February 25. 2015:
Part 3: Images of Hawaii 1950-60s, Interview with William Bixler
I reconnected with William Bixler, my special guest in the 2nd half of the program, after discovered a photo of my public Maemae Elementary School class on Flickr. The image conjured good memories of a not-so-long-ago past one dominated by the casual, innocent life growing up in Nu’uanu Valley, Honolulu, Hawaii. Would we have ever imagined that a student from Hawaii, though from the private school world of Punahou Academy, would someday become President of the US? I glanced at the Maemae class photo -- would these classmates prosper, fail, move on, aspire to non-conformist adventures, or simply vanish? The power of a historical photograph to engage our memory in terms of place, time and history is extraordinary.
Being
back in contact with William Bixler is exciting for we have so many years in-between
that May Day photo session with barefeet
and white shirts for our performance and today.
To
remember a place like Hawaii is more than nostalgia or cheap sentiment. It is
to document a past that has been transformed and altered to a radically
different place. William and I, and
hopefully other classmates, share a framed part of Hawaii’s territorial and
Statehood history of the 1950-60s.
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