Visitors from Canada explore the grounds of the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum on Thursday afternoon. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
Roslyn Lightfoot, director of the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum, has spent the past year collecting every sugar-related newspaper article, photograph and object she can get her hands on.
But after a year full of farewells and media attention on Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., Lightfoot said the museum isn’t ready to memorialize the final harvest.
“We have kind of stayed away from doing that, just because it’s kind of like we’ve lost somebody,” Lightfoot said. “I just don’t think it’s the right timing for us to really do something about that.”
Someday, Lightfoot and her staff will put a collection on display. But for now, the museum is learning to adjust to life without HC&S operating just across the street.
“Over the years, the Sugar Museum has been an independent nonprofit, but we have always felt that HC&S was our calabash cousins,” Lightfoot said.
Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum director Roslyn Lightfoot describes the workings of the Dargie Sugar Mill, a scale model (3/4 inch = 1 foot) of a nine-roller mill designed and built by Honolulu Iron Works in 1918. The working model on display at the museum shows how sugar cane was crushed in Hawaii from the late 1800s until the 1980s. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
For years, HC&S furnished the museum with free water and electricity. When the museum had a plumbing or electrical issue, mill workers would fix it. If Lightfoot needed a fence, “a little army came over and built it.” Once, Lightfoot was prepared to spend $7,000 to restripe the parking lot, an expense she wasn’t sure she could afford. So a group of HC&S workers researched the proper stall width and handicap requirements.“They came over and did it one morning before I came to work,” Lightfoot recalled. “There’s just so much kokua that they’ve always done.”
Now to get its water, the museum will connect to a submeter off the HC&S line and pay for its usage. As for electricity, the museum has two options: either hook up to the Maui Electric Co. grid or run on solar. Lightfoot hasn’t decided yet; she’s still looking at the costs for solar.“I wish I knew, because I’d sleep better,” she said.
Another HC&S contribution now gone was sugar sent to the museum at no cost. Last year, the museum made more than $22,000 from sugar sales alone. Now, about three cases of Maui Brand raw sugar and 30 cases of turbinado remain, “then it’s gone.”
In the weeks immediately after A&B announced it would shut down the plantation, museum staff brainstormed all the products they could create to fill the void. Oahu-based company Cane Haul Road helped design a number of T-shirts. The museum has stocked up on tea towels, etched belt buckles and coffee mugs printed with 1900s photos of plantation days — all told, about 18 new products.
“It was a good distraction at the first part of the year, because it was so upsetting to hear of the loss,” Lightfoot said. “You get to have a pity party for five seconds and then you’ve got to start pulling it together.”
Community members, eager to help, have stopped by with photographs and mementos. An HC&S worker salvaged an old rain gauge from the fields. A woman from Oahu sent over a miniature California & Hawaiian Sugar truck. One man wrote a poem. And before the Moku Pahu freighter departed Maui with its final load of sugar, the captain donated a life preserver from the 35-year-old ship, the last in the world of its kind.
Lightfoot admitted she’s gotten “so tired of collecting newspapers,” but knows the value of the museum’s work.
“In the future, this is something people will really have a major interest in,” Lightfoot said. “This is going to change Maui just like it changed the other islands when the plantations closed.”
One of the few remaining structures from the old plantation town of Puunene, the Sugar Museum was renovated and opened in 1980 with a grant from A&B Inc., according to its website. It was created to honor founders Samuel T. Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin and to mark the centennial of HC&S. Annually, the museum gets about 36,000 visitors. Lightfoot said there are no plans to reduce staff, which includes two full-time and six part-time employees.
In the future, the museum plans to add a building that would focus on train and steam engine history, once major players in the Hawaiian sugar industry. The museum has a locomotive and coach car currently on loan to the Maui Tropical Plantation, as well a restored 19th-century era velocipede, a bike that ran on railroad tracks used mainly by postmen.
Lightfoot said the museum didn’t bid on any of the machinery in the HC&S auction that took place last week. The museum already has several pieces of equipment sitting around its property, including a crane from the old Pioneer Mill and a hauler cab that HC&S donated shortly before the Puunene Mill closed.
Upcoming exhibits may include displays on “Dream City,” and exhibits inspired by community and cultural groups. Lightfoot wants to increase the museum’s school programs and has a new presentation to try out with preschoolers this week.
“It’s becoming more and more important that the history and culture and everything (sugar) created stay current with the younger generation,” Lightfoot said. “We just have to think outside of the box.”
Every year, the museum writes grants to A&B, usually for around $20,000. Last year A&B sent $30,000, “because they knew we’d have a lot of challenges to get ready” for the mill’s closing. The grants pay for education programs and projects, as well as a portion of staff salaries. Revenue from admission and gift shop purchases help cover other expenses.
These days, when Lightfoot pulls into the museum parking lot, the silence weighs heavy.
“It’s a true sense of loss when you come here and you don’t see or hear the activity or the smells,” she said.
The Sugar Museum is open 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., seven days a week, with last admission at 4 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for people 60 and above, $2 for ages 6 to 12 and free for children 5 and under. For more information visit sugarmuseum.com.
* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.
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