by Dan Barry
Hawaii effectively liberated Kalaupapa by abolishing its isolation laws in 1969—more than 20 years after the development of medicine to control and cure the disease. Earlier this year, the state’s Legislature formally apologized to the patients and their families for “any restrictions that caused them undue pain as the result of government policies surrounding leprosy.”
Today, just 24 patients are left: 24 people who experienced the counterintuitive twinning of loneliness and community, of all that dying and all that living. Here, you may have grieved over the forced surrender of your newborn; you may also have rejoiced in finding a life partner who understood.
Ten live off-island, including eight in a hospital in Honolulu, 53 miles away. The rest live in Kalaupapa, now a national historical park with restrictions befitting its almost sacred nature. When asked why he stays, Boogie provides an answer so easy it’s complicated:
“This is my home.”
At 67, he is among the youngest patients, silver-haired and weather-beaten, quick to shake hands. When he was a young boy, a rosy spot appeared on his cheek, and his parents had no choice but to take him to a special hospital outside Honolulu. “When my parents left me,” he says, “that is when I crossed the line.”
Boogie moved nearly 50 years ago to Kalaupapa, where three siblings are now buried, including a sister who died at age 12. Although he has been off-island many times, visiting the mainland, shopping in Honolulu, his identity is here, where he has married twice and done everything from operate the theater’s projector to preside over the Lions Club.
He is also on the board of Ka’Ohana O Kalaupapa, an organization that advocates for patients and the preservation of the settlement, which was established in 1866 amid growing panic about leprosy’s spread. We must remember the story of this place, he says, a story that began with the sorrowful arrival of nine men and three women.
His dust-covered van pulls up to the gas station, where his wife, Ivy, 72, aims a hose’s lazy spray on the windshield. As a Kalaupapa patient, she has known both liberation’s joy, with trips to the mainland and Europe, and confinement’s anguish: Her two children from a previous marriage were taken away immediately after birth because that was the law.
Husband and wife of more than 30 years gaze at each other through the distortion of running water on glass. Then he continues on, past the post office, past the wharf where, once every summer, a barge pulls up with building supplies, furniture and the occasional new car. “Christmas in July,” they call it.
He turns onto a gravel stretch called Damien Road, past the overgrown spot where the famous patient Olivia Breitha—“Even if my skin is insensitive,” she once wrote, “my heart and soul are not”—ran a chicken farm with her husband, John; past a tree-shrouded cemetery, where the rub of time has made tombstone almost indistinguishable from rock.
Farther on, Boogie points into a blur of dense green. “The picture of Damien, where he was kneeling down,” he says, recalling a famous image. “It was here.”
He reveres Father Damien, the strapping, strong-minded Roman Catholic missionary who came in 1873 to give hope and dignity to a place often called a “living tomb.” With the help of patients, the priest improved St. Philomena Church, built houses, planted trees, created a water system, established a choir, nursed the living and gave proper burial to the dead.
After he contracted leprosy, Father Damien wrote that he was now “the happiest missionary in the world.” He died in 1889 at age 49, and was buried a few yards from an open field that is believed to contain as many as 2,000 unmarked graves.
Father Damien’s canonization is expected to take place late next year, and Boogie and Ivy plan to be there in Rome. For now, Boogie honors the man often called, simply, Damien, by pausing awhile at the priest’s grave, hands clasped, head bowed.
The noon sun rises above Kalaupapa’s lush solitude. Tourists, maybe two dozen in all, have traveled by mule down the cliff from “topside” Molokai, and are now lunching quietly in a grassy field. Boogie remembers the Boy Scout camp that was near here; gone now. He greets a couple of the tourists and moves on.
Toward day’s end, a stop is made at the care facility where there reside some patients who remember when visitors were required to don gowns and have police escorts. When patients lived in a swirl of don’t touch this, don’t go there. When there were dances, and musical shows, and lei-making contests, and extremely competitive softball games with bats especially adapted for hands that could no longer grip.
