'A place of miracles' Polynesian Cultural Center attracts millions
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LAIE, HAWAII
In the early 1960s, Kalo Mataele Soukop of Tonga traveled the Hawaiian island of Oahu with other dancers to promote a new project — the Polynesian Cultural Center.
The concept of the center was simple: Students from across the Pacific attending nearby Brigham Young University-Hawaii would work their way through college by sharing their island heritage with tourists.
But many were skeptical about the plan. "You people are crazy," she was told over and over again. "What makes you think the tourists will come to Laie?"
Sister Soukop's response was indicative of the faith and tenacity of early PCC founders. "We have leaders," she told the critics. "We know we will be successful one day. We won't give up."
Today as a member of the PCC board of directors, she has seen first hand the fruits of those early efforts.
To date, the center has attracted "not thousands or tens of thousands, but millions of people," said Von Orgill, Polynesian Cultural Center president, noting that the overall visitor count hit 35 million this year.
That, he added, was hardly conceivable when the center opened on Oct. 12, 1963 — a time when fewer than 1 million people visited all of Hawaii each year.
In addition to preserving the Pacific island cultures, the center has helped provide educational opportunities to student employees. More than 17,000 students have financed their studies at BYU-Hawaii by working at the PCC and the center has provided more than $175 million in financial support to BYU-Hawaii and its students, said Brother Orgill.
The cultural center "is a place of miracles," he said.
The PCC features pre-created villages that highlight customs of Samoa, Aotearoa (Maori New Zealand), Fiji, Hawaii, Marquesas, Tahiti, Tonga and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Visitors can also experience island food and participate in crafts and games.
The center "touches people with the spirit of aloha — which we know to be the spirit of the Lord," said Brother Orgill.
Many of the visitors also take advantage of the opportunity to visit the Laie Hawaii Temple Visitors Center. In fact, about 80 percent of those who tour the temple grounds and visitors center come from the PCC, said Brother Orgill. It is one way the center helps the Church "build bridges of friendship," he added.
In addition, he said, many students who work at the center and attend BYU-Hawaii get an education and return to their home nations as leaders.
"It is a touching thing to witness and an amazing thing to see day in and day out," said Brother Orgill. "Laie is a small community, on a small island in the middle of a big ocean. Yet the influence of this place is truly profound."
Cultural center has rich history
Following is a brief history of the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie, Hawaii
As early as 1844, Church missionaries were working among the Polynesians in Tahiti and surrounding islands.
Missionaries arrived in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in 1850. In 1865, the Church purchased a 6,000-acre plantation that encompasses all of Laie.
The Laie Hawaii Temple — dedicated on Thanksgiving Day 1919 — attracted more islanders from throughout the South Pacific.
In 1921, Laie had become very cosmopolitan — so much so that President David O. McKay, then a young Church leader on a world tour of Church missions, was deeply stirred as he watched school children of many races pledging allegiance to the American flag.
President McKay envisioned that a school of higher learning would be built in the small community to go along with the recently completed temple, making Laie the educational and spiritual center of the Church in the Pacific.
Beginning in 1955, labor missionaries built the Church College of Hawaii. At the groundbreaking ceremony for the college, President McKay predicted its students would literally influence millions of people around the world.
In 1974, the Church College became a branch campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Today, BYU-Hawaii is a four-year liberal arts school with about 2,400 undergraduate students.
The concept of the PCC was established in the late 1940s when Church members in Laie started a hukilau — a fishing festival with a luau feast and Polynesian entertainment — as a fund-raising event. Bus loads of visitors drove to Laie throughout the 1950s; and by the end of that decade, Polynesian students at the Church College of Hawaii had started up Polynesian Panorama — a production of authentic South Pacific island songs and dances. They eventually played to standing-room-only crowds in Waikiki.
In early 1962, President McKay authorized construction of the Polynesian Cultural Center.
More than 100 labor missionaries volunteered to help build the Polynesian Cultural Center's original 39 structures on a 12-acre site that had previously been planted in taro.
The Polynesian Cultural Center opened to the public on Oct. 12, 1963.
In the earliest years, Saturday was the only night villagers at the Polynesian Cultural Center could draw a big enough crowd to fill the 600-seat amphitheater. Following the tremendous boom in the Hawaii tourism industry, however, and promotional appearances at the Hollywood Bowl and on TV's Ed Sullivan Show, the center began to thrive. By the late 1960s, the amphitheater had been expanded to almost 1,300 seats.
A major expansion in 1975 relocated and enlarged the Hawaiian village and added a Marquesan tohua or ceremonial compound. The following year a new amphitheater, which now seats almost 2,800 guests, was opened and several other buildings were added to the grounds.
(Source: Polynesia Cultural Center, www.polynesia.com/early-history.html).
