This story is made possible with the support of AARP
By Yiming Fu, Report for America corps member
Mikey Burke of Lahaina brought a box of tissues to the testifier stand and immediately turned around. She faced her back to the cameras as her body shook and she burst into tears.
Burke was there to speak about one of Lahaina’s most beloved community members.
Maui County passed a ceremonial resolution in the Wailuku council chambers Friday morning to honor the legacy of the late Lawrence Cabanilla, 81.
Burke knew Cabanilla all her life as the owner of Lahaina’s Cabanilla Shell gas station. It was a landmark and rhythm of daily life in Lahaina, Burke said, and she was always excited to go with her mom to the full-service pumps and watch handsome men pump gas.
“It was such a small thing, but it’s one of those memories that anchors you to a place. To a time when Lahaina felt whole and familiar.”
Cabanilla is Filipino-Japanese and grew up in Lahaina’s sugar plantations in the 1940’s, watching the town turn from a sugar economy to today’s tourism economy.
At 14, Cabanilla started working as a gas station night manager and started his first business repairing his teachers’ cars at Lahainaluna High School. He opened and operated Cabanilla Lahaina Shell for 27 years before opening Cabanilla Body and Fender in 1999.
Cabanilla spent his retirement gardening, farming, landscaping and raising goats. He has more than 80 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren who make the Lahaina community proud.
After the Lahaina fires, Cabanilla moved from hotel to hotel.
Burke said she saw Uncle Lawrence at every county and community meeting as an outspoken voice for Lahaina’s fire recovery.
“The conversation wasn’t complete until Uncle Lawrence spoke,” Burke said. “He was the elder in the room. The one everyone paused for. The one whose mana’o carried weight, not because it demanded attention but because it deserved it. You could feel it, the collective breath being held until he offered his wisdom. And when he did it grounded us. It slowed the chaos. It reminded me of who we were and who we still needed to be.”
Burke cherishes Cabanilla’s warm presence, gentleness in the face of chaos and hugs that would always regulate the room.
Burke and Cabanilla grew closer after the fires, supporting each other in their recoveries. She holds one piece of Cabanilla’s advice dear to her heart — “The world is always saying we need to be strong like an oak tree. We need to be strong like bamboo because bamboo bends under the most impossible pressure but it does not break.”
Mahina Martin, Maui County’s communications director, said Cabanilla was a familiar and consistent attendee of county meetings and helped set the tone of respect for everyone to learn from.
At every county recovery meeting, Cabanilla would open with a prayer.
“He once reminded me that we were placed here by God for a period of time,” Martin said. “And it’s up to us to choose how to use that time.”
Martin said Cabanilla brought out the best in many and was an example of the simplicity of gratitude, hard work, strong values and faith.
John Smith, who works for Maui County’s office of recovery, said Cabanilla’s prayers before public meetings gave him strength.
He thanked Cabanilla for his commitment to Lahaina and said few people have impacted his life as much as Uncle Lawrence.
Hara, the executive director of Lahaina’s Jodo Mission, said Cabanilla is “the heart of Lahaina.”
His family set up the Lahaina Jodo Mission’s Obon dance every year for the last thirty years, a two-month process that involves hanging lanterns, lights and moving the yagura.
Kekoa Mowat, one of Cabanilla’s son-in-laws, knew Lawrence Cabanilla since he was 15. He lost his own father 20 years ago, and said losing Cabanilla is a kind of sadness no one should have to go through twice.
Mowat said Cabanilla cared for everyone and embodied the true meaning of kupuna.
“He did everything right, and he taught people how to do things right. He listened to both sides and made sure he understood the conversation and understood the conflict. He just wanted to make sure that everyone was respectful to everyone else, no matter what the outcome was,” Mowat said. “We are one county and one family.”
Lawrence and his wife, Becky Cabanilla, rebuilt their home after the Lahaina fires and moved back to Lahaina in July, one of the first in their neighborhood to return. Lawrence got sick three months later.
Becky Cabanilla said they lived a long, happy and eventful life together.
In the sadness, there’s also hope.
“He knew I would be okay because we got back home,” she said.
Lawrence Cabanilla planted lilikoi and papaya trees on his property before he got sick.
A few months later, the plants are now bearing fragrant fruit.
Registration is closed for Common Ground: Building Together conference and gala award banquet in San Francisco on January 24. A shoutout to our planning committee: Jane Chin, Frank Mah, Jeannie Young, Akemi Tamanaha, Nathan Soohoo, Mark Young, Dave Liu, and Yiming Fu.
We are published by the non-profit Asian American Media Inc and supported by our readers along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AARP, The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, The Asian American Foundation & Koo and Patricia Yuen of the Yuen Foundation.
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