I was so sorry to see the news yesterday that former Honolulu Police Chief Doug Gibb died.
Doug and his wife, Melanie, were very much part of Kaaawa. Their home isn’t far away, and after their retirement move to Iowa, we would run into them whenever they returned for vacations.
I got this photo of Doug during one of their visits back several years ago. At that time, Doug regaled us with tales of becoming a bread baker and deliver man in their family-run bakery back in Iowa. He seemed to be relishing the experience.
We saw Doug most recently just two months ago, when he returned for a Kaaawa funeral. Doug said he and Melanie were planning to return to Hawaii and live on the Big Island, keeping their Kaaawa home (recently remodeled and expanded) for their extended family’s vacation use. We didn’t know he had been sick. That’s just as well.
We moved to Kaaawa in 1988, towards the end of his stint as chief. So we never really knew Doug as chief. But as a neighbor in Kaaawa, he was always very open, pleasant, and interesting. Just a genuinely nice guy with a passion for good police work.
I’m very sorry to hear of his passing.
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I had the pleasure of spending a little time with Doug and Melanie during a summer vacation as a tourist in Hawaii, probably 1985. My then-wife and I were staying for a week in a spare bedroom (illegal B&B?) in a house on Kamehameha Hwy, between the 7-11 and the elementary school. It happened to be the week of the annual Ka’a’awa community lu’au, held under a big tent on the school grounds, featuring the Cazimero Brothers. The imu for cooking the pig was in a shared backyard which was part of the property for the house, so we watched all phases of opening the imu, putting in the hot lava rocks, pig and ‘uala (sweet potato) etc., covering with burlap and dirt, etc. and watching the steam come up for more than a night/day, digging it up, pulling the pork off the bones, etc. We also went to the Gibb house to help with cutting up tomatoes and making lomi salmon. A very genuine experience for tourists who really lucked out. Doug and Melanie were gracious, and we enjoyed a couple of “talk-shtory” sessions after the lu’au day. I remember Melanie saying her nickname was “Manu” which I then mispronounced as “Mano” much to her horror (At the time I had no idea what either word meant). I asked Doug for his opinion about allowing citizens to own handguns (must have been a controversy at that time), and he was adamantly opposed to it. Said the bad consequences would be even worse in Hawaii than in other states, but he didn’t explain why.