(The late) Arthur Keawe Enos and Mildred “Millie” Ah Hee Enos enrolled at Church College of Hawaii in its inaugural 1955 class. After earning their respective associate degrees, then going on to BYU in Provo for bachelor’s degrees and teaching in California for a number of years, they returned to Laie to work, raise their family, and serve.
Both retired from teaching at Laie Elementary School after a combined total of almost 70 years, and they were always generous in serving the community and Church. For example, after retiring they served as senior missionaries at the Polynesian Cultural Center, and Aunty Milly dances as a kupuna in the night show. Unfortunately, Keawe — as nearly all of his contemporaries called him, or Mr. Enos as his 6th-grade students addressed him — died in a traffic accident near Laie in January 2014.
Millie recalled when she first arrived on the temporary CCH campus, “excitement was very high, so we didn’t even bother to focus on the number of people that were here.”
Originally from Maui, Keawe had been attending BYU in Provo when Church College started up, and perhaps because his parents became early dormitory and food service staff — indeed, “Mom” Enos was famous for feeding a generation of Church College students — Keawe probably came back to help as much as to study.
Dorms at Kakela, Clissold’s Beach, and Lanihuli: He recalled that almost all of the earliest CCH buildings were war surplus, and “we had the best dormitory at Kakela—all air-conditioned—no windows. Just a big giant screen that kept the mosquitoes out.”
“There was a girls' dormitory located at Clissold Beach that was called Laniloa, and then we had the big white house on the top of Lanihuli, which was a former mission home. That was called the Lanihuli Girls Dorm,” Millie added.
“We had two army trucks. I drove one and John Jensen drove the other,” Keawe continued. “I would take the boys from Kakela, and he would pick up the girls from Laniloa and bring them to campus. At lunchtime, we'd all get back on the truck and drive back to Kakela to eat. When we finished lunch, I'd drive those who had afternoon classes back to the campus and remain there until it was time to go after the last class. It was quite an experience.”
“It was like a big family in each dorm,” he said. “We, the students, were the children of the dorm parents, so we did the washing of dishes, but not necessarily the cooking. That rested upon the dorm parents, who received the menu from the main cook. We all had the same meal in all the dorms, except the boys always had a little extra.”
Diving for extra dinner: “After a class, we'd all be down in the ocean, swimming and diving. Whatever fish we caught, Mom [Enos] would cook. That would be the extra food we'd get other than what the girls would be eating if we didn't cook it ourselves on the outside barbecue,” he added.
Asked about their studies, Keawe replied, “I was previously in industrial arts at BYU in Provo, but when I met my wife, she was in education, so I switched to that, too. Most of the credits I brought from Provo wouldn’t go towards graduating with the first class.”
“We only needed one book because we shared it,” Millie said. “We even shared homework, so that was really convenient.” She added that her favorite teacher was Woody Deem. “He was the one who taught us Mandarin, not that I remember much. Nephi Georgi was another: He was challenging. So was Jerry Loveland: He was my boss. I worked for him for nearly the whole two years that I spent at Church College.”
She also fondly remembered Dr. Billie Hollingshead. “She was my advisor. She was also a person who did not want to do anything contrary to the campus rules or her rules because she would set you in your place, but I learned tremendously to organize my time, my schedule, and my life from her. You didn't dare be five or even one minute late to her class.”
“She would teach you to be punctual, and that's why I'm that way today. I got very upset when my husband was late, so I set the clocks — oh, I better not say it in front of him; too late — about fifteen minutes fast so we'd be where we have to be on time.”
Millie also recalled the first CCH students “had to set up the constitution for the school. We had a legislative body. That in itself was very interesting. We had the Associated Men and the Associated Women Club.”
“We had botany and science clubs that went along with the classes, and May Day programs,” she continued. “Our favorite activities were the treasure hunt and the Halloween Dance in the spooky house that was down in Kakela. It was a building that was no longer in use and looked very spooky. It got decorated to look like a haunted house, and we had our dances in there.”
Practicing basketball at Laie Park: “We also played a lot of sports,” said Keawe, who even as a kupuna participated in the Senior Olympics on the mainland. “We had a basketball team, but we didn't have a gym, so we practiced in Laie Park [which is still there, and the community uses it]. That was our basketball court.”
“CCH competed against Schofield (i.e., the U.S. Army Team) and the University of Hawaii JVs. There were other teams made up of different business-affiliated groups, and Brother Young was our coach. Brother Condie was our coach the second year.”
“Keawe and I got married in the Hawaii Temple the summer of the year we received our associate degree, figuring again it would be much more economical, much cheaper, to travel as a married couple to BYU and get housing. Again, we only needed to buy one set of books,” Millie said.
“I think it was Reuben D. Law who wrote in his memoirs that we were the first graduating students to marry in the temple,” Keawe added.
Asked what other values they learned at CCH, Millie answered, “For me, it was being appreciative of what we had. Most of us came from poor families the first year we attended. Our parents could hardly make tuition, but most of us received a $250 scholarship, and that paid for our tuition.”
“Coming from the country, we didn’t have much, so every little thing meant a whole lot to us. Especially knowing our parents sacrificed so much to be able to have the first child from the family attend a university: It taught me to be appreciative of people as well.”
Parents kept tabs on students: “When we first attended CCH, our mission president was Arthur Haycock,” Millie added. “Because he felt responsible for the students who came from the mission, he was always down here in Laie checking up on us; and when he would go to the different islands, you could be sure he reported to each parent who had someone here at Church College. So you see, I felt at that time that I couldn't mess up. I only had one chance, and I had to do good with it. My parents couldn't afford to have me repeat any years because I had more fun playing. My years in college were spent study, study, studying.”
“We came from a family that had to struggle a little bit, too,” Keawe said. “I had five sisters that attended BYU, three attending BYU [in] Provo at the same time I was here. Mom and Dad had to make some sacrifices to keep all of us in school. I was a little more fortunate because I was a veteran of the Korean War: My G.I. Bill was most helpful towards my education.”
The Enoses share their mana‘o: Asked what advice they would give to contemporary BYU–Hawaii graduates, Millie responded, “Go out and be the best you can be. You've received both spiritual training from the university as well as learned how to survive in our contemporary society. Modern technology can be to your advantage as well as to your disadvantage, so you need to discern using your spiritual knowledge of the right things to do, and then you'll be successful.”
Keawe’s advice: “They always said, ‘put your best foot forward.’ But there's more to graduating. In Hawaii, we always talk about the aloha spirit. With all the mixture of nationalities and cultures we have here, it really broadens the student’s understanding of people in general throughout the world.”
“Someone says, ‘I could live on the mainland, I could live anywhere.’ Yeah, but how can you do that when you don't have the ocean? It's not the ocean, it's the people. The secret is knowing the people you live around. And since you've been to Hawaii, mixed with all these different cultures and picked up a little bit of everything, put it all together and it comes out the aloha spirit. That's the key.”
“Most students go home, but they can't forget living in Laie,” Keawe continued. “It had such an impact on their minds, they just can't forget it. Alumni leave, but they still think of Laie. Laie is so choice. To us, there's no place like Laie; and wherever I go, I want to make it like Laie.”