My Pal Hank

by Tom Conger

Henry Richmond and I originally met in third grade and had passed through elementary and middle school as best friends, sharing our offbeat sense of humor. In high school, in those innocent days shortly after the end of World War II, we played prep football. Prep football – played both ways (offense & defense), with limited substitution, and face-masks not introduced until partway into our senior year – was a sure way to engender the now disfavored phenomenon of male bonding. We bonded.

In intermediate school a gang of classmates roamed the streets from Waialae CC to the piedmont of Diamond Head on fat-tire bikes. (Henry, unlike the rest of us, pedaled a snazzy green “English” bike with skinny wheels and hand-brakes). We called ourselves the Kahala Blahlahs.  Woe be it to the HRT bus driver who stopped, just after dark on a Friday eve, for a coupla freckle-faced haole: the vanguard of the water-balloon brigade crouched behind the nearby hedge. Although we usually managed to outrun the dripping victim, we all shoulda been sent directly to Koolau Boys’ Home (reform school).

I didn’t have a car at Punahou, but, once Henry hit fifteen and got his license, his dad scored a deal on a ’51 Chrysler fluid-drive coupe, which they souped up so it wasn’t so “square.” Every morning until we graduated, we rode to school together—Henry and his girlfriend Jerry in the ample front seat, and me in back with his li’l sister and Jer’s really li’l brother.

The bonds continued into college days. Although Henry and I went to different schools, they were both in New England, all male, and in remote rural confines. Jerry completed a Honolulu triumverate as Skidmore, where she enrolled for college, was about the most accessible women’s college to Hanover, NH—a straight dash across Vermont and down the Hudson to Saratoga-town. I didn’t have a girlfriend at Skidmore, but I loved reconnecting with Henry & Jerry—plus the restaurants served pizza: not to be found in Hanover (nor Honolulu) back in the ‘50s!

               l to r, back: Mike Irwin, Evan White, Henry Richmond, Tom Conger; front center, Jerry Conley

Henry and I both played rugby in college, though not in the same circuits; so Henry (the Williams lads called him “Hank”) and I booked a fixture in the spring of 1961. As Hanover was even more remote than Williamstown back in those pre-Interstate Highway days, we Injuns drove down on the back roads of northwestern Massachusetts. Results of the match may have been lost in the apocrypha, but the tilt for the keg was clearly a draw.

After college, Henry latched up with The Asia Foundation, and he and Jerry lived in San Francisco, happily reunited with Hawaii’s first-ever major league sports franchise, the SF Forty-niners. Many were the tales of junkets to Kezar Stadium for ten-buck end zone seats where the young Richmonds loudly and copiously cajoled the [then] hapless Garnet & Gold, often inciting near riots in the surrounding confines. In more recent times, they were able to fly in from Honolulu for Niner home games with their son James, and they never saw a playoff loss.

Henry descended from stout missionary stock, as did Jerry, and did his part to set an example for today’s keiki o ka aina. He paddled well into his elder years for Healani and Outrigger canoe clubs, and ran many marathons—Honolulu, Boston, and others—with zeal and determination, eventually logging his best time of 2:39.

Late in life infirmities restricted his exertions to bicycle circuits (later prohibited) then avid walking tours—you no doubt saw him treading around campus, balance enhanced by his trekking poles or cane. About a year ago I noted in the Punahou Bulletin that Henry & Jerry had joined us at RVM, observing: “Such a lovely way to end our days.” Then he got hit by a car while in a crosswalk on campus and, although the injuries appeared insignificant at first, Henry later passed on with full family in attendance. We never foresaw that his days would end so abruptly, but the memories linger on.