the wisdom of liliuokalani AUTHOR Luisa Kay Rayes
While living in Northeast Ohio with my grandfather as a young girl, my piano teacher was Mrs. Schaefer. Having had difficulty finding piano teachers in the area, we were very fortunate when she took me on as a student at my grandfather’s request. After only my first lesson, she expressed her desire to send me to her alma mater—Oberlin. Being young and impressionable, I had no idea that Oberlin was one of the top music conservatories in the world. When we moved back to Alabama, I continued studying the piano, but the closest I would ever come to studying at Oberlin was through taking private lessons at their community music school. Nonetheless, as a young girl, I found myself enchanted by Mrs. Schaefer’s stories about how the adopted daughter of the Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani went to Oberlin. Being very proud of that fact, Mrs. Shaeffer mentioned it frequently as I learned how to play “Aloha Oe” out of the “Let Us Have Music for Piano” book that she taught me out of. Leaving me entranced as a young girl by the notion of such an accomplished composer Queen.
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Later, as my curiosity about this musical regent led me to learn more about her life, I found to my horror that the descendants of some New England missionaries became prominent businessmen on the Hawaiian islands. And when smallpox that was brought over by Chinese laborers struck the islands affected the native Hawaiian population, Queen Liliuokalani demanded that the ports be closed and those affected be quarantined. Being the dutiful queen that she was, she was looking out for her people. However, the businessmen felt affronted as with the ports closed, their businesses were suffering. Their resentment to such circumstances quickly helped fuel their movement to force her abdication. “How could anyone possibly be so cruel?” was my first thought when I learned the story. Surely those businessmen were unnaturally greedy and such disregard for the lives of others was an isolated event in world history. Today’s quarantine due to the COVID19 virus has taught me otherwise.
