UH Hilo Press Release
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Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Contact: Paula Thomas, (808) 933-3112
For Immediate Release
UH Hilo honors its first leader
(L-R) Mrs. Cookie Roberson (daughter of Frank T. Inouye), Emeritus Chancellor Ed Kormondy, Chancellor Rose Tseng, Allan A. Inouye, M.D. (son of Frank T. Inouye) pose under Inouye’s memorial plaque.
University of Hawai`i at Hilo officials last Friday paid tribute to the University's first director during a special ceremony at the new University Classroom Building (UCB) Ho`oulu Terrace.
UH Hilo Chancellor Rose Tseng was joined by Emeritus Chancellor Edward Kormondy and the son and daughter of the late Dr. Frank T. Inouye at the unveiling of a bronze plaque that memorializes Inouye’s accomplishments.
Inouye served from 1952 to 1957 as director of what was then known as the University of Hawai`i-Hilo Branch. At the time of his hire, the University had just emerged from its meager status as a UH Extension Division. Situated in Lyman Hall at the old Hilo Boarding School, UH-HB consisted of 11 rooms, six faculty and 82 students.
Inouye immediately began to bring about the expansion of UH-HB, and within his first year was able to secure a $385,000 appropriation for a new campus. By the time Inouye left, his vision had materialized on a 30-acre site on Lanikaula Street with a gymnasium, a cafeteria, a library and a College Hall housing 11 classrooms- all connected by covered walkways serving 155 students.
"We have much to be grateful for and much to be proud of," said Tseng. "And without the visionary leadership of Frank Inouye we might be a different institution today."
Inouye's accomplishments are detailed in the publication The University of Hawai`i-Hilo A College in the Making, which he was writing at the time of his death in 1995. The book was completed and subsequently published in 2001, thanks in large part to Kormondy who served as UH Hilo chancellor from 1986 to 1993.
"Frank envisioned UH-HB as one symbolic issue around which the entire spectrum of Hilo life could rally and would serve as a new and promising beginning for the community, in a new direction -- academic development," Kormondy said.
"With such a campus, the prospects for UH Hilo's future according to Frank, were boundless - a broadened curriculum, perhaps including agriculture and science, a full four-year institution granting degrees, eventually even a major university competing with UH Manoa and halting the outflow of the Big Island’s brightest and most ambitious youngsters."
Kormondy, who donated the plaque, said he wished Inouye could see what he began in 1955 as UH Hilo has grown into a 3,300- student campus with 35 baccalaureate degree granting programs, a recently approved fifth masters program, a 425-acre science and technology park and high national rankings.
"Frank Inouye did do good for the University of Hawai`i-Hilo Branch 50 years ago, and his work was largely forgotten as the University went about growing and maturing as its administrators, faculty, staff, and students came and went," Kormondy said. "But, now we do remember that good work and future generations of faculty, staff, and students will also be reminded."
Inouye's historic role in UH Hilo's evolution is also commemorated through the Frank T. Inouye Scholarship Fund, which Kormondy helped establish through the UH Foundation. The scholarship is designated for students who are residents of the Big Island and majoring in History, Political Science or Economics.
Inouye's son, Allan, said UH Hilo today bears little resemblance to the campus he remembers when his family left Hilo in 1957.
"There was only a main administration building and three other buildings attached to it and you couldn't possibly get lost there," Inouye said. "But when I came back today I must have gotten lost about a half a dozen times."
Inouye's daughter Cookie Roberson said her father would have been proud of what the faculty, staff and administration of UH Hilo have accomplished since his time.
"He may have set the groundwork, but it took a wonderful group of very dedicated, loyal, incredible people here in Hilo to make sure that foundation continued, and that legacy continued," Roberson said. "I am quite overwhelmed at what you have accomplished here in Hilo."
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