Promoting the Center Offsite
From its earliest years, Polynesian Cultural Center leaders have recognized sending various-sized groups to perform off-site could help promote attendance.
Even before the Cultural Center opened in October 1963, the Church College of Hawaii (renamed BYU–Hawaii in 1974) students from the South Pacific and Hawaii — who had formed Hālau ‘Imi No‘eauunder the direction of CCH professor Wylie Swapp and other cultural instructors — had already established the precedence of putting on performances at the International Market Place in Waikiki. Within a few years later, a larger group of the students put on several concerts at the Waikiki Shell, at least one of them to a sold-out audience.
Soon after the Center opened in October 1963, after the excitement of the grand opening dropped off, costumed students waved signs at passing cars on Kamehameha Highway, trying to encourage them to turn in. Granted, their efforts didn’t go very far, and sign-waving is still a common promotional tool in Hawaii.
The PCC Promo Team and other PCC student performers as well as students from the Hong Kong Institute of Religion appear at Window on the World, a sister theme park to the China Folk Culture Village in Shenzhen. The PCC student performers remain for a summer run.
First Major Promo, 1964
With the Center’s “Hollywood management team” in place, who understood the value of promotion and publicity, the Center’s first major promo tour took place during the summer of 1964, when the Royu Development Company of Osaka arranged with the Center to send a group of students, older musicians, and leaders to Japan for six weeks.
Royu, inspired by the newly opened Cultural Center, built a resort at Lake Okuike near Osaka and Kobe in the nearby mountains surrounding Ashiya. Japanese tourists rode company trains and buses there to discover a stylized Polynesian backdrop complete with its own version of a “water curtain,” but of course the Polynesian Cultural Center performers were the main attraction.
From then to many years to come, PCC performing groups began appearing regularly at various events in Honolulu and off-shore.
Karee Bryant Garrigan, a Hawaiian from Oahu and one of the Center’s original student employees, recalled going on the original Japan promo was her first opportunity to travel outside of Hawaii. She found it very exciting, if not overwhelming, especially passing through the megalopolis of Tokyo as well as the fabled city of Kyoto with its historic temple structures.
She said the Center group soon arrived in their temporary mountain resort and stayed in a hotel where they learned to adapt to eating Japanese food every day, taking furo-style baths, lounging around in hapi coats, and sleeping four-to-a-room on tatami mats and futon mattresses.
“We had to catch a taxi to go to where we performed, and those mountain roads were really scary,” Karee recalled. “Even though there was a double-line, the drivers would take chances and just go. But it was fun to dance in the park.”
And, of course, all veterans of that tour remember the Japanese loved to have their pictures taken with the Polynesian performers.
A partial list of PCC group members she recalls almost 60-ish years later included choreographer Jack Regas and stage/tech manager Warren Trueblood; kūpuna musicians Lena Guerero and Aunty Marge Kekauoha; and fellow performers Sunday Kekuaokalani Mariteragi, Noelani Webster Mateaki, Maile Richards; Jim Bassett, Kin Lo, Wilson Ho, Tommy “Kamaki” Kanahele, Don Burke, Patoa Benioni and Bobby Kauō (among others).
Bassett, a handsome young man from Honolulu who would later serve a mission in Japan in the mid-1960s, recalled a few other names, including Vida Aiona, Karen Fuemura, Lucille Decosta, and Meteliko Tuaileva (aka Jack Tuiasoa).
After graduating from Church College of Hawaii, Bassett put his Japanese language skills to good use working in sales for the Center and other companies in Waikiki. He most recently retired from Bishop Estate, and he and his wife, Sandy Kawelo Bassett, also a Center alumna, now live in Kaimukī.
Paradise Hawaiian Style, 1965:
Though not off-site, one of the Cultural Center’s biggest promotional events of this era took place over the following summer of 1965 when “the king of rock and roll,” Elvis Presley, filmed a sizable segment of his feature-length movie, Paradise Hawaiian Style, on the grounds.
When the film came out in 1966, it showed Presley and his girlfriend taking a leisurely canoe tour along the lagoon, dancing with the villagers, and — thanks to “movie magic” — suddenly ending up on the stage of the Hale Aloha theater with the night show cast, rocking and singing to the Center’s signature song, Bula Laie — but translated into English as Drums of the Islands.
