← Albert Joseph Wilkinson in the family tree · Helen Lucile King Wilkinson

Kealaolu Family Album, 1940–1945

8mm colour · narrated early 1960s · restored 2026 · 23 minutes

Albert and Helen Wilkinson’s home movies of Kahala, Honolulu and Maui in the war years, in their own words

This film is stored here, on the family’s own server, and on lordoflucies.com and craigwalsh.eu. It does not depend on YouTube or any other service. Download the film (MP4, 1440×1080, 1.0 GB). The full-quality master (5 GB) and the restoration files are kept in the family’s Dropbox, “Kealaolu Family Album”, and on Craig Walsh’s archive drive.

About the films

The films were shot on 8mm colour film between 1940 and 1945, most of them at 1046 Kealaolu Avenue, Kahala, the home of Albert and Helen Wilkinson. In those years Kahala was still farmland at the edge of Honolulu, and the Wilkinsons grew flowers and foliage behind the house; the pink hibiscus hedge that runs through the wartime scenes still stands on Kealaolu Avenue today. Albert and Helen recorded the narration with their grandson Craig in the early 1960s, about twenty years after the events, and from memory. In 2026 Craig restored the pictures and sound.

The family

Albert Joseph "Baba" Wilkinson (1896–1975). Born in Honolulu on 11 May 1896. He started at the iron works of Catton, Neill & Co., joined the Bank of Hawaii as a bullion messenger, rose to vice-president and head of the mortgage department, and in his last working years chose to become an appraiser so that he could spend his days driving round O'ahu with his grandson. With Helen he also ran Hawaiian Island Flowers and Foliage. He died on 7 February 1975.

Helen Lucile "Nana" King Wilkinson (1903–1980). Born at Los Alamos, California, on 10 August 1903. She trained at the St. Francis Hospital School of Nursing in San Francisco and graduated in May 1923. In October 1924 she came to Honolulu on the Maui with her classmate Alma Ruth Herold to nurse at the Queen's Hospital. Alma arranged the blind date at which Helen met Albert; Helen went home in May 1925, came back on the Maui in November, and married Albert the day she landed, 17 November 1925. She was president of the Florist and Flower Growers Association of Hawai'i in 1956. She died in Irvine, California, on 10 September 1980, and her ashes, mixed with Albert's, were scattered off Waikīkī.

Shirley Rae Wilkinson (1927–1976) and Alberta Jean "Birdie" Wilkinson (1930–2017), their daughters. Shirley turned eighteen on 3 June 1945, in the last summer of the war; her birthday lū'au is in the films. Birdie appears on stage in Our Town at Punahou, from which she graduated in 1947. Shirley married John Walsh in 1948 and was Craig's mother; Birdie married Lt. Neil E. Moore, USMC, in about 1955.

Rachel "Rae" Morris King (1873–1941), Helen's mother, "Grandma Tootsie". The film opens with her leaving Honolulu on the Lurline on 26 July 1940, on what proved to be her last visit. She died in San Francisco on 15 January 1941. Helen flew to her on the Pan American Clipper and arrived five hours too late.

Charles Henry "Charlie" Wilkinson (1905–1975), Albert's youngest full brother. He married Sarah Helen Conceicao in 1934; their son Delwin was born in Hilo in 1935. Charlie died on 17 February 1975, ten days after Albert. His widow Sarah lived to 91 and died in 2001; she and Delwin's wife Naomi came to John Walsh's memorial service at Punchbowl in 2000.

Fannie "Aunt Faye" Wyser (1884–1971), the younger sister of Albert's mother Lily. Born at Glebe, Sydney, Australia, she died in Oakland, California, in 1971. She is on the pier at Rae's departure in 1940.

The friends

Lt. Robert E. "Bob" Peach, USNR (1920–1971)

Born in Syracuse, New York, on 9 March 1920; graduated from Hamilton College in 1941 and had just begun law school when the war came. He joined the Navy early in 1942, trained as a pilot and served in the Pacific, rising to lieutenant commander in command of a squadron and winning two Distinguished Flying Crosses. In Honolulu he was a guest at the Wilkinsons' Christmas Eve party at 1046 Kealaolu Avenue in 1943 (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 31 December 1943), and he appears with Gil Stewart in the garden at Kealaolu. After the war he flew part-time for little Robinson Airlines while finishing law at Cornell, became its general manager in 1948 and its president in 1954, and built it into Mohawk Airlines, which by 1969 carried 1.7 million passengers a year across the northeastern United States. The friendship lasted: in 1966 Craig, then a freshman at Rensselaer in Troy, New York, wrote home that he would "write Bob Peach." Strikes, recession and debt overtook the airline, and on 20 April 1971 Bob Peach died by his own hand at his home in Clinton, New York, aged 51.

