By Mary Lou Foy
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, April 16, 2007

Don Ho winked at me once.

It was back in the early days when he was becoming Hawaii's big star.

It was also back in the days when I was a young woman, a girl, really, and I had moved to Honolulu with a college friend. It was 1966, and we were two young women off exploring the world back when young ladies still had to secure their parents' permission before venturing off too far.

News of Ho's death from heart problems Saturday at the age of 76 took me back to those times in the islands when he was the center of the universe and I was one of a million star-struck fans. Gosh, he was gorgeous.

After Hawaii became a state, he was the nightlife attraction for millions. He worked the Waikiki scene from 1964 until last Thursday night when he got a standing ovation as he left the stage. His show was boozy and sexy, and tourists loved it. He was not just a star in Waikiki -- he appeared on national television, had a network series and toured the world.

My friend and I had been sorority sisters and college roommates. Our parents knew each other well. We left from Atlanta's airport on Delta to Los Angeles, then took Pan Am to Honolulu. She brought the hair dryer. I brought the iron. We wore heels and stockings and hats, and halfway there we removed our girdles. We never put them on again.

We knew no one in Hawaii. We were small-town Southern girls who had lived all our lives in one place, a place where everyone knew who we were and just what we were up to -- all the time.

But now we were on our own. And soon after landing in that island paradise -- and the paradise of our newfound freedom -- we were off hunting for jobs and housing. We quickly established both. And in no time, we discovered Waikiki nightlife and Don Ho.

He always admitted he wasn't much of a singer. He couldn't really play an instrument well (he sat in front of an organ) and he didn't write songs. But there was no doubting his star power.

"Tiny Bubbles" written by Leon Pober and, sung in English and Hawaiian, was Ho's signature song. But he also made famous the beautiful songs of Kui Lee, a young Hawaiian songwriter who died of cancer in 1966. Ho called Kui Lee the John Lennon of Hawaii, and sang all of his music, including "One Paddle, Two Paddle," "If I Had to Do It All Over Again" and "Days of My Youth." One of Lee's songs, "I'll Remember You," became popular on the mainland.

Before he found fame, Ho lived a regular life, attending Punahou High School with other native Hawaiians and serving in the Air Force. His parents owned a bar called Honey's -- named for his mother -- in Kaneohe, the leeward side of Oahu. After his military stint, he gathered up some friends for a band as a way to attract people to the family business. In no time, the lines were extending down the street.

In the four years I was in Hawaii, "Don Ho and the Aliis" at Duke Kahanamoku's in the International Market Place in downtown Waikiki was the island's biggest show.

If you were a pretty young girl without a date, the doorman might pick you to bop (yes, we bopped back then) down to the front to the reserved seating. Ho kept several tables right in front for the pretty young girls.

I remember the drinks being free, but I may be wrong about that. Once you got a seat at one of those tables, Ho would signal his approval. His signal was a wink.

I got the wink the first time I showed up. I floated for days. The wink also meant I could become a regular who could show up minutes before the late show and still have a seat. It was, I thought, what royalty must be like.

After the show, the regulars could go to Don Ho's apartment in the Hawaiian Village and hang out with him until the wee hours. The idea of it was exciting, and I had always intended to go. The view of Waikiki, I had heard from friends, was fabulous. But I never made it.

My job at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard started at 7 a.m., and I had not figured out how to nap before hitting the town. The few times my friends and I were invited, I ended up asleep in the car, completely missing all the fun.

Eventually, we tired of the late nights, we got boyfriends, and other young women took our places at the tables down front. But I kept my three mai tai glasses with the Don Ho and the Aliis logo until a few years ago when I gave them to the girlfriend who went to Hawaii with me. She and her husband still live on the Big Island, where they raised two daughters.

The day before I left Hawaii, I drove around Oahu one last time. I stopped at Hanauma Bay, a favorite spot of mine. There in the late-afternoon shadows after everyone else had left, Don Ho walked alone slowly in the surf. He seemed so solemn, so solitary, that I didn't dare speak to him.

I left the next day, off to a career and the demands of a lifetime of work -- its joys and frustrations, its relentless necessity and its sometimes dogged repetition.

Since then, I've often thought about how Don Ho sang "Tiny Bubbles" almost every night. And how he did it with such joy.

Now, when I think about that moment I saw him on the beach, I am glad I left him to his solitude.