Kailua Historical Society went through a bit of a rough patch during the pandemic years, and with the passing of some of our most dedicated board members, it has been a time of great change. Although the work of organizing the archives and writing booklets has continued uninterrupted over the pandemic years and beyond, the public programming ceased in 2021 and was dormant until 2024 when Robert Clancey spearheaded an excellent presentation in honor of Lanikai’s centennial. The program was televised on ʻŌlelo, and was well attended thanks also to the help given to Kailua Historical Society by the Lanikai Association. Since Kailua Historical Society reorganized in 2023/2024, it is slowly being restored back to a robust organization capable of organizing multiple public programs per year as well as stocking the Kailua Book at local retailers.
Kailua Historical Society has a few new things in the works. Among these, a new website. You may have noticed our prior URL, the dot org, is not working. Sadly, sometimes it can be hard to maintain control of a domain name during reorganization. We ran into some red tape which allowed the old hosting company to sell the URL off to web pirates. It’s not a unique situation unfortunately, but we are taking the opportunity to redesign and upgrade the website on the dot com domain instead.
Rest assured we are still very active. With the youngest board we have had in recent memory, we have to take it at the pace of volunteers who have full time jobs and school, but despite it, we are regularly stocking the shelves at UH Manoa (online book sales), and Bookends in Kailua (who handle both books and booklets in person), and we have some really cool plans for a couple of public programs in this calendar year.
You can learn about the upcoming events most efficiently by becoming a member of the Kailua Historical Society so that you will be on our e-mail mailing list. The next best way is to follow us on Facebook. Finally, you can check this site for new notifications of events. We are planning a summer meeting with a Kawainui Marsh presentation, and a “Then and Now” presentation later in the year, likely autumn 2025.