Listed below are (slightly edited) articles that have appeared in 2010. For other years, click on the above links.
 

January 2010:  In Memory of Thomas F. Kelly

February 2010:  Engineering Department c. 1908

A clarification of last month’s (Dec. 2009) article is in order: The proposed (but never built) roadway tunnels I mentioned were to connect Hawaii Kai and Waimanalo, whereas the constructed utility tunnel is from the Kuapa Pond side of the Ko`olau Range to the Sandy Beach side above the location of Koko Crater. With that out of the way, let us turn our attention to this month’s vignette.

The December 2003 cover story of the Wiliki o Hawaii was titled “2003 ASCE Hawaii Section OCEA Award,” OCEA standing for the Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement. One of the nominated projects was the “Lower Hamakua Ditch By-Pass Tunnel” on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was a project undertaken by the design/build team of Jas. W. Glover Ltd. and the URS Corporation under contract with the State “to construct an emergency bypass tunnel to restore water to farmers and the environment.”

Water flow had been restricted since 1989 when part of the “90 year old, 8-foot diameter water tunnel collapsed due to a catastrophic landslide at mid height of the 2,000-foot Hakalaoa Falls.” This event left only one of the famed twin falls of Waipi`o Valley (the Hi`ilawe Falls) flowing.

The restoration project went on to become one of seven National ASCE OCEA finalists in 2004 because it “offered the team multiple challenges, including the continuing danger of further collapse. Their solution, a 300-foot long, 7-foot in diameter, hand-mined, liner plate supported bypass tunnel, was built without the use of tunneling machines and drilling robots. Over 1,300 tons of materials had to be hauled to the site at one half ton per load, over a distance of 2 miles each way, at 5 mph. The cumulative distance for all materials was over 5,200 miles, further than a round-trip from San Francisco to D.C. Despite the many challenges, the tunnel was completed on schedule, within budget, without claims and with no discernable impact on the environment.”

Around that time, I attended a monthly meeting of ASCE-Hawaii where Jeff Kalani, a consulting geotechnical engineer with the URS Corporation at the time, made a technical presentation on the project and expressed his amazement at what the original engineers were able to achieve with even fewer resources, merely human and animal power, pick and shovel, and perhaps a transit for surveying the rugged and inhospitable terrain.

During a fascinating conversation at the end of Jeff’s presentation, he casually asked me if I knew anything about an engineer or construction assistant named Thomas F. Kelly who possibly worked for William J. Payne, the tunneling engineer/manager of the sugar company. Kelly had lost his life on the job in 1909. His grave, he said, was at the site and his name evoked warm feelings in the memories of the area’s residents to this day. 

I suggested “Sugar Water: Hawaii’s Plantation Ditches” by Carol Wilcox as a possible source of information about the matter, and promised a follow-up try to find out; after all, I was given the definite year of Kelly’s demise as a lead to the search.

A few days later, Jeff sent me an email message that included three topographic maps of the precipitous area and a file that contained photographs of Kelly’s gravestone, one clearly showing a modest three-line inscription:

As Jeff put it, “the respectful nature of the site itself leads me to believe that Kelly was someone important or well-liked.” Wilcox provided little additional information. She states “William Payne took pride in his final report that all tunnels were built without an accident. The only death he reported during construction was that of an engineer named Thomas Kelly who, returning home one night, drowned when he was swept off his horse while crossing the river. He was buried up in the valley where his headstone can still be seen at ‘haole make’.” In Hawaiian “make” means “dead” or “to die,” thus “haole make” is “dead Caucasian/foreigner,” depending on the nuance given to the word “haole.”

To my surprise, my search for additional detail yielded nothing until this year, when I chanced upon a story in the Tuesday, August 3, 1909 issue of the Hilo Tribune [HT] titled “Kelly Drowned in Waipio River.” It described the deceased simply as “an employee of the Hawaiian Irrigation Co.” who “was drowned in the Waipio River last Tuesday while attempting to cross it on his return home from Kukuihaele where he had been to obtain supplies at the main office of the company.” His drowned horse, the story continued, was found the same evening, but a careful search failed to discover his body until two days later “wedged in between two large boulders where it had been carried by the water. The body was buried in Waipio gulch.” The story, it turns out, was reprinted from Honolulu’s Sunday Advertiser of July 25, 1909, thus placing the day of Kelly’s death on the previous Tuesday, July 20, 1909.

As for Kelly’s background, the article said, “the deceased was born in Rutland, Vermont, May 4, 1876. He enlisted in the army at the beginning of the Spanish American war and spent several years in the Philippines. He was a member of Theodore Roosevelt Camp No. 1, U. S. W. V.” The last acronym, I discovered, stands for “United Spanish War Veterans,” the 1898-1972 records of which are kept by the Utah State Historical Society.

What led me to the HT entry was a story in Vol. 6, No. 2 (August 1995) of “Environment Hawaii, a monthly newsletter.” This article contradicts Payne’s claim of “no accidents” on the job and cites another HT report on September 7, 1909 that a Japanese laborer “was pinned down by a large boulder falling on him; he died shortly after the accident.” Moreover, according to a lengthy article by Albert Pierce Taylor in the Advertiser [7/3/1909], another Japanese laborer was reported to have “tumbled to death hundreds of feet below.” Perhaps, in Payne’s mind, Japanese workers did not count for much. For one, even their names were very rarely reported in those days!