In one room, Makia Malo, a gifted storyteller of 74, sits in a wheelchair, sunglasses covering his compromised eyes. He so vividly recalls the morning he was sent as a boy to Kalaupapa that you share the child’s excitement about boarding an airplane for the first time, even though you know the dreaded reason for the trip. In another room, Henry Nalaielua, 84, who wrote a memoir of his rich life in Kalaupapa, talks about the black-and-white photograph in his book, of a boy of 10, posed with hands across his chest to help document the state of his just-diagnosed disease. The boy glowers back at you from the harrowing past.
Father Damien’s grave
“I was scared and defiant,” that boy as man says. “Or maybe I just didn’t care to smile.” Who will tell the story of Kalaupapa after Henry has gone, and Makia and Ivy and Danny and Boogie? Boogie says he thinks about this all the time: “Every time one person dies, we get less and less.”
Still, he believes he has had a good life, with a loving wife and a remote paradise to call home. He prays daily to Father Damien. And when sea breezes stir the whispers in the trees, he listens.
Burlesque Days Again for the Feather Boa Crowd
BARABOO, WIS.—OCTOBER 2, 2009
In a modest hotel suite at the Ho-Chunk Casino, a few women from out of town gather for a reunion. Homemade brownies sit on the counter, along with a peach pie, some cheese curds, several cans of soda and a long, sleek bottle of cherry vodka—a perfect name, they joke, for a burlesque queen.
There is no Cherry Vodka in the room. But Nocturne is here. And La Savona. And Ann Pett. And the Irish Mist. And Bambi Jones, also known as Bambi Brooks, Joi Naymith, the Black Panther Girl, the Mona Lisa Girl, the Garter Girl, Evangeline the Oyster Girl—and, for a while there in New Orleans, “The Girl the Whole Town’s Talking About.”
La Savona
And Pat Flannery, just Pat Flannery, may also show up. Nearly 60 years ago she did her “How Do You Do?” routine at the old Moulin Rouge in Oakland, wearing dark opera gloves, a polka dot gown and a look that said, You naughty boy. By act’s end, only the look remained.
But Ms. Flannery might have to cancel her Baraboo appearance. She is 83 now, using a wheelchair and living in a nursing home about two hours north of here—though there is hopeful talk of an overnight furlough for the woman who once saucily sang to would-be suitors:
“How do you do? But now, How do you do?”
Either way, Ms. Flannery is present in some of the photographs splayed on a table. Here she is in a skimpy sailor’s outfit, saluting. And here is La Savona in midwrithe, during her signature Scheherazade routine. And here is Bambi in Miami, sharing drinks with Errol Flynn in the mid-1950s, and performing at a senior center in Connecticut just a few weeks ago, where she wowed them.
For that appearance she wore a pink Southern belle number that she proceeded to remove, slowly, before beginning a discourse on the history of burlesque. “I worked the walkers, and I worked the canes,” says Bambi, a limber 79.
Outside this hotel door, civilians plod about, playing the penny slots, shuffling toward the bargain buffet. What do they know of the old bump and grind? Of enthralling men through skin and suggestion—and then puncturing the moment with a bawdy one-liner?
Bambi shares a few of those lines, but you’ll have to catch her at the senior center to hear them; they cannot be repeated here. She also shares a basic burlesque technique. Imagine an apple to your left, an orange to your right, and a coffee bean in front of you. Now follow these
pelvic thrusts:
“Hit the apple, hit the orange and g-r-r-ind the coffee.
“Hit the apple, hit the orange and g-r-r-ind the coffee…” Where were we?
Oh, yes, we are in Room 1223 at the Ho-Chunk Casino in lovely Baraboo, where the days blur and the chitchat says this is no quilting bee:
“I had been kicking chorus in Cleveland… I worked with Champagne glasses… It took 10 guys to get the snake off of her. And I said, ‘So now I understand why you don’t work Massachusetts.’”
“That cheese curd is delicious,” Nocturne says. To which Bambi says, “Did you ever work Canada?”
