It was a lovely, warm day on Molokai’s Kalauapapa peninsula last July, and I was getting a tour of the area from local resident Rick Schonely.
Schonely, a musician and high school sports coach, is one of several Molokai residents who gives tours of the peninsula, an infamous spot where leprosy victims were exiled for decades, living in a state of quarantine that makes what we’re going through child’s play. The peninsula is now a U.S. National Historic Park, and you can only visit if you have a permit.
It’s a very sad place, where people lived far from their families (people were sent here not just from other Hawaiian islands but from around the world) and suffered much misery. But it’s also a place of hope, of tremendous courage from victims who refused to give in and of volunteers such as Father Damien from Belgium and Sister Marian Cope, who was originally from Germany but came to Molokai from upstate New York to minister to the sick and deserves more attention than she gets.
Schonely likes to bring his ukulele when he does his tours, and often stops to perform a Hawaiian song or two. We paused at a small church on the peninsula and he sang one of my favourite tunes, Wahine Ilikea, which talks about a woman on Molokai. We also stopped in a lovely picnic area on the east side of the peninsula, where the original colony was built before being (thankfully) moved to the sunnier, drier west side.
As we were finishing our box lunch, Schonely wandered out into a grassy area near the ocean and sang a Hawaiian song. I don’t remember what it was, but it was lovely.
As he was finishing, a gentleman of a certain age with white hair and a drawl thick enough to pour onto a stack of pancakes wandered up. I had been chatting with he and his wife, but I can’t remember his name. I think they live in Florida, but it might be Georgia, and I seem to recall he was a music teacher or perhaps a professor.
Rick Schonely on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokai. JIM BYERS PHOTO
He said something about enjoying music and asked Schonely if they could sing a song together. “Can you play ‘You Are My Sunshine?’”
Schonely, naturally, agreed and began plinking the ukulele. What happened next was simply magic; a melding of voices and an achingly beautiful harmony that wafted through the moist, tropical air and weaved through the off-shore winds. These two men had only met an hour or so prior to this, and here they were, singing a stunning duet about sunshine and love in this terrible and painful but hopeful and inspiring place.
If you watch the video, Schonely finishes his last note, pauses for a second, and yells out, “How beautiful was that?”
“Pretty damned beautiful,” I said.
It gave me goosebumps the size of the towering, green, sea cliffs that flank the north side of Molokai, said to be the highest in the world.
As I was leaving the island two days later, I was sitting on a bench outside the island’s tiny, wonderful airport. As I waited for my plane, I wandered outside to enjoy the fresh air and a spotted a woman with a baby in her arms. The baby was fussing a bit, so the woman started singing. As the first words tumbled quietly from her mouth, I
stared at her with wonder. She was singing “You Are My Sunshine.”
I’ve watched the video of Rick and his singing partner many times since, and I think about the song a lot. I think it has a special poignancy in this time of sadness and death but also of love and caring.
I hope you enjoy the video. Whatever you call your god, or whatever you do to get you through tough times, I hope this short musical segment helps you a little.
Bless us all, and see you on the other side.
