During the first week of September, I received an envelope from Leimomi Apoliona Brown. We met Leimomi in 1976 through her then-boyfriend, the late George Helm.

George and I had both been part of the “Kahoolawe Nine,” the group that staged a symbolic protest in January 1976 by landing on the island of Kahoolawe, at that time controlled by the U.S. Navy and used for naval target practice and other activities.

That first landing was followed by a number of others, along with arrests, court cases, a civil lawsuit, and a long lobbying campaign, eventually leading to an end to Navy control and the return of the island to the State of Hawaii.

Inside the envelope was a card Brown had prepared some 46 years earlier on behalf the fledgling Protect Kahoolawe Ohana. It wasn’t mailed, perhaps because it was written around the time Helm and another man were lost at sea in March 1977 while attempting to return to Maui after a subsequent protest on Kahoolawe.

The Ohana return address on the card was in Honolulu at that time, and would later move to its home base in Molokai. The original card appears to have been signed “Lei & George,” although part of his name has been lost where the card was torn.

Leimomi tracked me down during a visit to Honolulu in December, and told me about finding the card while cleaning following the death of her husband, attorney E. Cooper Brown, at the end of 2019. Luckily, this second time around, the card was delivered, a little tattered but otherwise basically intact. Not bad for its age! Our green kitchen counter top can be seen through where the card is torn.

In any case, just another little piece of island history.