Mike Grilikhes, the former network TV executive who served as one of the Center’s early general managers, recalled Bula Laie was almost a sticking point in negotiating the movie deal: Hal B. Wallis, the head of Paramount Studios that was making the film, told him “Elvis would like to use that [song],” but “Elvis owns all his music.”
In the end, however, Grilikhes said, “He’s not going to own this. This was composed by Isireli Racule, and he should get credit for it… They finally agreed. The Center copyrighted the song, and Isireli got compensated. It’s in the agreement.”
To this day, Paradise Hawaiian Style still occasionally plays on streaming TV.
An Unofficial Japan Promo, 1966:
Following up on the success of the 1964 promotional tour to Japan, the Royu Development Company of Osaka negotiated with an unofficial group of Cultural Center and Laie community members to make a six-week “return appearance” at Lake Okuike (located at a mountain resort near Osaka and Kobe. (The Center had already committed a large group of its employees to the U.S. mainland promotional tour to Hollywood and Utah that summer.)
The late Alan Makahinu Barcarse, already a PCC veteran who had served a mission in Japan and spoke fluent Japanese, emceed the group. Other members included Joe and Malia AhQuin, musicians; the late Tui Hunkin, who later married group member Simi Vanisi; also Tevita Lui, Luseane Fa‘aumu (Philips), Sharon Lum (whose husband visited the group while they were there), Mahealani Soren (Rawlins), Sally Ann McShane (Foley), and also (Faleomavaega) Eni Hunkin (another original PCC employee) who visited the group and performed with them while he was on R&R from Viet Nam; among others.
The Big Appearance at the Hollywood Bowl and Utah, 1966:
It may seem hard to believe what a “dent” this promotional tour must have put in PCC operations and interactions with guests on the ground in Laie, but in the summer of 1966, 175 Polynesian Cultural Center performers flew to Los Angeles to stage “Polynesian Festival” for four nights in the famed Hollywood Bowl.
Then they boarded the Union Pacific Railroad to extend their tour to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they put on six more performances in the Highland High School auditorium, considered one of the best theatrical venues at that time.
Indeed, the promo “cannibalized” the night show to the point where the Center could only offer daytime activities while the promo group was gone. Meanwhile, the PCC people flew first to Los Angeles for their Hollywood Bowl engagements, then boarded the Union Pacific railroad to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they put on six more performances in the Highland High School auditorium, considered one of the best theatrical venues at that time.
They also had two opportunities to meet with David O. McKay, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who had been instrumental in establishing the Church College of Hawaii and the Polynesian Cultural Center.
Karee Garrigan also participated in that promo. She recalled just to see the audience at the Hollywood Bowl was “phenomenal.” The famous amphitheater can hold an estimated 17,500 people.
She noted while the group was in Los Angeles and Utah, they traveled by chartered buses and stayed in homes of Church members. And she also remembers the Salt Lake City leg of the tour was “very, very special, because I had just joined the Church. In that room with that man with white hair, that was the first time I had that kind of feeling the spirit.”
“It was so special. He talked to us, and we all gave him a kiss.”
Karee graduated from CCH soon after returning from the Hollywood Bowl/Utah promo and eventually became a public-school teacher where she spent most of the 42 years in her career at Laie Elementary. She now lives in Kapolei with her niece and her husband — Robert and Sheila Woods, who are both PCC alumni and also retired schoolteachers from Kahuku High.
Large Promos put on hold:
Despite the success of the 1966 promotional tour to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, those efforts weren’t enough to overcome unspecified problems some group members had apparently caused while on the road, plus the operational challenges created back home at the Center with the absence of so many employees. For example, the villages were minimally staffed while the group was gone, and the night show was cancelled.
Consequently, for approximately the next 15 years, the PCC board of directors decided to discontinue any further large promotional appearances.
Local and U.S. mainland promotions begin to take off again:
As the mid-1980s approached, however, local promotions in Waikiki started to take off. By then Center’s Waikiki Sales Office (WSO), which included a marketing team, had by then moved from the 9th floor of the Bank of Hawaii building across Kalakaua Avenue to the third floor of building-C (on the Diamond Head end) of the newly opened Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center.