Fifteen years ago, Tanayo, the Costa Rican Dream Girl, handed a worn address book filled with the stage names of lost friends to her civilian friend, Jane Briggeman. So began the Golden Days of Burlesque Historical Society, a nonprofit group dedicated to reuniting those who worked the circuit in the years before 1965: the strippers and dancers, the comics and straight men—the feather boa crowd.
The society had 235 members at its peak, many of whom helped Ms. Briggeman, 54, recover enough memories and photographs to write two books: “Burlesque: Legendary Stars of the Stage,” published in 2004, a year after Tanayo died, and “Burlesque: A Living History,” to be published this year. She continues the cause, in part by maintaining a newsletter with health updates, recent deaths and requests for help, as in:
“Lilli Marlene is looking for Luna, Goddess of the Spirit World.”
But the hook of time has reduced membership to about 135. A list of attendees from a reunion in 2006 includes the names of Lee Stuart, a great straight man; Sunny Dare, the Girl With the Blue Hair; and Carmela, the Sophia Loren of Burlesque. Gone, gone and gone.
As Ms. Briggeman says their names, La Savona, petite, elegant, and wearing a blond wig, sits with a magnifying glass, reading her newspaper notices and advertisements from the days when she was the Czech bombshell who escaped the Communists. (“She’s the Cinderella that upset European royalty! Now making her first Toledo appearance!”)
At some point a knock at the door disrupts the memories. Pat Flannery?
No. A lanky, white-haired man, carrying in some chairs. Says his name is Bones. Outside, civilians and buffet lines. Inside, cherry vodka, rich desserts and stories about tassel applications and acts with animals. “I worked with this little girl, and she had parakeets,” Nocturne remembers. “Parakeets in her purse.”
Nocturne, 79, who drove up from Texas with her husband, is alone in saying her burlesque days were her darkest. She found stripping to be a lucrative humiliation, and she detested the pressure to mix with customers so they would buy a club’s overpriced liquor.
But that is all behind her now, she says. Thirty years ago she found Jesus and has not had a drink since, “Praise God.” She has come to Baraboo to see old friends and to remember the one aspect of burlesque she adored, those glorious costumes.
Bambi, also 79, is Nocturne’s opposite: She left Holyoke, Mass., as a young woman and never looked back. Yes, some strippers would sabotage the outfits of their competitors, and yes, there was that abusive second husband, the one who forced her to flee. But one of burlesque’s many charms is its service as a kind of witness-protection program; for a few years, then, Bambi became Holly Simms. Of burlesque over all, she says, “I loved it.”
It is deep into the second day of the reunion now; time for a show. The coffee table has been moved aside, some chairs arranged. The Irish Mist will strut for a while, Bambi will grind that coffee bean, and a young burlesque star named Orchid Mei—who has been listening to the stories with undergraduate earnestness—will do an act that makes many in the room wish for 1955.
Another knock on the door. Is it Bones?
No: Pat Flannery. And what an entrance she makes: seated in a chariot of a wheelchair pushed by her elder daughter, Bekki Vallin, and wearing a pink sweatshirt, white socks that match her hair, and teal slip-on sneakers.
Her one-liners come out fast, most of them at her own expense. When she cannot remember the name of some Wisconsin town, she assumes a stage mentalist’s pose, with a hand against forehead, and intones, “The mind has left the body.”
Ms. Flannery watches the three women dance, one after another. She laughs at Bambi’s wisecracks. She admires the fluid grace of Orchid Mei. And when the show is over, she is wheeled to a place where she enjoys a cigarette while looking out upon some grass.
How do you do.
Seeking God’s Help for a Wounded Gulf
BON SECOUR, ALA.—JUNE 28, 2010
In a small white building along the baptizing Bon Secour River, a building that once housed a shrimp-net business, the congregation of the Fishermen Baptist Church gathered for another Sunday service, with the preacher presiding from a pulpit designed to look like a ship captain’s wheel.
After the singing of the opening hymn, “Ring the Bells of Heaven,” and the announcement that an engaged couple was now registered at Walmart, the preacher read aloud a proclamation from Gov. Bob Riley that declared this to be a “day of prayer”—a day of entreaties to address the ominous threat to the way of life just outside the church’s white doors.
