Aunty Kela: ‘so much history since we first started’
Aunty Kela Miller was born in Laie, learned hula from her ‘ohana, danced at the Hukilau, then became an original Hawaiian Villager and dancer at the PCC.
Aunty Kela Miller was born in Laie, learned hula from her ‘ohana, danced at the Hukilau, then became an original Hawaiian Villager and dancer at the PCC.
Aunty Valetta Nepia Jeremiah from New Zealand devoted 50 years of her life to the Polynesian Cultural Center and was revered as a “living treasure.”
Tivakno Ieli Sievinen was originally from the small, remote island of Rotuma, a political dependency of Fiji with its own language and culture. (She passed away in July 2020.)
Ottley Wright — came to Laie in 1984 and worked at the PCC as a canoe tour and Laie Tour guide — at the Center’s 50th-anniversary reunion.
Before marrying George Hunt of Samoa, Beth McKinnon Hunt left Australia to attend Church College of Hawaii in 1963 and ended up dancing in the Polynesian Cultural Center night show.
Tongans at the Polynesian Cultural Center draped the queen’s summer palace in the Tongan Village in mourning the death of Her Majesty Queen Mother Halaevalu Mata’aho, who passed away at age 90 on February 19, 2017.
PCC senior missionary Sister Gayle Bleak felt angelic help in the dark.
Irene Tsu, who co-starred with Elvis Presley in the 1966 movie, Paradise Hawaiian Style, that was partially filmed at the Cultural Center during the summer of 1965, revisited “the set” for the first time since then in April 2023.
The late Emosi Damuni recalled how he first came to the Polynesian Cultural Center in 1964 during the 40th anniversary in 2003.
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