While many people in Koolauloa today recognize Fuatino “Tino” Tinei Suapaia Koahou, 84, as a guitar-playing kupuna with the Nani Laie Serenaders — the volunteer musical group who perform at funerals, weddings, birthday parties and other events in the community — only old-timers will remember that at one time the lively lady was a well-known Samoan fireknife dancer.

Tino was only 18 when she left her home in Sauniatu, Western Samoa, and boarded the old Matson liner Mariposa for the trip to Honolulu. She and her little nephew, who years later would be known as Al Harrington, arrived on the Wednesday before Pearl Harbor was bombed.

She moved in for the next five or six years with her uncle, Kipeni Su’a, who owned a home in Pacific Heights. “I went to McKinley High School for a little while, and I also worked for the government, giving out uniforms right in town.”

She recalled she met her first husband when she went to business training school, but the couple divorced. Later she married Jacob Koahou and lived close to Queen’s Hospital. “He was a truck driver for the government, and passed away in ‘69. I never married again,” she said.

Early on, she would visit her äiga [family] in Laie. “I loved it here,” she recalled. “The people were so nice. When we got together, the spirit was different than now. Today, everything’s so rushed.”

“I helped a little at the Hukilau [in Laie]. That was a wonderful time with all my old friends that I still remember — Margie Vaita’i and my cousin, Vendy Alapa. I was always a dancer.”

When the Polynesian Cultural Center first opened in 1963, Tino became a supervisor for the tour guides, “and then they asked me to help start the canoe pageant where I was a guitar player. I did that for about five years, and then I went to San Francisco and worked all over in entertainment.”

“I signed a contract for two years to work at Clear Lake [about a three-hour drive from San Francisco], and they gave me a beautiful apartment. It was very good pay, but I was lonely,” Tino said. She also performed at the New York World’s Fair for several months in 1965 as a fire knife dancer. “I didn’t want to go, but they paid me big money. I had a partner, Kimo Wong from Honolulu, who said he didn’t want to go dance unless you folks hire Tino, too. We had a routine.”

In her early years she became associated with the Princess Abigail Kekaulike Kawanakoa’s family, and stayed for a while at their beach estate in Punalu’u. I used to go spear fishing all the time, and learned from an old Hawaiian lady how to catch he’e [octopus]. I would get four, five or six a day. I knew exactly where the he’e were, because she showed me how.”

“I’m still working for her. She’s the best boss in the world, but she won’t release me,” continued Tino, who has been living for the past 20 years in Kawanakoa’s house next to the Episcopal church in Mälaekahana with her companion, Noa Au.

Au and her friends would come listen to Tino and others play music, “and they were so sweet,” Tino recalled. “She kept coming, and so I said, Noa, you want to come live with me?” After getting her parents’ permission, Au moved in with Tino and the two have been friends ever since, dividing the yard work at their house. “She’s taken good care of me for more than 30 years. She’s a wonderful person, and we like to go holoholo all over. We like to eat breakfast, too, at Hukilau Café.”

Aunty Tino has completed four LDS missions — three in the temple in Sämoa — and most recently doing reactivation work with Walter Wong. She also frequently spends early morning hours in the Laie Temple.

“My mother and father made us promise that we would go on a mission. That stuck in my mind all that time, so when my husband died, that’s what I did.”

In fact, it was her work at the temple and singing for the missionaries here that led her to join the Nani Laie Serenaders: Martha [Kalama], she told me I should start it, but I told her no, so she started the group and I’m still singing with them. We don’t get paid, we just donate our time.”

“I’m very happy with my life here,” she said. “I loved the old Hawaiian people in Laie back then. They were very kind and helpful. They had great respect and love, and would do anything for you. Tino, they’d call. You better come eat. We just opened the imu.”

To the young generation, Aunty Tino advised, “Take care of yourselves and your families. Love your children and raise them in a better life.”

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