2526A Makiki Heights Drive

This was George H. Kerr's address for about 26 years of his life in Hawaii. Out of curiosity, I googled it and was happy to find photographs of what used to be his apartment on the second floor of what's described elsewhere as an "'Old Hawaii' style home in a 'Tree Top' setting with private deck and ocean/Honolulu views." (My wife and I drove by the house years ago on a trip to Hawaii, but I never thought I'd get a look inside!) In case the websites or photos disappear, I'm going to copy them here, knowing that there's a chance that June Maeda Realty will ask me to take them down. (On the other hand, perhaps I'm helping them advertise this apartment!)

The house was built in 1934. I see from the description that the carpeting is new, but I imagine that the stove and the bathtub might have been there when Kerr lived there. It doesn't appear that this apartment has air conditioning, but perhaps the climate on Makiki Heights Drive is/was cool enough that a combination of fans and the large windows would suffice. 

In a letter from 1984, Kerr noted “the imminent loss of my apartment here which I have occupied for twenty-five years.” He had to leave after his landlord died. He moved to an apartment in Wilder House at 1114 Wilder Avenue, Honolulu, which I imagine was a challenging task, considering he was in his seventies at the time.

[Update, 8:12 p.m.] I was right about the last sentence. I just read that shortly after moving to his new apartment, he ended in the Emergency Room at the Queen's Medical Center and had to have surgery. (He doesn't say what kind of surgery.) He spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, it seems. A month later, he reported that he had lost 24 pounds "and apparently all my strength" since moving. He had to have someone help him organize his research materials because he didn't have the strength to do it himself.

Need some motivation

My course materials are "published" ahead of time--classes start Wednesday, although I don't need to meet with in-person students until Friday. I'm trying to spend as much time as possible before then working through some George Kerr correspondence as a contribution to a chapter on Kerr's later years. Lots of uplifting talk of his trials and tribulations with getting Licensed Revolution published; getting Asian art objects sold to keep body and soul together; dealing with aging and being robbed and becoming more and more cantankerous; trying to finish a book about Hawai'ian King Kalākaua, about whom Kerr was becoming less and less enamored the more he wrote about him (how well I know the feeling...). 

Speaking of King Kalākaua, I recently bought a copy of Tiffany Lani Ing's book, Reclaiming Kalākaua: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives on a Hawaiian Sovereign (2019), which promised a more sympathetic evaluation of the man than he has traditionally received. Kerr isn't cited in the book, but that is not surprising, considering that he never published his manuscript on Kalākaua. Ing's book relies more on Hawai'ian-language sources than many of the other books written about Kalākaua. Like the writers of these other books, Kerr did not have access to (i.e., couldn't read) the Hawai'ian language. 

For an introduction to Ing's book--by the author herself--you can watch this video (I need to watch it later because I need to get back to the Kerr correspondence now!):