 |
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
|
Kaimana-Paele Lineage
of
Nathalie
was my beloved mom. She and I poured over the pages of the
Kaimana-Paele lineage from Great Aunt Fanny matching mom's
remembrances to the names.
NATHALIE MARIE KAIMANA-PAELE LINDSEY TRUITT This Mo'o Kupuna is not complete. I have quite a few more pages to add to the list of Kaimana-Paele family names - especially the pages that actually connect mom's family to the long list of names. When I have more time, I will sit down and amend the list with the additions. Great Aunt Fanny (who submitted the list to the Mormon Church) was my mom's aunt. Fanny and my mom's mother were sisters. Here is the lineage showing my connection to the list of names. Father: John Kaimana Paele (born 1856) Mother: Emily Kaukena Kapaona (born 1855)  Their
children:Ione Kelekoma Paele John Kalaokahiku Abraham Paele Joseph Hamuela Paele Eunice Kapuakelaonamoku Paele Emily Kalikookamaile Paele Edward Waiemehea Paele Fanny Kalikookamaile Paele (Great Aunt Fanny) Sarah Keaomalamalama Paele (Nathalie's mother and my grandmother) Maria Naomi Paele Charley Kealohaokalani Paele Nathalie's Parents Father: Thomas Weston Kinsley Lindsey (Born May 6, 1885) Mother: Sara Keaomalamalama Paele (Born July 26, 1886) Their children: Lewis Rodney Keawe Lindsey Betsy Kaipukai Lindsey Francis Weston Lindsey (twin) Harvey Ross Lindsey (twin) Seymour Miller Lindsey Sarah Keaomalamalama Lindsey Thomas Weston Lindsey Elizabeth Kaupena Lindsey Naomi Keala Lindsey Victoria Lanakila Lindsey Nathalie Marie (also perhaps "Malia" or "Maraea) Lindsey Fanny Kalikookamaile Lindsey Biography of my Mother  Nathalie
Marie Kaimana-Paele Lindsey TruittNathalie Marie Lindsey Truitt was born in the small town of Waimea on the Big Island of Hawaii. Her father was Thomas Weston Kinsley Lindsey and her mother was a full-blooded Hawaiian named Sarah Keaomalamalama Kaimana Paele Lindsey. Waimea was the center of cattle ranching on the Big Island of Hawaii. Her father was a foreman on the Parker Ranch, the second largest cattle ranch in the U.S. Nathalie was the second youngest in a family of 12 children. She led a simple country life, but full of love and exciting times. She was her father's pet because she had been born a blue baby. He restored her to health by wrapping her in blankets and putting her in the oven of their kitchen stove. After a while, her mother and father took her out and put her on a pig platter and moved her to the kitchen table. They massaged her (lomi) to get her circulation going. She loved her dad very much and followed him everywhere and was in on everything. She learned to ride horseback and accompanied the Parker Ranch cowboys in rounding up cattle. At the age of 7 she could cook a full meal for her family. During her high school years, she boarded at the Kohala Girl's Seminary and took her academic classes at nearby Kohala High School. During World War II, Nattie worked with the Army Signal Corps at the Kilauea Military Camp where much of the coded messages were sent and received. She remembers seeing General Eisenhower when he came to the camp. She always insisted on eating with the enlisted men instead of in the Officer's Club because she said, "if I can work with them, I can eat with them". Nathalie loved to dance and she volunteered to dance with the soldiers. The girls were held to a strict standard of dress and conduct. She was spellbound when she heard the U.S. Army dance band play swing music. She had always danced before to smaller local bands. She attended the local Waimea Imiola Congregational Church where, with her mother and sisters, they cleaned and decorated the church, sang in the choir, and took part in Church festivities. She learned to hula from her mother as well as to play the ukulele and piano. She and her sisters were often asked to perform in Waimea at event and onstage for the community. She rode horseback as a Pa'u rider during the annual Lei Day (May 1st) parades, dressed in the appropriate colors of whatever Island she was representing that year. She survived the April 1, 1946 Hilo Tidal Wave, managing to run up the hill to escape the oncoming water. As far as we know, the café she had been sitting in when the Tidal Wave came ashore is still there. Because the wave hit on April Fool's Day, when someone exclaimed, "Tidal Wave!!!!" some people thought it was an April Fool's joke. Nattie saw the train station and all the shops across the street get picked up and thrown into the air by the force of the water. Since then, they have never rebuilt the storefronts that were wiped out on that side of the street. In her 20s, Nat decided to come to the Mainland to go to college. She is the only one in her family who graduated from college. Nattie decided to pursue a business career and came to Los Angeles on her own to attend Woodbury College in Los Angeles where she received a degree in Business. In 1955, while working for the County of Los Angeles, she