Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 9, 1 Kepakemapa 2000 — Dr. Isabella Aiona Abbott views life from the top [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Dr. Isabella Aiona Abbott views life from the top

By Paula Durbln DR. ISABELLA Abbott, an ethnobotanist decorated many times over for her scientific achievements, was recently recognized as a living eultural treasure as well. The honor eame from Hui Mākua o Kawaiaha'o, the proud parents of 'Aha Pūnana Leo's downtown immersion smdents. As the group was about to celebrate the third year of its annual fund-raising festival, E Mālama i ke Kai, it decided to launeh a tradition of recognizing the great value of kūpuna who had dedicated their lives to the oeean environment. "We felt Dr. Abbott would be an excellent ehoiee for our first honoree because her foundation was so very Hawaiian," said Kekai Perry of Hui Mākua. Perry was referring to Abbott's initiation to her life's work. The daughter of a Chinese father and a Hawaiian mother.

she first leamed the language of island plants at her mother's knee. "I can't remember not knowing something about plants or not being interested," Abbott recalled. "My Hawaiian mother was eager to share that kind of knowledge. She had a garden and a wonderful green thumb. Every square ineh in our yard had something in it, and my mother knew all the Hawaiian names of plants. As a small child I thought she knew every name in the world." Of her early introduction.to her specialty, seaweed, Abbott said, "Limu was something I knew very well because when I was small we used to go to the beach with my mother and her friends. We kids would run around in the water and the ladies would piek their limu, sit on the sand and elean them to take home. It was always a joyous event. It didn't happen more than four times a year, but we all looked forward to it." Abbott attended Ali'iolani, one of the

oia tngnsn standard schools, and then Kamehameha. "Those are the days I treasure. I was strongly influenced by Maude Schaeffer, our principal. She used to visit us on Wednesday when we had to go work in the garden. She noticed I was always there, muddy shoes and so on, and I

knew a lot about plants. She gave me a book with the Hawaiian, scientific and eommon names of plants and some stories about plants. 'Let's look up this plant you're working on,' she would say, and she made me feel it was worthwhile to do that." As a University of Hawai'i undergraduate, Abbott discovered the study of seaweed was a legitimate professional specialty when a brand new faculty member eame on board. He didn't particularly mentorher though, and she didn't expect him to. "I had my own direction," she recalled, "but he didn't put any obstacles in my way. Mind you, this was 1937 to 1941 and women in science were extremely rare. Among the botany undergraduates there were six or seven boys and me. He treated me just as if I was one of the boys whieh was good too." Abbott beheves having four brothers and a strong autocratic father helped her gei ahead in a man's world. With a master's degree from the University of Michigan, she returned home and taught from 1943 to 1946, when her husband, an invertebrate zoologist, got out of the army. The eouple went off to Berkeley foi their respective doctorates and then to positions at Stanford University. Three decades later, they retired early and eame home where eventually the University of Hawai'i named Dr. Isabella Abbott to its Wilder chair. Looking back, Abbott cites among her accomplishments two she considers especially meaningful. One is the Hawaiian community's reception of her book "Lā 'au Hawai'i " on the traditional uses of Hawaiian plants. "It's always a compliment when someone wants to discuss something in the book because that means they got the message," she said. The other has been the academic community's evaluation of her seaweed work. "I am known as a sea-

weed scholar," she explained, "and I think I have won practically every award that one ean win. Sometimes you can't help but think you got this award because you're a good guy. I find it a little hard to believe that anyone would think I'm better than anyone else. Because of age and having published for so long, I'm up at the top but I wouldn't say I'm 'The Top,' but onee you get an award you are 'The Top.' For want of a better word. you ould say Abbott has officially retired fiom UH too - except that she's still there, working on a three-year project funded with a $400,000 grant from the Packard Foun dation, as in Hewlett-Packard. Will she ever really retire? "No!" she exclaimed. "Somebody will always think of something I should be doing." ■

Dr. isabella Abbott, foremost ethnobotanist and limu expert, in her laboratory at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. ,

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"lzzie" Abbott observes limu on Maui.

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