They started to line up at 9:15 a.m., draping lei on the decorated floats. The kahili bearers and warriors took their places. ADVERTISING They started to line up at 9:15 a.m., draping lei on the decorated floats. The kahili bearers
They started to line up at 9:15 a.m., draping lei on the decorated floats. The kahili bearers and warriors took their places.
“Are we ready?” someone asked.
Almost. One more guest, in a wheelchair decorated with yellow flowers, needed to join the lineup.
The parade was short — through the hallways of the Hilo Adult Day Center and down the front entrance ramp — but like other Kamehameha Day parades, it’s an important tradition.
“We started this right when I got here,” said Lori Thal, art therapist for Hawaii Island Adult Care. Thal has been with HIAC and the day center for 34 years.
The center celebrates a different holiday every month, giving kupuna a chance to decorate the facility with crafts they made (next month, there’ll be a Fourth of July celebration complete with appearances by Ben Franklin) and a “focal point,” Thal said — something to look forward to.
Art is a “vital part of what we do,” said HIAC community outreach director Lizby Logsdon. “It engages everything. … I just love to make them (the kupuna) think.”
This year’s parade and its decorations were “one of our best,” Logsdon said.
Sadao Fujimoto, 74, and Frida Bishop, 84, portrayed Kamehameha the Great and Queen Kaahumanu. Day center attendee Miyoko Hoshide celebrates her birthday on the holiday and turns 96 today.
It took about a week to prepare a dozen wheelchair floats for the parade, along with homemade Hawaiian flags to wave and long strings of paper-flower lei. One chair was decorated to look like an underwater scene, with colorful fish attached to the wheels. Sarah Ching, who turns 100 in August, rolled along in her lava-and-lehua chair.
Staff, volunteers and more than a few kupuna sang “King Kamehameha (The Conqueror of the Islands)” as they marched along the short route, beneath paper flowers and mosaics strung from the ceiling.
The artwork also helps make the day center environment more welcoming and cheerful for HIAC participants, Thal said. The art therapy program was a major component of helping the center earn its accreditation years ago.
“Ninety-nine percent of people say, ‘Oh, I can’t do art,’” Logsdon said. “They have all these excuses, and then they start doing it. … We’re all artists.”
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