In typical Polynesian Cultural Center style, a large group of employees participated in the opening of the ticket office, including the presentation of a full-grown cooked pig the Tongan Villagers pulled in on a sledge.
As part of the lease, the RHSC also offered its main performance venue near the new Waikiki Ticket Office (WTO), on the ground floor of Building-B, several times a week.
Working closely with the Villages and Theater departments, ad hoc promo teams drove in from Laie to delight pedestrian traffic with their appearances. These usually ran for about two hours, sometimes three-to-four times a week.
As a regular sales strategy about this same time, several of the Center’s major agent tour operators would offer tourists free “breakfast briefings” in hotel ballrooms and other large venues. In addition to a feed, the briefings featured entertainment, sales pitches, and ticketing agents selling optional activities — including the Polynesian Cultural Center.
The WSO sales account managers began requesting more small promotional teams from the Theater department and the Villages. These groups usually left Laie before daylight to set up in time and wouldn’t return to Laie until that afternoon.
Moa Mahe, who’d previously been a popular emcee at the Center and then a WSO sales account manager, soon started his own business as one of the briefers and then tour conductors. Naturally, he gave the Center excellent reviews, and later, all his tour drivers and guides who were also PCC veterans, would always “pitch” the PCC.
Three other pivotal opportunities arise in the 1980s:
Three major events arose about this time that helped convince both executive management and the board of directors that the Center needed a standing Promo Team:
1) The Center’s 20th anniversary in 1983: The Polynesian Cultural Center decided to use its upcoming 20th anniversary in 1983 as a sales and marketing concept. In addition to featuring the anniversary in advertising that year, , we also put together several small traveling teams to do a series of PR and media appearances across the U.S. mainland.
The Ketchum PR tour: At the recommendation of Bill Marriott, the hotel magnate and member of the board of directors, the Center contracted Ketchum Public Relations, a national firm (which had previously done PR for the Marriott amusement parks in San Jose, California) to put together a media tour. They also organized inviting a group of six travel writers on a fam trip to the Center as part of that strategy.
Ketchum outlined taking a group of performers on a six-week schedule of visiting media and travel writers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, New York City, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver (British Columbia). The agency also conducted professional media training for the late Bill Cravens and Vernice Wineera (formerly Pere), and Mike Foley in their San Francisco office before the tour began.
Because the PR campaign covered so much geography and ran for about six weeks, however, few team members — especially those who were BYU–Hawaii students — could remain on the road that long. The Center made special arrangements for those tour members who were full-time BYUH students.
An interesting sidenote of that arrangement involved how much per diem expense money the students would get while they were on the road. Naturally, they were quite excited to collect both their regular PCC pay plus the expense money; and in a special bonus, the producers of the Mike Douglas Show in New York City required the Center to pay a labor-fee of several hundred dollars, which at the time we didn’t know the producers would turn around and give back to the students. That was a very pleasant surprise for them.
Consequently, the tour was divided into three segments and three teams roughly covered the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast. Foley and Wineera were the PR spokespeople on the tours, while Peters was the Theater representative at the time.
At this point, we didn’t keep detailed records of who went where, but according to Foley, some of the performers included the late Oli Tuiā and her sister Dofi Fa’asou — who doubled in getting each group to singing beautifully, So’o Tufaga (knife dancer), Moni Togia’i, Keith Awai, Verna Tonga, the late Patricia Hutihuti Wilson, Luçie Fonoimoana, Charles Teriipaia, Esta Kershaw (Metakingi), Paula Strother, the late Albert Peters, Winton Ria and Fa‘anā Purcell; as well as Vernon “Nā” Kiaha, Valerie (Enos) Grace, and (Tagaloataoa) Delsa Atoa Moe (with apologies to the others whose names have inadvertently been forgotten; please feel free to submit any other names).
The Ketchum plan kept the teams busy. Appearances ranged from meeting various famous travel writers and columnists, crowding into morning-drive radio stations and newsrooms across the country, and even appearing on the Mike Douglas TV Show in New York City.
Moe said she particularly remembered performing at the main branch of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan, “where we had to set up an impromptu dressing room with lavalavas by the large lion statues” that overlook the street. Foley remembers he and Peters had a hard time finding the right kind of fuel in mid-Manhattan to prepare the fire knives.
