quiet. That's why I'm here. That's why my wife is here, because she's from Washington."

Everyone on the island knows Fred, if not for his 25-year presence at the airport, then for the music he writes and the fishing and surfing events he plans regularly for the community. He has worked at the airport since 1977, first with Air Moloka'i, then with the four carriers that succeeded it until Island Air took over. He remembers being one of only two employees at the airport (now there are 16) and is one of the few in the company with a two-digit employee number. He keeps his guitar at work and plays during his lunch break and at every opportunity."They call this the 'airport community guitar,' " he smiles.

With wife Louann, a high school teacher and avid canoe paddler, he has raised four children, who are as comfortable in the ocean as they are in the forest. His mother, 75-year-old Kauila Reyes, is a local legend-generous host and everybody's auntie, known for her love of music, fishing and crabbing. Their family home, Kalama'ula, is renowned as a hub of conviviality across from Kapuaiwa, the famous coconut grove (purportedly 10 acres in size at one time) planted by Kamehameha V.

"My father was a papio [jack trevally] troller and when he passed away, I decided to have a fishing tournament to honor him," Fred explains. "It's the biggest such tournament on the island, with 43 boats." This will be the sixth year that Moloka'i residents will turn up in the pre-dawn hours at the family homestead for a day of fishing and fun, ending with a huge cookout and talent show.

The children of Moloka'i have their day, too, at the Keiki Surf Meet, now in its 13th year, which the Reyes family has directed for years. "We have it three times a year, during summer," he continues. "Parents bring their kids, and there are spotters in the waves. We get the kids out in the waves and push them off on their boards. The categories are 6 years old and younger, 7 to 10 years old and 11 to 12. We provide surfboards for the kids who don't have them, and everybody wins something. We end up with a big potluck."

It's no wonder Fred is writing music. "Moloka'i, a Place to Be," with his group Pa'a Pono, appears in the Moloka'i Now CD, with these words: "People come to spend a day, but just end up, they want to stay. Moloka'i an island by the sea: this is where I'll always be."

Hawai'i no ka 'oi and Happy New Year, one and all.

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