met and married William Paul Truitt. He thought he was the luckiest guy in the whole world. And with his love, she devoted her life to her family up to her death on September 5, 2003, with her family at her side. While working for the County of Los Angeles, she was highly regarded by her boss - and at one point, he asked her if she could bring any more workers like her from the Islands. As a Homemaker, she was such a great mom - full of fun and she constantly participated in her children's activities. She sewed costumes for her daughter's shows and took an interest in her son's activities at school. She was known and loved by all who knew her, for her warmth and outgoing, giving nature. Her family is torn apart by the loss of her happy presence, but they now leave her in the hands of the loving god who created her. Characteristics, Memories, and Stories  -
Proud of her Hawaiian heritage, she instilled this pride in her
children and her husband. She passed on a great deal of knowledge
to them about the culture, music, dance, genealogy, language,
customs, and aloha spirit. Her husband Bill also became absorbed
with Nat's Hawaiian culture and genealogy and could eat Hawaiian
food with the best of them.- She had a remarkably green thumb and could grow anything. All she had to do was stick a plant in the ground and it would grow. She could nurse sick and dying plants back to health. She passed on this knowledge and skill to her daughter who continues to tend the backyard's plumeria trees, ti plants, orchids, ginger and other tropicals in honor of her mom. - She loved crossword puzzles and had a sharp mind for answers - including the much loved play on words found in the LA Times Sunday Crossword puzzle. - She loved to keep up with politics and current events and had a keen interest in the LA Times business section every day. - She was a musical person - she could sing, dance, play the ukulele, bass, guitar, and the piano and enjoyed a wide variety of music from swing to musicals to classical music and opera. But of course, her favorite was her Hawaiian music, which, when in pain later on in life, she would put on her tape player and headset and transport herself back to the islands - keeping the pain at bay. - My, how she could cook! Among friends and relations of the Truitt family - she was a legend. Modestly, she always said her food was "plain cooking" but nobody did it better. All the years that her kids were growing up, their friends would always hope for a dinner invitation - and the invitation, Hawaiian style, always came. People would come to her daughter's Christmas Caroling Parties not so much for the singing and decorations, but because Steph's mom was cooking for the party. - Nattie's mother, Sarah, was a healer. And Sarah passed it on to her daughter, Nattie. Her daughter absorbed those healing ways from her mother, too. - As a Lindsey, Nattie was very proud to be from a prominent Hawaiian family on the Big Island. The prestige was not because of monetary reasons, but because of the Lindsey family heritage and their ties and service to the community. - Whenever someone on the Island needed entertainment for their lu'aus or events, they often called on the Lindsey family to pull something together. Nat's mom provided the entertainment using the kids in the family - all of them could play instruments, dance, and sing. - Her mother was so well regarded that when someone passed away in the community, they often sent for her to help bathe, dress, and prepare the body of the deceased. This was the way of small town life, and Nat would come along to learn and to help. - "Hanai" is a special Hawaiian custom. Sometimes when there are too many children, one or two can be "adopted" out to other families or relatives in a very informal way. An aunt of Nat's once tried to get her mother and father to let them adopt her as hanai, but being her daddy's favorite, that was stopped quite dead in its tracks. Cold. - Her father, Thomas, enjoyed gambling. Once, in a lively game, he won a big Pierce Arrow Touring Car. Her mother was angry - no one in the family knew how to drive - so the children played in it. Whenever they wanted to go for a ride, they had to hire someone to drive it. - Her father wanted to open a gambling den in the attic of their house that would be accessible by a trap door. His wife, Sarah, gave him a reluctant okay. The sheriff came to look at his plans and warned Thomas that if he invited his friends there to gamble, he'd have to be arrested. Needless to say, Thomas decided not to open the gambling den. - In another gambling stint, Nat's dad won a small boat and he put his sons in charge of taking care of it. They hated doing this so much that they sank it. - One day, her father had built a bonfire in the yard to burn refuse. The children loved to dance around it. Nathalie was warned by her mother not to jump over it, but of course she did and accidentally stepped into the fire and burned her leg. Her