Anna Blackwell

Hawaii has lost a loving and devoted daughter, one of those born in the generation that saw the islands transition from the territorial period through World War II into statehood. “Five-foottwo and larger than life,” Anna Derby (Bond, Howe) Blackwell died peacefully at The Queen’s Medical Center on October 18, 2016. Anna Charlotte Kalaninuiaiamaumau Derby was born in Kapiolani Hospital on August 12, 1932 in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, as the oldest of four children born to Stephen and Dora (Cooke) Derby of Makiki Heights. A proud descendant of three missionary families, Anna grew up hearing stories of the kingdom period from those who had lived through it, and throughout her own life she endeavored to pass those stories on to everyone she knew.

As a young girl, she was a student of Kumu Hula Helen Desha-Beamer, and Anna continued to enjoy hula for the rest of her life, ensuring that her four daughters learned the tradition as well. Anna often attributed her vast knowledge of Hawaiian culture and history in part to the chants she had learned and danced in her lifetime. At the age of 84 she was still dancing, for Michael Pili Pang in Honolulu while her granddaughter Lahela Langan dances for Kumu Pang in Waimea on Hawaii Island. Another great influence in Anna’s early life was her grandpa George P. Cooke, her mother’s father, whom she spent summers with on Molokai. He was manager of the Molokai Ranch, inducted into the Paniolo Hall of Fame, and is also remembered for his service in the Territorial Legislature, but she remembers him for teaching her to play cribbage and for the many old songs he taught her that she in turn taught to her children.

The war years in Hawaii also made a deep impact on Anna, and both the habits she acquired and the friendships she made stayed with her for life. Family and neighbors would gather some nights in homes with a piano and bring ukulele and guitars along with instruments made from washboards, spoons, or an upside down wash tub. They would pull the black-out curtains tight around the windows and play Hawaiian music by candlelight, to pass the songs on and to keep spirits up in war time. This group dubbed themselves the “Makiki Heights Hawaiian Music Society” and they continued to meet for decades after the war, albeit less often, passing on the songs and stories of the times that had brought them together. As the years dispersed that group, the idea stayed alive with the informal “Hawaiian Sing” hui that is hosted periodically in different homes and was a great joy to Anna and her family in the last decades of her life.

Anna began her education at Hanahauoli and Punahou School on Oahu, later attending Miss Porter’s School and Vassar College on the U.S. mainland before returning to the University of Hawaii at Manoa to begin a course of study in Pacific anthropology. This was interrupted by her first marriage in 1952, to Charles H. “Charlie” Bond of Honolulu, also a missionary descendant, and Anna spent most of the 1960s and 70s following her husband to different plantations on Maui, Hawaii Island, and Oahu while raising their five children, Caroline, Susan (Suzi), Boyd Davis, Sarah (Sally), and Elizabeth (Betsy) Bond. Anna and Charlie were divorced in 1970, and as Anna used to say, “I became a single, working mother well before it became fashionable!” Anna found work doing public relations for the YWCA on Richards Street while moonlighting as a freelance editor for numerous writers and magazines, and also helping research and write a book on Hawaiian petroglyphs. Just as she was settling into the life of a single working woman, Anna met Robert D. “Bob” Howe, a former Navy man of Santa Cruz, CA, whom she married in 1976. Bob must have loved her dearly, for he stayed with her through the bulk of her children’s teenaged years, and her children are agreed that Bob was the love of their mother’s life, but sadly he died in 1981 and Anna became “the widow Howe” for a time, focusing all her attention on her job as the first Executive Director of the Moanalua Gardens Foundation.

In that capacity Anna not only successfully fought the State to keep H-3 freeway out of Moanalua Valley, she also conceptualized and founded the Prince Lot Hula Festival in Moanalua Gardens, distinguished as an exhibition rather than a competition, and noteworthy for the construction and dedication of the first hula mound in modern times, at the beginning of what is recognized now as the modern Hawaiian Renaissance. Promoting environmental education as a strategy to help save the valley, Anna created what became the widely distributed Ohia Project binder used in the Hawaii public school system. This taught students about the unique ecosystems in the Hawaiian Islands almost a decade before environmental education became a mandate in public education nationwide.

Anna found love once more and in 1984 married Lt. Col Jesse E. Blackwell, who remained in the employ of the U.S. Government following his retirement from active duty. Anna followed him to assignments in Christchurch, New Zealand and Seattle, Washington before returning to live in Hawaii, enjoying junkets now and then to Germany, China, Japan, and reunions on the East Coast. Anna loved to travel and explore, and kept family and friends informed with postcards and letters along the way. Everywhere they lived, Anna and Jesse stayed involved in the Episcopal Church with Jesse participating in the lay ministry while Anna sang in the choir. She particularly enjoyed the years she sang for John McCreary in the St. Andrews Cathedral Choir, and with the Honolulu Symphony Chorus. In Christchurch, Anna also found time to continue her education and when she returned to Hawaii, she finally completed her studies at Hawaii Pacific University earning her BA in Pacific studies in 1991. Sadly, Jesse passed in 2003 and Anna became a single working woman once again.

Anna is one of those who failed at retirement, continuing to sing with various choirs; volunteering for the KHON Action Line; serving as a committee chair for the Daughters of Hawaii; and delivering Meals on Wheels on not one but two routes, when she wasn’t attending meetings as one of their board members, all the while travelling as needed to attend graduations and weddings and other joyous events with her far-flung family. With such a full life, it was difficult to go anywhere with Anna without running into someone she knew, or, more likely, was related to either as ‘calabash cousins’ or by blood. She touched many, many lives in so many places and in so many ways, with humor, style, and unconditional love, that we should count ourselves lucky.

Anna was a dedicated Trustee of the Cooke Foundation until she retired in 2008. While the programs she supported spanned all the interest areas of the Foundation, Anna was particularly knowledgeable about the work of the Honolulu Academy of Arts (now, the Honolulu Museum of Art). Anna often served as the historian for the foundation, sharing stories about the Cooke family and their work in the community. Anna is survived by her siblings Philander C. Derby and his wife, George Anne; Martha D. McDaniel, and John M. Derby and his wife, Lyn; by her five children mentioned above; her seven grandchildren; and eleven great-grandchildren, all of whom collectively were the center of her life, along with many nieces, nephews, and her beloved adopted dog, Bubba.