A motorcycle crash July 15 in Colorado sent shock waves back to the Big Island.
The three-vehicle collision on U.S. Highway 36 between Boulder and Lyons killed 61-year-old Rob Abe of Volcano.
Abe retired in 2022, after 30 years and 2,364 performances, as technical director of the University of Hawaii at Hilo Performing Arts Center.
The Boulder Daily Camera reported that, according to a Colorado State Trooper, Abe — who was riding a Ural motorcycle with a sidecar — was turning off the highway onto Neva Access Road when he crossed into oncoming traffic and was hit. He died at the scene.
“He got the motorcycle with a sidecar, and it was his dream to go across the country visiting his friends and relatives,” said Justina Mattos, UH-Hilo Performing Arts Department chairwoman. “He did it last summer and had a fabulous time and was doing it again this summer to see more people and places.”
A roadside memorial marks the spot of the collision.
Abe was originally from Boston, but his father’s family is from Hilo.
“He was a rock-and-roll sound technician, and he was visiting family here,” Mattos said. “And on the last day of his trip, he happens to open the Tribune-Herald and saw an ad for a theater technician position. Rob decided on a whim to turn in an application.”
Jackie Pualani Johnson, UH-Hilo professor emerita of drama, said Abe’s father was in the tech industry and Abe had lived “in France and Japan and so many different places in the world” and “was like a Renaissance man.”
“Rob solved my problems all of the time,” Johnson said. “In the theater, you have a crisis, you have to solve it. And Rob would come up with the answers. And he would do it in a quirky, wonderful way.”
Johnson said Abe was a respected sound technician beyond campus, as well, and traveled to Japan with Halau O Kekuhi as a sound engineer, as well as working with other local theater companies.
“He and I worked on Lois Ann Yamanaka’s books for Audible,” she said. “We spent a few months recording them at his house. He set up a little sound booth for me. It was a closet that he outfitted. So, we worked together a lot very recently. We had so much quality time together — and I realize now that was a gift.”
Abe also engineered albums for Technical Difficulties, Professor T and the East Side Shredders and the Ing Crowd.
News of Abe’s passing spread quickly on social media.
Hollywood filmmaker Derek Frey, current head of Tim Burton Productions and a friend of Abe’s, said on Facebook he cherished “our creative spirit of anarchy.”
“From blowing up a band to igniting a volcano, you truly made some cool creative s—- happen for me and countless others …,” Frey said. “My crazy requests were never met with a ‘That can’t be done,’ only ‘Yes, we can.’”
Kekoa Graham, technical lead at Encore Global in Honolulu said Abe changed his life.
“I use all the tech skills I learned working with him every day at my current job,” Graham said. “My solace is that Rob passed whilst living his best life, on his terms.”
“He was following his dream, you know?” Johnson concluded, emotionally. “This is something he planned and wanted to do in his retirement. And he was up in Boulder, which was his heart spot. He had so many friends there, yet another circle of ‘ohana.”
Email John Burnett at hawaiitribune-herald.com.