Clearly, using the Center’s anniversaries worked well as both as a marketing strategy, especially among alumni. Quite a few of them have been coming back regularly for similar reunions every decade since, and the special alumni night shows are particularly anticipated.
2) Aloha Liberty: Championed by Reg Schwenke, then Vice President of Communications, the Center became a major sponsor for the Aloha Liberty Foundation, Hawaii state’s way of observing the 1986 centennial of the Statue of Liberty in New York City.
“That was amazing,” said Tagaloataoa Delsa Atoa Moe, who also went on the Liberty promo as a dancer. “We performed in the [former] Giants’ Stadium [across the Hudson River] in the Meadowlands, and a lot of A-list celebrities were there, including Bruce Springsteen, Tony Bennet, Frank Sinatra, and Stevie Wonder, I think. It was also my first time seeing such a huge fireworks show,” Moe said.
She added other Center alumni in the group of about 30 she remembers included Silina Tu’ua Manumaleuna, Patricia Wilson, Greta Tautū and So’o Tufaga. (Again, please help submit the names of other Liberty team members.)
In those years Moe said the Center also participated in several other New York City promotions: “One as part of a State of Hawaii promotion with Gov. George Ariyoshi; and another for the opening of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square.”
“I think that was when we also performed in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, but most of us didn’t realize what a big deal that was at the time.”
3) Aloha West Airlines, based in Tempe, Arizona, about this same time frame, asked the Center to help promote the opening of its new route to Honolulu (and its office in Waikiki) by appearing at a series of travel agent and tour operator events in several of their hub cities. (AWA eventually merged with US Airways and adopted their name, which later merged with American Airlines in 2015.)
Some of the venues included Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, and New York City. An incomplete list of participants includes Delsa Moe, Valerie Enos (Grace), Patricia Wilson, So’o Tufaga, Benny Kai, John Maka Cummings, Emili Moala, and Luçie Fonoimoana (again, with apologies to the others whose names have been forgotten).
The America West series of promos also proved to be a very good match. For example, the Center got excellent coverage, and AWA agreed to cover all travel expenses for Center performers and accompanying managers involved.
In short, with these and other appearances, it became apparent the Center needed a dedicated Promo Team whose members were available on short notice to participate in approved events, not only for self-promotion but also to work more closely with travel partners, including hotels, rental car companies, and the State of Hawaii and government tourism-related agencies.
Consumer FIT promos: By the mid-1980s, the Center’s sales and marketing team also began to take advantage of offers to join consumer travel shows in large cities, which were good markets for Hawaii tourism.
Consumer FIT Promos:
By the mid-1980s, the Center’s sales and marketing team also began to take advantage of offers to join consumer travel shows in large cities, which were good markets for Hawaii tourism.
For example, American Airlines would notify the Center they had put together a schedule of travel shows in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, and even once in Raleigh, North Carolina.
For a relatively modest fee, tourist attractions such as the Center (or hotels, rental car companies, other activities) would get a booth, a couple of airline tickets, and sometimes hotel discounts to appear in these usually two-day events in a large venue.
Mike Foley, who in addition to his marketing duties at the PCC, also oversaw sales to FIT [i.e., “free and independent travelers” or customers who usually make their own travel arrangements] customers for a number of years, found this was a very economical way to contact thousands of them during such a show.
“The annual Los Angeles Travel Show in the Los Angeles Convention Center was huge,” Foley recalled. “For that one, we booked a double-booth, and took along seven or eight other PCC employees to help in the booth. The sales and marketing team already had display units we used to decorate the booth, plus we would usually take additional fresh flowers and greenery to boost the appeal.”
He added he often turned to other PCC departments to “recruit members of his team” who didn’t normally get picked to go on the road for the Center for some of these shows. For example, he remembers going with the late Pulefano Galea’i, Moana Crismon, Verdetta Kekuaokalani, and Fia (Mau) Sataraka; and Greta Tapusoa or Joe Berardy (who both spoke Spanish), and John Muaina. “I would also ask the Villages Office if there were any workers who were doing a particularly good job, they could spare for a few days. Everybody wanted to go.”
Depending on the travel show, Foley said he would also sometimes take a three-person performing group — musicians, a fire knife dancer and drummer, etc., who could be worked into the organizer’s entertainment schedule.
