Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 23, Number 12, 1 December 2006 — A great trustee and friend [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A great trustee and friend

£ £ an, it would have been niee 1% /I to return home with that -1. T A bill passed." It was all I could bring myself to say, sitting at the restaurant table after a long day of interminable meetings. I, along with fellow trustees who had made the pilgrimage to our (as of yet) nation's capitol, had started early that morning, grabbing a quick breakfast before scurrying off to engage a myriad of key people in an attempt to get the Akaka Bill passed by the end of that week. We would eonclude our work day at the office of our own honorable senator for whom the bill was named, where his expression immediately led me to believe that the situation was not positive. My premonitions would unfortunately be validated as Sen. Akaka would relay that our day's efforts had been for naught: despite promises to him by the Republican leadership to bring the bill to the Senate floor by the end of that session, there was apparently no intention on their part of following through. Exhausted and hungry, Trustee Dante Carpenter and I met up for a late snack at the Senators Grill at the Holiday Inn on The Hill, where we were both staying. "It certainly would have," he responded, "I guess the question now is: where do we go from here?" Trustee Carpenter would proceed to speak about his experiences as a state senator, Big Island mayor, and OHA administrator; the obstacles he had faced and the ways he had dealt with them. We would continue exchanging ideas on "next steps" and sharing stories of our

life experiences until we closed the plaee down. Although none of the circumstances had changed, I ended up going to sleep that night a lot more encouraged. Dante Carpenter was elected to the OHA Board of Trustees at a time when any wrong decisions could have sunk the organization: the state Supreme Court had repealed Act 304, and the state was dispensing no money to OHA; OHA's ability to disburse grants had been eompletely suspended; and two cases seeking to prevent OHA from serving the Hawaiian people were pending in the courts. This month when the OHA trustees take our oaths of office, we will do so in a community where OHA receives $6 million more in ceded land ineome than we had before the repeal of Act 304, OHA dispenses more than triple the amount of grant money we ever did prior, OHA's portfolio is the strongest it's ever been and for the first time since Rice there are no anti-Hawaiian lawsuits pending in the courts. These achievements are a small part of Dante Carpenter's legacy, along with the many others he shared with me that night at Senators. For me personally, however, I will tend to remember the friend with the impressive vocabulary who always had time to hang out after the work was finished and inspire hope. While most political accomplishments seem to become a mass of grey space on a resume that few read and even fewer remember, perhaps our interpersonal relationships are the legacy that truly endures. After all, only time will answer what effect anything anyone has aeeomplished will ultimately have on what we were trying - and have yet to - achieve that day in Washington. I guess the question now is: where do we go from here? S — 1

Jūhn D. Waihe'e IV Vice Chair, TrustEE, At-larga