In March 2023, my wife Mindy and I appeared before the Hawai‘i Historic Places Review Board, she in an orange mu‘umu‘u, me in a seafoam green aloha shirt, both bought at Liberty House in 1950 by her grandmother.

We and they wanted to prove that you don’t need to be rich, famous or well connected to get a historic designation.

We were an hour late—what townies know their way around Kapolei?—but were graciously forgiven by Alan Downer and other members of the group’s review board. Soon, a photo of our Hibiscus Drive home appeared on the screen. One of Mindy’s first remarks drew smiles: “This is the house of the kim chee king of Hawai‘i.” To which I added: “And the house that VD built.” As in venereal disease. Having read our application, William Chapman, dean of the University of Hawai‘i’s School of Architecture, shot me a bemused look. “Not really,” he said.

Photo: Diane Seo

OK, but not wrong, either—the first owner was the late Dr. Samuel Allison, the former president of the Hawai‘i Medical Association and, during World War II, the man in charge of STIs, as we now call them.

We settled in for an enjoyable conversation about our beloved Diamond Head home, after a four-year effort to have it listed on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places. The designation would earn us a bronze plaque for our gate, but more significantly, would cut our state property taxes to a low three-figures. Members of the review board, as well as the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation, already knew of our quest—we’d certainly pestered them enough. We and they wanted to prove that you don’t need to be rich, famous or well connected to get a historic designation.

A little history on the home. We returned to Honolulu from New York in 2009 to save the house, which Mindy’s grandparents, Lawrence and Mary Kang, bought in 1951. In 1965, Lawrence bought modest Halm’s Kim Chee and turned it into Hawai‘i’s premier brand. After they passed, it went to Mindy’s mother, Dolly Kang Won, and her five children. It took six years to find jobs that would land a jumbo mortgage to buy out Mindy’s four brothers.

Four years later, a bronze plaque showed up on the immaculate plantation bungalow of our neighbor, Ellen, Mindy’s childhood friend. “You need to get one of these,” her husband, Russell, said. Indeed, we did. We could barely cover the mortgage on journalist salaries and a tax hike was in the offing.

In January 2020, everything paused when a murderous recluse set off a blaze in our neighborhood. Seven houses were lost, including Ellen and Russell’s gem. Then came the pandemic. A year later, we resumed our mission after attending a Historic Hawai‘i Foundation seminar, where a National Park Service program manager told us that along with proving distinguished occupants and architecture, the NPS would look favorably on connections to underrepresented groups, especially Latinos and Asians.

Our house was built in 1929, possibly by a Swedish architect, of whom there was no record. Samuel Allison sold the house to Mindy’s grandparents 22 years later, turning away other offers, to ensure an Asian family would move into the formerly all-white Diamond Head Terrace. Lawrence and Mary took a gamble in a life that began on Kohala plantations, followed by work at Dole Pineapple, then ownership of a Hotel Street bar during the war. Five years after buying Halm’s from the original owner’s widow, Lawrence was considered the kim chee king of Hawai‘i in articles and a book by newspaper columnist Bob Krauss.

Further delving into our home’s origins, Mindy spent a week in the dusty Bureau of Conveyances tracking the house lot tract from King Lot, Kamehameha V, to Iona Pehu of Pālolo, to James Campbell, to Waterhouse Co. and finally in 1924 to builder Charles Ingvorsen—not Swedish, but a Danish immigrant whose houses grace our street and neighborhood. We learned ours is a rare stick Tudor, possibly the only one in Hawai‘i. A 65-page application lay ahead, along with two months of online glitches and fails, but Mindy is tenacious.

Our plaque went up Feb. 4, 2024, right down the street from Ellen and Russell’s beautiful new, old house. For Lawrence and Mary, the house was their gold medal; to honor them, we picked up the bronze.