Whereas, and whereas, and whereas, the proclamation read. People of Alabama, please pray for your fellow citizens, for other states hurt by this disaster, for all those who are responding. And pray “that a solution that stops the oil leak is completed soon.”
In other words, dear God, thank you for your blessings and guidance. And one other thing, dear God:
Help.
The governor’s words hung a moment in the fan-turned air. Then the preacher, Shawn Major, summoned the men of the church to the front to “ask God to do something special.”
Two dozen men, many of them wearing short-sleeve shirts in summery colors, knelt and sat with heads bowed and eyes closed, while a half-mile down the street, other men—and women—underwent training in the use of a more secular form of hope, the laying of boom.
The wall between church and state came a-tumbling down on Sunday, as elected leaders from the five states on the Gulf of Mexico issued proclamations declaring it to be a day of prayer. Although days of prayer are not uncommon here—Governor Riley declared one asking for rain to relieve a drought a few years ago—these proclamations conveyed the sense that at this late date, salvation from the spill all but requires divine intervention.
In the two months since the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion began a ceaseless leak of oil into the gulf, damaging the ecosystem and disrupting the economy, the efforts by mortals to stem the flow have failed. Robots and golf balls and even the massive capping dome all seem small in retrospect.
So, then, a supplementary method was attempted: coordinated prayer.
In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry encouraged Texans to ask God “for his merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis.” In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour declared that prayer “allows us an opportunity to reflect and to seek guidance, strength, comfort and inspiration from Almighty God.” In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal invoked the word “whereas” a dozen times—as well as the state bird, the brown pelican—but made no direct mention of God. In Florida, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp asked people to pray that God “would guide and direct our civil leaders and provide them with wisdom and divinely inspired solutions.”
The suggestion by government to beseech God for help—to petition a power higher than any elected official—rang out in churches and halls from Pensacola, Fla., to Galveston, Tex., as well as here, in Bon Secour, where Brother Harry prayed with head bowed.
The Fishermen Baptist Church has been in this village, whose name means safe harbor, since 1989. An anchor is planted in its front lawn. Its walls are adorned with paintings of nautical scenes. Its collection boxes are a miniature lighthouse and a treasure chest. The dock across the street is used for baptisms and fishing.
These are all reflections of the church’s founder and pastor, Wayne Mund, who grew up here. His father, grandfather and gre
at-grandfather were fishermen, and so was he, until the age of 21, when he dropped his nets and went off to Bible school.
Pastor Mund, 66, lanky and proud to call himself a Bible Baptist, works hard to incorporate his seafaring past into his mission. He sees the Bible, from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation, as a nautical book, and the sea as a mesmerizing draw. He will end conversation by warning that those who do not climb aboard God’s boat of salvation “will drown in a sea of sin and despair.”
And now the oily despair in the sea is affecting his small church, his community. Fewer envelopes are being slipped into the treasure chest and lighthouse at the back of the room because some of his 200 congregants can no longer afford to tithe. Fewer people are attending service because fishermen, who normally take Sundays off, are now working for BP to help clean up its goo, which is washing up in Gulf Shores and Mobile Bay.
“The sea, the sea, the sea,” Pastor Mund says. “It has to do with the sea.”
Pastor Mund expected to be out of town on Sunday, so he assigned an associate pastor, Mr. Major, to preside over the 10:30 service. Mr. Major is 46, stocky and more apt to smile than his boss when proselytizing. The spill affecting the river, the world, has been difficult for him to fathom, and he expects that the human toll will not be felt for another year.
Mr. Major spent Saturday with 70 men and women, all learning the proper way to lay boom. But now he was with 70 other men and women, all praying from nine wooden pews; all saying amen to his assertion that “We are still a Christian nation”; all nodding when he said that everyone knew “who ultimately will stop” the spill.
A missionary about to leave for Brazil was waiting to make a multimedia presentation, but first these kneeling men, led by Brother Harry—Harry Mund, a relative of the pastor’s—needed to finish their prayer.