Finally! Earlier this year, I was able to share with Jeff Kalani the additional information about Kelly when he presented to the Engineers and Architects of Hawaii (EAH) yet another awardwinning project following recent earthquakeinduced damage to the same irrigation system. This time, Jeff was associated with Yogi Kwong Engineers LLC.

In preparation for its official centennial celebration in 2008, the University of Hawaii College of Engineering (COE) obtained the services of retired librarian and curator emerita Nancy J. Morris, Ph.D., to write a commemorative historical piece for the occasion.

Sometime in 2007, Kerri Van Duyne, the alumni relations officer of the College at the time, had asked me specifically about Leslie A. Hicks, one of the notable graduates of the college who rose to the position of Hawaiian Electric Co. (HECO) president, and for whom a power plan dedicated in 1955 on the Honolulu waterfront was named. In response, I sent her quite a number URLs and newspaper clippings (including Hicks’ obituary) and I also arranged via Mary Ellen Nordyke-Grace of HECO to obtain a related file from the company that had been compiled by librarian Annette Summerlin.

Then, in Sept. 2007, I received an email message from Dr. Morris that said in part:

“Dear Dr. Papacostas: I’m writing the history of the College of Engineering for the centennial. History being my field of study, I’ve come to realize that you are the faculty member most interested in history and I’ve enjoyed reading your very readable articles in Wiliki online. Here are a couple of things I’ve come across in researching the centennial piece and I wonder if you have some ideas on this... Also in one of your articles (April ‘95) you mention the “engineering archives”as a source of your note on Keller and UH road building. In one of the meetings with the centennial project staff, I asked about such an archive but those at the meeting weren’t sure there is such. Do you know more? The UH archive at Hamilton doesn’t have too much on engineering - mostly faculty appointment papers in the UH president’s files. I’m very much enjoying this project and hope I can pester you as other issues arise.”

I suggested to her a publication entitled “College of Engineering, University of Hawaii 1907-1982: A Record of its History and its Alumni,” which I had used in 1990 to prepare a “Proposal for a Program Leading to the Ph.D. in Civil Engineering” that (following several unsuccessful attempts by others since 1969) led to the establishment in 1992 of the doctoral program in Civil Engineering. Included in the package I sent to Dr. Morris was my proposal that she thought to “be of great help.” When the centennial book arrived, I was tickled to see an acknowledgment of my contribution to it as the “unofficial historian” of the college!

The centennial celebration came and went but, following a persisting streak in my nature, I continued to collect, as time permitted, additional records about the College (as well the larger University community). Much of this material has been documented elsewhere, but some of it that would be of particular interest to engineers and college alumni was passed over in publications targeting more general audiences.

An article in the September 1908 issue of the monthly “Paradise of the Pacific” (PP) by Prof. Willis T. Pope began “The College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of Hawaii first came to public attention in 1905. For several years prior to that time there had been considerable discussion in regard to agriculture among many of our citizens.”

By 1907, the Territorial Legislature passed two Acts that “embodied the establishment of a College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in Hawaii, provision for its government and support, and special appropriations for the use of the college during the biennial period ending June, 1909.”

Lands were designated in Manoa Valley but, due to insufficient legislative appropriation and the fact that federal Morrill Act funds were not eligible for the construction of buildings, “the most feasible plan was to lease and remodel a building on Young Street near Thomas Square.”

Prof. Roadhouse, who was appointed Dean on the recommendation of Prof. Hilgard of California met with a sudden death in San Francisco in Nov. 1907, and the job of Acting Dean was given to Willis T. Pope, of the Science Department of the Honolulu Normal School.

A map in his PP 1908 account shows a 68-acre site reserved for the college in Manoa, covering 30.6 acres of “Puahia,” adjacent to the Manoa Stream, and the rest to the west in an area designated as “Pilipili.”

While at the temporary quarters, library materials and laboratory equipment were purchased and “the theodolites, levels, telescope, etc., of the Engineering department are of the latest design and best workmanship.” During the year, Prof. John W. Gilmore, then associated with State College, Pennsylvania, was appointed first President of the college at the recommendation of Pres. Schurman of Cornell and other “famous educators” at an annual salary of $4800. Leading the Engineering department was Prof. John Mason Young, who also doubled up as engineer for the college.

Thus, what was originally envisioned as strictly an agricultural college was from the start expanded to include, according to the school’s 1908-09 catalogue (summarized in the Aug. 1909 issue of PP), “a course in Science, a course in Agriculture, a course in Engineering, and a course in Household Economics.” The planned engineering curricula offered bachelor and master degrees in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering.

It appears that under a good measure of uncertainty, the first academic year “opened in what is ordinarily the middle of the scholastic year,” in February 1908, with five regular and 97 special students. Of the five regular students, two were enrolled in engineering and three in agriculture. The first two regular engineering students were DeWitt Gibson, “son of the Superintendent of the Boys Industrial School” and Ching Quon Amona, who had been “a student at the High School [Pacific Commercial Advertiser, PCA, 2/16/1908].”

On Feb. 18, 1909, Pres. Gilmore boasted to the PCA that, even though still housed in a temporary building, “as to the equipment for the engineering building, there was machinery which would be of public service. It was a testing apparatus, where a railroad company, desiring to test absolutely the strength and carrying qualities of ties, could learn it with this machine and determine just how many ties to use to the rail. The Honolulu Iron Works, the Rapid Transit Company, the Railroad Company, and other service corporations, could obtain valuable knowledge from this equipment. In fact, the College of Hawaii offered a field of study which was invaluable to
the development of the Islands.”

Next: The original engineering curricula!