Keiki Say It All With 1,000 Feet Of Silk

Carol Chang
Wednesday - May 10, 2006
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Whether or not they have the world’s longest lei, the children of Kama’aina Kids have set their own record by stretching their aloha to the top of a Waikiki hotel and into the heart of a New York City school.

The massive Lei Day project brought 1,000 feet of colorful silk plumeria and pikake blossoms together on May 1. Necks strained and cameras rolled as a crane lifted the entire flower chain on high to be draped over the 37-floor Radisson Waikiki Prince Kuhio Hotel.

“We have a whole packet of documentation that’s due to the Guinness Book
of World Records
by June 1,“said Kathy Hew, vice president of KK hotel and convention services. “It’s been a very interesting project, a lot of fun - and a very meaningful story.”


Key players in the story are KK’s Radisson site manager Jennifer Yoshiura, engineer Don Clifford (official measurer), Hew, 80 adults and 839 keiki from all 25 of KK’s Oahu after-school sites, Radisson staff and 180 fifth-graders from Public School #130 in New York’s Chinatown.

The NYC and Oahu keiki made 1,820 greeting cards for U.S. troops, special messages of aloha now entwined on the massive lei, which will be split into sections and displayed for deploying military at USO centers at Hickam and the Honolulu airport.


PS #130 was also involved in “Lei of Aloha,” when the Kailua-based Kama’aina Kids partnered with the local tourism industry to bring paper lei and messages of comfort on Oct. 24, 2001 to children in NYC, Virginia and Pennsylvania - at schools close to the terrorist crash sites of Sept. 11. The children were in kindergarten at the time.

Trade West Inc.sewed the 610 silk lei,which the KK team secured onto 60-pound test fishing line from Nanko’s, weaving the cards into the finished product. Hew said Barry Cutler of TV’s Cooking with Cutty is producing a video of the entire effort for film festival consideration.

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