mother was angry and went to pick a switch to spank her, but her father told Sarah her not to switch her, she had already been punished enough by the fire. He went to the woods to pick medicinal leaves and vines and wrapped her leg in them. During her final illness, she so wanted her father to come and heal her. Bill only wished that her father could. - When Nattie was little, she loved to play on the veranda that encircled the house. One day, she said to her older brother Harvey, "Haw-vy, play with me!" Harvey said, "what do you want to do?" to which Nattie replied, "I want to wun (run) awound (around) the wanda (veranda). Years later when Nat was grown up, Harvey would kid her in front of his friends and tell them, "this is my kid sister who wanted me to play with her and wun awound the wanda" which of course embarrassed her to no end. - The family would go to the beach at Kawaihae and watch the cowboys loading cattle on the cattle ship anchored offshore. They would tie a number of cattle to the sides of a small boat and row or motor them (as they swam tied to the boat) out to the ship from the beach. The cattle would be hoisted out of the water in the air on a sling and put onto the cattle ship. Her mother would pack a picnic lunch to eat while they watched. - Travel for the Lindsey family wasn't in a plane in the early days. Sarah and her children (mom included) would go by steerage between islands overnight from Hawaii to Oahu and back. They would sleep on the rear deck of the ship on blankets and Sarah would pack dinner for them in a pail including rice, fish, and poi. - When the volcanoes erupted, one of the family's outings was to picnic at the lava flow site. They'd pack a nice lunch and sit and watch the lava flowing. They also would find a stick lying around, jab it into the lava flow, pull some out, and whirl the stick in the glob to make bowls. Being savvy Hawaiians, they knew they had to be alert and keep an eye on the direction and speed of the lava flow to make sure that Pele didn't trap them in her "fingers". - Nat and her cousin Kamaile loved to go to the stream that ran nearby to catch pollywogs in their dresses and skirts. They brought them back to the house and put them in a can by the faucet. The next morning when they went to look for them, they were missing. She believed that her father had taken them, walked all the way back to the stream, and set them free. He told her, "Life is sacred. Do not catch living things for no good reason." - Nat's home had a bamboo forest. Her sister Fanny and she loved playing house. They called on their father to make a tunnel in the bamboo forest. He cut the bamboo to make a kitchen, living room, and bedroom. They would lay pillows and blankets on the ground and nap in their bamboo house. She would cook rice outside or her mother would bring rice and egg sandwiches. Nat remembers that her mother didn't like it because they would sweat, running around, then go into the bamboo to lie down. Her mother was afraid they would get sick. Nat remembers her concerned mother once coming to cover her and Fanny with a blanket. - Nat and Kamaile used to put on old gunny sacks and play shepherds. They would make a bed of leaves, put a doll in it, and sing Christmas carols - "We Three Kings". For presents for the manger, they would find marbles and paint matchboxes and put them by the baby Jesus. - The churches in town were all grouped together in the same location - Mormon, Japanese, Protestant, Catholic. Hers was Congregational - Imiola. At Christmas, the church was full. Everybody came to her church at Christmas. She never went to the church of the Holy Rollers, because was afraid of them. She said later in life that, "I was a kid and didn't know any better."  -
During Christmas, Imiola Church gave all the kids presents. Nat has
never forgotten the oranges, apples, nuts, raisins, coloring books,
crayolas, pencils, and writing pads she received for Christmas
presents.- In her musical family, mom sang soprano. Her other sisters sang tenor and alto. They were so good, everywhere they went, they were asked to perform. - One of the recent times that Nat was in the hospital, she had her walkman and Hawaiian tapes to keep her company and to help keep her spirits up during her painful and difficult stays. She was in her hospital bed listening to a particular favorite when a nurse came in to check on her. At first, the nurse thought that Nat had become delirious - but then realized that she was only doing the hula hand motions to one of her favorite songs. Nathalie is deeply missed by her family: husband William Paul Truitt, daughter Stephanie Lani Truitt, and son Robert Paul Truitt. Nathalie's ashes have been laid to rest in the Lindsey family cemetery in Kamuela-Waimea, very close to cousin Anna Perry Fiske's ranch.
|
 |
 |
|||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| WELCOME | BACKGROUND | GENEALOGY | CONTACT |
© 2004 Stephanie Lani Truitt
All Rights Reserved.