Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 5, 1 May 2005 — DAVID KAHELEMAUNA ROY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DAVID KAHELEMAUNA ROY

The Hawaiian community is mourning the loss of prominent cultural leader David Kahelemauna Roy Jr., who was instrumental in restoring Kamehameha I's personal heiau in Kona. Roy died on April 6 of complications from hip surgery. He was 79. Roy grew up in Kawa Nui, Kona, in a home where Hawaiian language and culture were deeply rooted. He was a graduate of Konawaena High School and the University of Hawai'i Teacher's College. After serving in the Army as a radio operator in World War II, he returned to Kona to start a fishing business and later was a construction superintendent. While he contributed to the Kona and Hawaiian communities in many ways, Roy will be best remembered for his work with Ahu'ena Heiau. Kamehameha I rebuilt the heiau and used it as his temple to worship Lono, the god of fertility and agriculture. In 1 975 , Roy served as the superintendent of the restoration of the heiau and later became its kahu. Roy was also an integral figure in the creation of the nalional park at Kaloko-Honokōhau and an early supporter of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and he taught Hawaiian language and history at Kona Community School for Adults. Although confined to a wheelchair as the result of a stroke, in 2003 Roy still protested a construction project at Kailua pier that he feared would jeopardize Ahu'ena heiau. "Even though he was in a wheelchair," Native Hawaiian writer Anne Keala Kelly said in a press release, "he stood stronger and fiercer than most of us on the matter of protecting our iwi kūpuna."