Graduation time again.
I see the smiling faces of the students graduating at Hilo college. I was one of those faces graduating there 50 years ago.
Journey with me now to a bright September morning in 1969 when I landed in a magical place called Hilo. Seeing all the beauty blew my mind!
Our story begins two weeks before in smoggy Southern Cal when I met a science professor friend of my parents. He was teaching at Hilo College and said he’d get me into UH Hilo if I went surfing with him over there. What a deal.
A week later, don’t ask me how, he got me accepted at UH Hilo. My professor friend picked me up and we drove to the Hilo campus. The parking lot was 50 feet wide. It was a middle school a year before, about the size of Holualoa Elementary.
You could walk across the school in 2 minutes. It had small classrooms, the cafeteria was elementary school size.
It had a small library. There was no 3-story student center, no gigantic library, no auditorium, and for sure, no space center.
Where those buildings now stand was a field of grass where 2 horses grazed, like a farm. One day I used one horse as a prop. I had my whole drama class go out in the field, I put a Styrofoam horn on the horse and made him a unicorn in a short play for the class. Hilo college was a funky but lovable place.
It was small but the college credits were good. It was a grand college experience.
Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, the rabble rousers at the 1968 Democratic convention, gave a speech on campus. Their ravings shocked smalltown Hilo. We had a protest when President Nixon bombed peaceful Cambodia in 1970.
Then they put in a pub. Sometimes Beer 101 was the only class of the day.
The professors were great. My anthropology teacher was a burly, bearded adventurer. His lectures were like going on safari. In a science class I trekked up the volcano and braved deadly fumes for a research project. After school we swam in waterfalls and surfed at Honolii.
I am proud to say I founded the first literary magazine of UH Hilo and it’s still going today. A friend, Michael Ferrington, now living outside Kona, founded the first Ka Leo Newspaper, and that’s still going too.
On graduation night I walked across the stage and shook the hand of the commencement speaker, Senator Daniel Inouye, what an honor.
I was in the class of 1973, there would be 51 more and counting.
Congratulations to my fellow UH Hilo Graduates. You got a great education and will go far. You had everything but a horse grazing outside your classroom.
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com.
