[Reprinted from pcc50.com, the Polynesian Cultural Center‘s 50th-anniversary website which is no longer active; originally posted September 12, 2013; interview and 2013 photo by Mike Foley]
Introduction: The late Aunty Valetta Nepia Jeremiah, who was originally from Manutuke in the Gisborne District of North Island, New Zealand, shared her PCC story that goes back to just before the gates first opened to the public:
Volunteered to come at age 20: I first came to the Polynesian Cultural Center as a member of Te Aroha Nui o te Iwi Maori Company a few weeks before the PCC opened.
There were about 150 of us. Our senior elders and sisters helped us get together and meet often so we would have a good feeling about each other throughout the whole journey. That happened.
We arrived here on September 30, 1963, and were sent to the [CCH] dorms to stay. In the beginning, we were told we were going to help prepare the Cultural Center for opening on October 12.
We did that by helping the other islands, like Fiji, which was right across the lagoon from Aotearoa:
So much excitement on the actual opening day: Everybody was rushing around, making sure we’d eaten, making sure we had the right costumes.
We also had to have the right clothing because we knew it was going to be hot, and we were going to be out on the stage of the original theater.
Because I was so much on the chanting side of things, I didn’t have a voice to sing, so I was exempt from the actual choir. I also didn’t have to learn the numbers, because basically, I was doing the chanting. That in itself
took a toll on me, because we were chanting loudly.
Hauling coral and weaving mats: They needed to have coral poured right around the chief’s house, so we were carrying five-gallon cans of coral, pouring it, going back, and getting more.
In Tahiti, which also used to be right across the lagoon [from Aotearoa], we had to do the same thing; and finally, we were approached to help other villages.
I ended up in Samoa. They were making pola [coconut-leaf mats. I had never done any weaving, but I decided to try that instead of carrying coral. Aunty Ana Fanene taught me how to make the pola.
I was only 20 years old at the time, and I had been involved in Maori things back in my hometown. My teacher, Arapata Whaanga, was actually the leader of the group.
I can still remember listening to President Hugh B. Brown. I was still pretty much a brand-new member; I had just been converted in 1959, so everything was still new to me.
I had been able to get here in a very short span of time, and it was scary because I was away from home.
By then, I was actually thinking of staying here for school, but then I went back home. We arrived there in December 1963.
President [Wendell B.] Mendenhall called me in March 1964 and asked me to come back.
50 years at the Center: In May 1964 I arrived with Uncle Ollie and Aunty Olive McKay and their children. I came not as a student, but to work, and I’ve been here ever since until I retired two years ago.
One of the highlights for me over all those years is watching the
new students come, the old ones go, and seeing the differences, seeing the changes in them.
A lot of them came from homes where they were pretty sheltered, so when they arrived it was like freedom; but then they learned to buckle down.
For example, I got a call from a boy living on the mainland: “Aunty, do you remember who this is?” I didn’t recognize the voice and had no idea who it was.
He said, “I was your naughty boy.” When he said that, I started tearing up because I knew he had become a good student, married well, had his own children, and was trying to prepare them.
Before I came, I never imagined my life would be like this. I wasn’t a member [of the Church] then, and my life was already in turmoil. My parents thought I was getting into the wrong company.
That’s the reason they took me to Church College of New Zealand, to go to school. It changed my life.
[The Polynesian Cultural Center presented Aunty Val, as everybody here calls her, with its “Living Treasure” Award on September 4, 2013, for her 50 years of service and cultural leadership.
She passed away one year later at her long-time home in Kahuku on September 4, 2014.]