“All of us wore PCC outfits, and not only would we pass out brochures, we would also take the time to personally encourage the people to come to the Cultural Center on their next trip to Hawaii.”
“One of the popular things I would do,” Foley continued, “is get someone in the Samoan Village to cut me a couple of coconut palm fronds, tear the leaves into strips of three, then braid those into our coconut-leaf headbands.”
“Rather than just hand them out, however, several of us would braid each one slowly while we gave people who stopped by a PCC pitch,” he added. “They loved it, and I was thrilled afterward to see hundreds of people walking around these travel shows wearing PCC headbands. People would ask them, ‘Where did you get that?’ And they would say, ‘I got it from the Polynesian Cultural Center booth.’ It was a lot of work, but it was very rewarding.”
“I don’t know if this is still a marketing thing,” Foley said. “I doubt it, because most FIT customers now just go online to make their travel arrangements; but back then, for the cost of a couple of ads in newspapers or magazines, I could take a team of motivated PCC employees and put on some great travel shows across the country.”
The ‘REAL’ Promo Team:
Aunty Ellen Gay: Ellen Gay Kekuaokalani Dela Rosa, a real niece of Aunty Sally Moanikeala Wood Nalua’i, the Center’s original Hawaiian kumu hula, was still a sophomore at Kamehameha Kapālama in 1967 when she got a call from her aunt to join the Center’s Hawaiian hula section. (Her older sister, Aunty Sunday Kekuaokalani Mariteragi, was already one of the Center’s original hula dancers who had been helping their aunt as an alaka’i or hula leader from the beginning.
Over the next few years, Ellen Gay worked out the logistics, entered and graduated from Church College of Hawaii in physical education in 1973 (the year before CCH was renamed BYU–Hawaii), also worked as the Guides department secretary and Maintenance dispatcher, and served a Latter-day Saint mission in South Dakota, working principally among Native Americans.
Back home in Hawaii, she taught one year of intermediate school, then got the call again from Aunty Sally to come back to the Center to take her sister’s place as alaka’i. (Aunty Sunday had moved on to Kahuku High, plus was kumu hula for her own keiki hula hālau in Laie and later launched the ongoing Moanikeala Hula Festival as a special annual event at the Center, which honors Aunty Sally.)
“My first full-time job with the Center was in 1974,” Gay said in an earlier interview. Even so, she admitted she wasn’t thinking in those days of spending the rest of her working-life at the Center, or even of being heavily involved with Hawaiian culture.
“I wanted to teach young people,” Aunty Gay said; but she ultimately realized she fulfilled that desire by training, developing and overseeing several thousand talented PCC Theater Department performers over the next four-plus decades.
Managing the Promo Team: That number included members of the Center’s Promo Team, which was initially organized in the mid-1980s, starting when then-Theater manager (the late) Jack Uale asked Aunty Ellen Gay to become its first and as it turned out, only manager until she retired in 2016 with over 40 years of experience at the Center.
“Prior to that, Sales and Marketing would just ask the Villages for whoever they needed, whenever and wherever they needed to go,” said Ellen Gay. As the new Promo Team manager, she quickly set up standards, held auditions, and worked with “our instructors and cultural specialists. We wanted to make sure they had a say, and if we were going to take entertainment off the grounds, then let’s make sure we’ve got the right people, representing the right things in our cultures.”
She also soon discovered managing the team included a lot of logistics. “For example, we had to do cost-benefit analyses and make sure we paid for travel, food, salaries and per diem (travel expenses). Depending on where we went, some people also needed passports, and some had to arrange for visas.”
Domestic and international promotions: Ellen Gay noted the Center was still doing promotions in Waikiki and on local military bases, greeting Navy ships, plus traveling off-island. Some of the appearances were done in conjunction with WSO sales account executives, who accompanied the teams; “and some teams only included, maybe three dancers and two musicians. I ‘guesstimate’ in the years to come we put on hundreds of promotions, with maybe about 40 percent of them international appearances.”
“At one time, we were going to Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia,” she continued. “We went to China and particularly Japan, time and time again; and we’ve been to Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Poland. We’ve also been to Ecuador in South America and Panama,” and other places.