Lt. Gilbert "Gil" Stewart, USNR

Helen remembers him in the narration as "a war hero during the war". He was a Navy reserve lieutenant in Honolulu, a guest at the Wilkinsons' 1943 Christmas Eve party with Bob Peach, and he is in the garden scenes; Albert recalls him and his friends leaving "that day by a big, big carrier — the Enterprise, I think". He is also in a scrapbook photograph taken at the Copacabana in New York. His decorations, home town and later life have not been found: "Gilbert Stewart" is a common name, and no record yet singles him out. It is possible that, twenty years on, Helen's memory merged him with the much-decorated Bob Peach.

Lt. Evar T. "Dode" Cedarleaf, USMC (1915–1993)

Born Evar Theodore Cedarleaf Jr. in St. Paul, Minnesota, on 22 December 1915, into a Swedish-American family whose name was originally Cederlöf. He was a Marine officer at the Marine Barracks, Naval Air Station Kāne'ohe Bay, from 1943 into January 1945, first as a second and then a first lieutenant. He spent Christmas Eve 1943 with the Wilkinsons, and he is in the Maui footage, in civilian clothes at sunrise on the summit of Haleakalā. By July 1945 he had been posted to the Marine Corps War Dog Training School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He died on 24 February 1993 in Minnesota and is buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. The origin of "Dode" is not known.

Katherine McGrew "Kate" Cooper (1873–1963)

Born in Honolulu in February 1873, the daughter of Dr. John S. McGrew, the physician remembered as the "father of annexation". She married Charles Bryant Cooper in 1897. Her family had owned McGrew Point at 'Aiea, on the shore of Pearl Harbor, for about seventy years when, in 1944, the Navy took it by court order for the war. That November she bought Maunalei, the 1929 C. W. Dickey house on Olinda Road above Makawao, Maui, and lived there from 1945 until her death in 1963. She left it to the Episcopal Church, and in 1964 it opened as Seabury Hall, where the house is still called Cooper House.

George Bryan "Oily" Girdler (1892–1971) and Electa Williams Girdler (1897–1975)

Oily was born in Honolulu on 16 July 1892 and spent his career at the Bank of Hawaii, assistant cashier by 1940, alongside Albert. The Girdlers were Kahala neighbours of the Wilkinsons. He was a keen golfer, playing as "Oily" Girdler at Moanalua in 1928 and still winning the A flight at the O'ahu Country Club in 1950. Electa, born Electa Williams in California on 28 September 1897, married him in 1917; they had two sons, Eugene and George. Both later moved to California, where Oily died in February 1971 and Electa in December 1975. How Oily got his nickname is not known.

The Rev. Dr. Henry P. Judd (1880–1955)

Grandson of the missionary Dr. Gerrit P. Judd. He served the Hawaiian Board of Missions from 1908 to 1935 and then taught Hawaiian language and literature at the University of Hawai'i, where Shirley was a student in 1943–44. He wrote Hawaiian textbooks, co-authored an English–Hawaiian dictionary and compiled Hawaiian Proverbs and Riddles (1930). He is the "Dr. Judd" who speaks at the lū'au for the Hawaiian class at Kealaolu in about 1944, and he appears again in the Maui footage at Makawao.

Catherine "Patsy" Rice Doolin (1927–2018)

The girl next door. Born Catherine Rice in Honolulu on 6 June 1927, three days after Shirley, to Robert Blakesley Rice and Leona Agnes (Rhinelander) Rice, she grew up at 1068 Kealaolu, a few doors from the Wilkinsons. In those years she was the only other child in that quiet corner of Kahala, Shirley's close friend and Birdie's too. In her own words, decades later: "we lived next door to each other and I spent as much time as I could over at the Wilkinsons' house… they were so much fun." Birdie was younger, but "we were buddies especially when Shirley was angry with me for whatever reason." Her father, from Iowa, was an advertising manager who also edited and drew the cartoons for Ohua Kaa'uila, the staff magazine of the Honolulu Rapid Transit bus company. Patsy married Ronald O. Doolin in San Francisco on 31 December 1954, later lived at Rocklin near Sacramento, and was widowed by 2008. That year Craig put her back in touch with Birdie, and she wrote Birdie a long letter enclosing old photographs from Kealaolu and her father's cartoons. She appears in the films in close-up. She died in Sacramento on 22 August 2018, aged 91. (From Patsy's own letters and emails to Craig, 2008–2010.)

Where the narration and the film disagree

Albert and Helen were remembering events twenty years after the fact, and a few details slipped. Their words are left exactly as they recorded them; the corrections are here.

Sources: Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Advertiser, San Francisco Examiner (Newspapers.com); U.S. censuses, ship passenger lists, U.S. Marine Corps muster rolls, Social Security Death Index and Find a Grave (Ancestry); Wikipedia ("Robert Peach"); LibraryThing (Henry P. Judd); letters and emails of Patsy Rice Doolin; family papers and memory.