Saturday Briefing

By Ethan Chang — Memorial Day weekend was extra special this year at the Outrigger Waikiki on the Beach with the help of our guests and ‘ohana who made lei to decorate the graves of veterans at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl and state veterans’ cemeteries

Last week, the City and County put out a call to the community. Memorial Day was fast approaching, and they had a shortage of flowers and manpower to complete the 50,000 lei needed for the special Memorial Day event, where Boy Scouts place a lei at each grave of our fallen heroes.

When the call for lei came in, I thought to myself, “Here at the Outrigger Waikiki, we teach our guests how to make a lei. Wouldn’t it be great if our guests wanted to make and donate their lei for this cause?” What started up as a few donated lei grew to three huge overflowing bags of lei donated by guests and employees. It was incredible! Most of our guests ended up making two to four lei for this great cause. Many people stayed and made more than ten! In all, there were over 40 guests who participated and well over 200 lei that were donated.

Everyone had a great time, and it was so good to see our guests so enthusiastic about making lei for our fallen veterans. Guests invited their families, encouraged other guests to participate, and even helped teach others after having just learned themselves. It goes to show that our values of Ke ‘Ano Wa‘a our employees exude can definitely be felt, shared, and multiplied by our guests.