Lots of time to fill in home isolation, so I have to invent “jobs” to do.

Here’s one. I’m slowly going through old files, trying to scan and dump as much paper as possible in order to reduce the number of boxes in storage. Some things are easy. Very old financial records, for example. Scan, label, shred the originals. Others not so easy. Scan, think about shredding, waiver, put back in folder and storage. Example: A nondescript envelope turned out to contain my original “Certificate of Baptism.”

This 70-year old document shows the event took place on November 23, 1950 at the Waipahu Community Church, which I assume was selected in deference to my grandmother, who lived in Waipahu. My grandfather had died earlier that same year. I was, at the time, three years and three months old. As I heard the story, my baptism was delayed because my parents weren’t confident I would survive, as I had been at least two months premature. As luck would have it, I did survive, and there we were.

The minister was Arthur R. Koch. Of course, I just Googled him. He had been trained at The University of Chicago and Garrett Seminary. This was his first assignment. After Waipahu, he returned to Illinois and a long career. He died in 2007 at age 83.

Koch also signed the certificate as a “Sponsor,” along with three others: Emma and Eugene Dunn, and Anna M. Harbeson.

Two sisters, Alice and Emma Nahaolelua, had been students at the Priory at the same time as my grandmother, and the three became close and lifelong friends. Their mother, Kia Nahaolelua, had been a lady-in-waiting for Queen Liliuokalani. The photo shows Kia Nahaolelua with the queen.

Emma married Eugene Bal Dunn, while Alice was married to one-time Honolulu Mayor John C. Lane. I grew up thinking “Aunty Emma” was a blood relative, as did my mother, I later learned. So their names were quite familiar to me.

But the third person, Anna Harbeson, is not someone I have any recollection of, therefore a minor mystery that managed to sidetrack me for a while as I dug into Newspapers.com to discover who she was. Here are some of the factoids gleaned from the clippings.

Anna Harbeson was the daughter of Mary Elena Quinn of Wahiawa. She was born in San Francisco.

She was married in February 1927 in Honolulu to Charles Harbeson.

She attended a meeting of Girl Scout leaders in Waipahu in June 1939 to plan summer programs for 11 Girl Scout troops in the area.

Perhaps the same day, she was a guest at a small poi supper hosted by the principal of August Ahrens School in Waipahu. Also on the short guest list was Julia Toomey, one of my mother’s cousins.

She was president of the August Ahrens School Parent-Teacher Association in 1941.

In August 1950, she was one of ten employees of the 14th Naval District public works office who received cash awards for suggestions that had been adopted by the Navy. She worked for the Navy until her retirement.

In 1953, she and her husband moved into a new home in Wahiawa.

She died in Sacramento, California, on September 24, 1989, at aage 82.

So I had a general idea that both Anna Harbeson and my grandmother had been active in the Waipahu community. But then I found another newspaper article from April 1950, which reported that my grandmother and Harbeson had chaired committees for the Waipahu Community Church bazaar and fair held in May. My grandmother, Lani Yonge (or Mrs. Duke Yonge, as the newspaper reported) shared the plants and vegetables committee responsibilities, while Harbeson (Mrs. Charles Harbeson) was a co-chair of the pastry committee.

So they were apparently friends through their involvement in the Waipahu Community Church. Good enough friends that Anna Harbeson signed as a “sponsor” for my baptism. Mystery more or less solved.

I have fleeting memories of arriving at the church for the baptism. Is it possible for an adult to have memories of events when they were just three years old? What I remember is arriving at the church, a building surrounded by a grassy field. We drove right out onto the field, then pulled up and parked in front of the building. Something burned into my brain circuits. It’s just that image of bouncing across the field and arriving at the church, along with perhaps some sense that my parents were excited, that continues to bounce around my mental synapses.

A quick online search turned up several references with the same basic information regarding early memories.

“Research has indicated that most people’s earliest memories, on average, date back to when they were 3-1/2 years old,” according to one article in Psychology Today. So it is possible that I do have a true but partial memory of the occasion.