Directed by Blair Treu, Sharing Aloha offers a heartfelt look into the lives of BYU–Hawaii students behind the Polynesian Cultural Center’s night show. Premiered at the Zions Indie Film Fest, the documentary highlights their cultural journey, sacrifices, and spirit of aloha.
In June 2024, the Polynesian Cultural Center and BYU–Hawaii worked together to prepare and sail the beautiful 57-foot traditional wooden Hawaiian sailing canoe Iosepa to Kualoa to participate in the Pacific Festival gathering of canoes at Kualoa. On its way back to Laie, the Iosepa circumnavigated Oahu.
Many of the Polynesian Cultural Center students who participated in the 1966 mainland promotion to the Hollywood Bowl and Salt Lake City said their visit with President David O. McKay and his wife, Emma, at their home in Huntsville, Utah, was the highlight of the trip.
When Elder Michael Theobald and his wife, Sister Shauna Theobald, completed their volunteer service as senior leadership training missionaries for full-time employees and orientation for new Center student workers in October 2017, it wasn’t his first experience at the Cultural Center.
In the summer of 1963, while labor missionaries and community volunteers were still finishing the future PCC, Elder Theobald was a 14-year-old teenager who also had opportunities to help. Read his memories about those early Center days at:
https://blog.polynesia.com/michael-theobald
Eriki Marchand, former “chief” of the Polynesian Cultural Center’s Marquesas tohua, recently revisited Laie to install a mural honoring the visit of King Kalākaua to Laie in 1894.
Milton Kaka’s video, “Tala,” traces the death of an infant girl in Samoa and its subsequent impact over 60 years ago.
The story behind the Cultural Center’s 60th-anniversary virtual choir video that was performed on screen during the opening devotional on October 8, 2023, in the BYU–Hawaii Cannon Activities Center, and is now online.
“Big Joe” Vakalalavanua was a very popular Fijian student-employee at the Center in the 1960s and only returned once in 2002 after graduating.
Mama and Papa Pu, who were originally from Tuba’i, French Polynesia, served in the Tahitian Village until 1983.
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