Father Du Teil would be proud

30 years after Father Claude Du Teil began his peanut butter ministry for the homeless, his widow Bert visits the IHS and executive director Connie Mitchell

Wednesday - July 16, 2008
By Chad Pata
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ert Du Teil, surrounded from top left by the cast of the homeless
Bert Du Teil, surrounded from top left by the cast of the homeless musical Totally Dually, Wendy Yip, Michael Ullman, Gloria Moe, Iwalani Miles, Chastity Ki, Tino Veltri, Yvette Kahuli, David Wire, Jackie Lee, Lali Lai-Hipp and Connie Mitchell

FATHER CLAUDE DU TEIL CHANGED THE WAY HAWAII DEALT WITH THE HOMELESS, AND 30 YEARS LATER THE INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN SERVICES CARRIES ON HIS LEGACY

“Well, I’m a Kailua person ‘cause I live in Kailua; a street person is a street person ‘cause he lives on the street.” - Claude Du Teil, founder of IHS, in a 1983 television interview

It was this type of pragmatic thinking in 1978 that allowed Father Du Teil to tackle a problem that no else in Hawaii wanted to touch: homelessness.

He did not see them as sots, hobos, streeties, bums or winos. They were just people, and no one was giving them a hand.

He tried to help them through the Salvation Army’s Alcohol Services Center; it seemed a logical choice, as he was a recovering alcoholic himself. Unfortunately, it was funded by the federal government and thereby had mandates to only help those afflicted with alcoholism.

“He was really frustrated, because most of the people had so many problems other than alcoholism, but helping with their alcohol problem was all he was supposed to do,” remembers Roberta “Bert” Du Teil, his wife of 50 years.


Though an Episcopal priest, he lived by a different sort of Golden Rule, the Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences: He who has the gold makes the rules.

So he struck out on his own, beholden to no one but his God and took up what became known as the Peanut Butter Ministry. He set up shop in a rundown building at 1128 Smith St.

It was in an area of Chinatown where the homeless had been squatting for years in abandoned buildings. The city had recently rousted them at the owners’ behest and they now were sleeping in the alleyways and storefronts of Chinatown and beneath the trees in A’ala Park.

To serve the homeless, Father Claude Du Teil had to break the law<
To serve the homeless, Father Claude Du Teil had to break the law<

“We had no refrigeration so we had to stick with coffee and peanut butter sandwiches,” says Bert, who moved to Hawaii with Claude in 1949. “The sink was so small we had to fill up the coffee pot one cup at a time and that took a while.”

Despite the legend of Father Du Teil wandering the streets of Chinatown handing out his famous sandwiches, it simply isn’t true, according to Bert. Everything happened out of the shop on Smith Street, and the first day they opened their doors, on the occasion of his 58th birthday, four men stopped by for a meal.

Thus began IHS, the Institute for Human Services, a name Du Teil lifted from a friend of his because it sounded innocuous to the non-believer and would not scare them away. It also held the significance of the acronym spelling out Jesus’ name in Greek.

While he was the autonomous leader of his crusade, he was still bound by draconian laws the state had that were construed to prevent him from providing aid. There were limits on from whom he could receive food donations, laws that prevented him from providing shelter for the homeless. At one point, the courts went so far as to make providing blankets to the poor a one-way ticket to jail for those receiving the aid.

A judge ruled that anyone sleeping in the park under a blanket was camping illegally without a permit, but anyone sleeping under an overcoat was just sleeping in the park.

“You have never seen as many overcoats as we gave out after that ruling!” laughs Bert, remembering Claude distributing those coats to any who wanted them.


As word of the institute’s services grew, the Du Teils had to come up with more and more ways to provide food for the needy. Churches began to bring in hot meals on certain days, but they still had to fill in the other days, so Claude began thinking way out of the box.

Wedding cakes - you only eat a quarter of it anyway; bring it by on your way to your honeymoon. You sell pizza by the slice; they’ll take the leftovers before you toss it. Ritzy hotels that replace their half used toilet paper rolls every day with full ones, you know what to do.

But now that food was pouring in, you need people to serve it, so Du Teil would recruit tourist volunteers from his Waikiki Chapel to come dole out grub to the destitute while on their dream vacation.

Much like those they served, the IHS moved a lot, everywhere from the Tenney Theatre at St. Andrew’s Cathedral to a former bathhouse on Beretania Street. (“At least there we had lots of showers for the homeless,” says Bert with a smile.)

It was there on Beretania in 1983 the mission began to change. A regular patron of theirs was beaten up in A’ala Park, they took him to the hospital. After the doctors released him, Claude did not want to put

 

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