Promo Team member experiences: It’s easy for some to think being a Promo Team member and traveling around the world for the Polynesian Cultural Center was glamorous, but as many people who travel a lot as part of their work can confirm, they were not on vacation.
For example, Milton Kaka, a New Zealand Māori who first came to Laie in 1981 with his parents, joined the Promo Team as a musician in 1991. “When I first joined, we went to Europe a lot,” he said. “I’d never been there, so those promos were exciting. But as time went on, we traveled to Asia a lot more than any other place besides the U.S. mainland.”
“I really like Japan,” he continued. “The people are nice, the food was good, and we made a lot of good relationships, too. Our hosts, especially in Japan, and Asia, were always right on it. As far as the technical stuff with sound, they were particular. When we were doing a show for them, they made sure everything was set the day before. We just did plugins, and only had to take instruments, basically.”
On the personal side, however, Kaka admitted, “Traveling was hard for my wife when I first started. I was still young, and we had young kids.” He added that his perspective became more balanced when the team also started doing more Church-related activities, such as devotionals and musical firesides in their various destinations.
Ray Magalei, senior director of Theater, recalled he was “very excited when I got asked to join the Promo Team, partially because I was actually new to dancing,” but he came up to speed quickly.
In addition to traveling and working on the team with Shonna TeNgaio, who he eventually married, Magalei remembers the great camaraderie he enjoyed with other team members, including Bil Keni, David Tiave, Nephi Setoki, Jon Raymond Mariteragi, Bill Tenney, Roy Evans, Cathy Teriipaia, Della Wirihana, Bobbie Crowell, and of course, Ellen Gay Dela Rosa, the team manager. “She also sometimes sang with the musicians, Dallin and the late Tia Muti, and Milton Kaka,” he said.
On the lighter side, Magalei also remembers some team members used part of their per diem before leaving Hawaii. “Cathy and Bobbie used to always buy snacks before a trip, like Spam™ or Vienna Sausages™ when we were going to countries they’d been to before, but knew they didn’t like all their food. They would also take some sort of crackers, and they always had good food.”
“So, when we were hungry after a promo, or late at night after we had dinner, we knew their room had food,” Magalei continued. “They were always so kind and generous with all of us, even though they were probably thinking, ‘Next time, spend your own per diem.’”
He added one promo he particularly liked took the team to Germany with industry and government leaders such as Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano and Mufi Hannemann, who was then-director of the State Department of Business and Economic Development.
“We did promos in five cities, and the following morning we would drive to the next location on a very nice motorcoach. We got to see the country, and we also stopped over to do promos in Zurich, Switzerland, and London, England, on the way home.”
Nephi Setoki — who started as a night show dancer-student in 1990 “at the tail end of This is Polynesia, and we were rehearsing for Mana!” — is now the Center’s eCommerce Manager, but in 1996 he joined the Promo Team when “we had to audition.”
He remembers traveling to China, Thailand, Poland, Sweden, Ecuador, Panama, and more. “But one of the downsides,” he said, “we didn’t usually see the places because we got up in the morning, had prayer and coordination meetings, and we were off to work. We would often come back late, have dinner, and go to sleep. We probably had one day for sightseeing — normally the day we got there.”
Food could also be different, Setoki recalled, “even in places we thought we knew. In China, for example, they didn’t know what ‘fried rice’ was, and somebody at the next table in a restaurant ordered snake. It was wiggling around. Very interesting.”
But unlike Kaka, Setoki remembers when he first joined the team, his future wife — Roberta Lang — was also a promo dancer; and later she and their kids would pick him up at the airport when he returned from promo trips.
Miracles happened, the Hong Kong “handover”: With such large, widespread events happening on behalf of the Polynesian Cultural Center, it should surprise no one that divine assistance played a key role.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable demonstrations of this happened on the rainy morning of July 1, 1997, when 20-plus members of the Polynesian Cultural Center Promo Team plus about 30 Institute of Religion students from Hong Kong had just arrived in two buses at a large stadium in nearby Kowloon.
The Promo Team came to Hong Kong a week earlier so they could train the local Institute students. All were fully costumed and ready to help put on a celebration that day marking the “hand over” or transfer of sovereignty from the former British colony to the People’s Republic of China.
