Former kindergarten teacher, 93, found dead as Hawaii residents clean up after storm
HONOLULU — A beloved former kindergarten teacher who taught generations of residents in a small town on Hawaii’s Big Island was among the two deaths authorities blamed on a hurricane that lashed the state over the weekend with heavy rain and strong winds.
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May Doi, 93, was found dead Monday after she was reported missing, police said. Neighbors think she was escaping floodwaters in her home and trying to get to a nearby shelter, said ʻĀina Akamu, a former student of Doi’s who is now a vice principal at a local school.
She taught for so long at Naalehu Elementary on the island’s southern tip that “Mrs. Doi was my dad’s kindergarten teacher,” Akamu said Wednesday.
“She taught grandkids of her students,” he said. “She was a fixture in this community.”
Akamu often saw her taking walks around the small, rural, sugar plantation-era town: “She was so strong.”
He recalled how everyone looked forward to having Mrs. Doi as a teacher because she sometimes allowed students to have sleepovers in her classroom. Her deceased husband was a math teacher, Akamu said.
The body of a man in his 60s was located by residents in a pasture on Tuesday, a day after police were asked to conduct a welfare check, police said. Authorities said it was the second death attributed to the storm and have not yet released his identity.
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Residents were struggling to clean up after Hurricane Lala tore roofs off houses, uprooted trees, covered roads in mud and rock and left many households without electricity for days. On top of all that, forecasters warned of the likelihood of another tropical cyclone forming southeast of the islands.
‘We just ask the ancestors to protect us’
Akamu also lamented the destruction of two cemeteries, including one where Akamu’s ancestors have been buried since 1850. Caskets were sticking out of the ground through the town, home to about 800 people, and headstones littered the roadway, he said.
“Our graveyard is now scattered all over the community and how do we heal from that?” he said.
He worries crews working to clear roads could inadvertently run over remains.
“Don’t clear the road, my grandma could be in there,” he said. “That’s what makes me most emotional, it’s like you lost them again.”
Akamu was trying to focus on helping his community recover by setting up a hub where residents can get donated items. They are in most need of generators, gasoline and propane, he said.
“We just ask the ancestors to protect us,” Akamu said of the threat of an another storm.
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