Second in a series
LAIE, Hawaii — Percy TeHira is a wiry, upbeat New Zealander who came to Hawaii in 1960, a missionary called to build the kingdom, literally, by laboring on construction projects.
TeHira was already an experienced labor missionary in his own country, called in 1956 to help built the Church College of New Zealand and the New Zealand Temple. He didn't know that much about what he was getting into with the call to Hawaii, but he was satisfied with a verse of scripture in the Pearl of Great Price: "I know not, save the Lord commanded me."
The Mormon community in Laie was experiencing a prophetic growth spurt. David O. McKay, then president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, first envisioned a university in Laie in 1921. Ground was broken on a college campus in 1955; and late in 1958, President McKay dedicated the first permanent buildings of the new Church College of Hawaii — today's BYU-Hawaii.
Students began streaming in from throughout Polynesia. The desire to preserve Polynesian culture and give the influx of new students jobs to support their schooling had congealed into plans to build a tourist attraction near the college, filled with Polynesian villages, food and performers.
Labor missionaries, a staple throughout the church at the time, were needed to help build the new project. So church building chairman Wendell B. Mendenhall, grandfather of current BYU football coach Bronco Mendenhall, traveled through the islands of the South Pacific, issuing calls to experienced labor missionaries like TeHira to go to Hawaii and work on the new Polynesian Cultural Center, or PCC.
Sione Feinga was a labor missionary in his native Tonga when Wendell Mendenhall visited there in October 1959. "We thought we were going back to build more buildings (in Tonga). We never imagined there was a mission in Hawaii. He asked who was willing to go. We all raised our hands, not knowing what we would be doing. Then he spread out the plan — the PCC plan."
It was to be a village of large and small buildings with trees and water features. Visitors entering its gates would get a sampling of cultures from Tonga, Hawaii, Aotearoa, Samoa, Tahiti and Fiji, all in a matter of hours. Laborers and craftsmen from Hawaii and the other South Sea islands would soon be on their way to Laie: Tuione Pulotu and two brothers and a brother-in-law from Tonga. Sione Sulunga, also from Tonga; Antone Haiku Jr., from Hawaii; and many others. Some 50 couples also were called from the mainland, many assigned to supervise construction projects.
They moved palm trees, dug a lagoon, fitted authentic village structures with elaborate carvings and, in some cases, reclaimed elements of their native cultures that were all but lost.
"We were anxious to learn, to pick up a whole different culture," Feinga said.
"We came to build a Tongan village," Pulotu said. Some 50 years later, "The princess of Tonga asked me to build a traditional village there," he said. "I have talents created by the Polynesian Cultural Center. Without that I don't know what I would have done in Tonga."
Today, the former missionaries can look at individual palm trees in the PCC and point to rings in the trunks that show how tall each tree was when it was transplanted.
Each day's work began with prayer and a devotional. The work was both spiritual and physical.
"I first came in '56. I had recently joined the church, so I had the Spirit with me while I was here," said Haiku, describing what he felt in Laie. "You felt you were someplace special," Haiku said. "There was nowhere else in the world where the priesthood was in charge of such a big project."
Sulunga would take his experience home, building more than 20 chapels in Tonga after his mission ended. Some missionaries stayed in Laie or returned years later.
Their numbers are dwindling now because they are getting older, but those who live in the vicinity of Laie today still command celebrity status when they walk through the PCC; and they still carry the passion for the work they undertook 50 years ago next spring.
The setting in the '60s was ripe for any number of culture clashes: Laie's native sons working alongside the labor missionaries who had come from throughout the Pacific and the couples imported from the mainland. But when a small group of the laborers got together in Laie recently to talk about their experiences, the only thing they were interested in complaining about was the sandwiches. "The white ladies made deviled-ham sandwiches. We didn't know what to do with them," Pulotu said, his companions simultaneously laughing while pulling faces. "So we threw them on the roof."
"Those sandwiches were for the birds, literally," Feinga said. "Now we eat sandwiches, but it took us 40 years to learn," Sulunga said.
John (Jack) Pierce and his wife, Ilene, were among the couples called from the mainland. "Mom would cook for them all the time," said her son Keith, who was just a boy when he went with his parents to Laie. "She learned how to make all of the different Polynesian foods. Then she'd make spaghetti — and she taught them how to enjoy American foods."
The Pierces established a contracting business in Hawaii after their missionary service ended. When Ilene died in 1991, all of the pallbearers at her funeral were former labor missionaries.
"Where else can you find a group from so many different cultures working together? We weren't Tongans or Samoans. We were labor missionaries," Haiku said.
Originally, the PCC was to be developed on a plot almost adjacent to the temple in Laie. Planners decided to move it several blocks, closer to the beach, to keep the bustle of tourist traffic from disrupting the temple setting. But the change in plan meant labor missionaries would start arriving before the work they were called to do was ready. So they started on other projects in Laie — a visitors center at the temple, dormitories at the college.
Taro plants, used to make the Hawaiian food staple poi, filled the new site. "I was the first to wade in there with a bulldozer to start clearing it out," Pulotu said. Meantime, the clock was ticking on their mission calls. "We were told we would be here 18 months," he said. But the PCC was far from complete, "So they released us and set us apart again for another 18 months." The PCC would start welcoming visitors in 1963.
TeHira was one of those who stayed in Laie, working to maintain the park he helped build and performing there as a musician and Maori dancer.
The world became a much more structured place in the span of time between the labor missions and TeHira's recent retirement from the PCC. Now he sees remodeling at the Laie Temple being done by private contractors in a 21st-century environment corralled by concerns about liability. "We live right in the shadows of the temple and we can't go there and do something," he said with great emotion. "We want to go help."
E-mail: sfidel@desnews.com