“I understood there were at least 70 countries that were invited to be part of this celebration,” said Center Vice President of Human Resources John Muaina, who also oversaw the joint PCC/BYU–Hawaii Asian Executive Management training program in Laie and who had accompanied the promo team to Hong Kong. “The event was supposed to be humongous,” agreed Ellen Gay, “and we were also there representing the Church.”
Bill Hsu, a BYU–Hawaii alumnus then living in Hong Kong and serving in a Church Area public affairs calling, had arranged for both the Polynesian Cultural Center team and Institute students to participate in the historic occasion.
But “Uncle John,” as all the Chinese alumni called him, said when the buses arrived at the stadium, “we noticed it was quite empty. There were still other performing groups there, but it looked like they were leaving, and some had already left.”
After only a few minutes, “one of the Chinese officials came on the bus, and shared that they had tried to call us and tell us they were canceling the event,” Muaina said. “It took us all aback because of the time we had put in practicing, plus the effort for our team to travel from Hawaii. It was rather discouraging and disappointing.”
In the hands of the Lord: At that point, Muaina asked the group to join him in prayer, which he offered. Everyone knelt, and Muaina recalled mentioning they “were still grateful for the opportunity to come to represent You… and Father, we just leave it in Your hands. We will do whatever you want us to do.”
Muaina recalled they decided to wait, and about 15 minutes later some of the organizers were outside the bus, holding an excited discussion. “One of them came inside, and said, ‘We have decided to go on.’ Our kids were elated and humbled.”
As the only performing group left at that point, a couple of Chinese media celebrities led the Center/Institute team around the stadium. Muaina explained the TV cameras used close-ups and selective angles “as if we were stars surrounded by thousands of people. All of our kids felt the hand of the Lord, it was so incredible.”
“By the time we began to perform, the rain had stopped,” he continued, “and we were later told the broadcast had been seen by over 200 million people China.”
“I don’t know if I ever told this to anybody”: Ellen Gay said an even more ominous miracle of sorts occurred at the end of a promo to Bermuda in 2002. “We only had, I think, two dancers and two musicians, maybe three, for a trade show — and there was a hurricane coming. The organizers said to us, you guys need to leave as soon as possible, because this isn’t the place you want to be for a hurricane. We were really kind of afraid. We didn’t know if we could catch a flight off the island, or what.”
“By some miracle,” Ellen Gay continued, “our trade show group of travel agents and salespeople from different companies, so there were quite a few people who caught a flight off the island the next day. We didn’t want to spend any longer than we needed in Bermuda.”
“We flew to New York, and from New York, our team came home. The next morning, or maybe it was early that same morning at 3 a.m., I got a phone call telling me about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and the East Coast.”
“When people ask about miracles, I think of how we were originally supposed to have left Bermuda that day for New York.”
Helping host the DC diplomatic corps at Marriott Ranch: Asked what some of her “favorite” promos were, Ellen Gay quickly mentioned helping host the Washington DC foreign diplomatic corps to a Polynesian luau and activities at Bill Marriott Jr.’s ranch in nearby Maryland.
“I think one of the reasons I enjoyed that so much was we were working with BYU–Hawaii’s Napua Baker [Vice President of Communications, who was also on the Center board of directors] and Barbara Velasco with the LDS Philanthropies office in Laie. We also worked hand-in-hand, with our students in the forefront, to represent the Center and BYU–Hawaii,” Ellen Gay said. She added the Promo Team later made several presentations at the Washington DC Temple Visitors’ Center.
A lot of work, but “so much fun”: “Back in the early days, they called me the ‘Dragon Lady,’ because I made sure everyone kept the rules, but oh gosh, we also had so much fun,” said Ellen Gay, who is still on contract at the Center.
“One of the things I always tried to encourage was for the team to remain humble. Basically, we were just an extension of the Cultural Center. We were ambassadors of the Center and representatives of the Church.”
Promo Team discontinued during the pandemic: Asked about the future of the Promo Team, which was discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ellen Gay said she didn’t know what might happen, but added that the growth of social media has made it easier to accomplish some of the things the team did over the years.
“The Center always has a purpose,” she said. “It always has a mission as to why you’re here, and we really need to use our resources in ways they should be used.”
