Where you can get Drunk on Love or Friendship, Meet a Live American Princess…and Bury the Lead.

by Brian O’Keefe

“He’s here”….. said the host …into a walkie talkie…when I announced my arrival at one of the fancier hotel restaurants in Honolulu, which set off a Secret Service style “perp walk” through the entire place and a soft hushed, yet urgent, silence surrounding me as I was escorted outside to a private far end of a verandah. I was kind of surprised at the big deal, but not really. After all I had a couple White House and Papal security bubble knotches in my belt. Brought to a grand table, adorned with flowers, I met my lunch date: a real life royal princess.

It was the Nineties and one of my last plum assignments at CBS’s “48 Hours” (every one was better than the next) early in my Lucky Seven career. Before me was “Princess K “, Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, the sole last of the Hawaiian Royal Family lineage. With our national obsession with the German…ummmm….I mean, British —Royal Hanover-Windsors….right there: out there in the island sub-nation, under our collective nose…or a macadamia tree, is a real live American princess. Graceful, grandmotherly, with beautiful eyes, and a soft looking face and head of hair. Think June Lockhart in her 70’s with white hair. Or, maybe a lost Baldwin sister from The Waltons. The funny thing is she asked more questions than I did. About me. She was genuinely intrigued by my job and activity in television.

I was researching an hour broadcast about Hawaii and, industrious and workaholicly busy, I even did it during a vacation….attaching myself to that plum assignment which would create follow up trips. How greedy of me. If you haven’t figured out by now, I have the habit of complementing my work addiction with those other Dopamine salivating ones: air miles and loyalty hotel points. Don’t forget…. I was an American Airline Million Miler by 28. Two Million in my 30’s. Its been a long staggered climb, stalled by a decade long United-Airlines-interruption —as I approach Three (Million). Yes, I have created my own luck, but also a rather diversified mileage portfolio. If I had a dollar for every air mile I have accrued over the years, I would be a millionaire. Four times over. My Irish Twin (Katie O’Keefe Murphy) has called me “the mileage miser”.

The Aloha State is a place so relaxing, serene, stunningly beautiful. No wonder so many couples get married or honeymoon there. A place to get Drunk on Love. One of my ever-besties Theresa met her boyfriend there on a beach more than 20 years ago…and have been together ever since.

The parents of my friend Greg bought their own corner of paradise with a wraparound porch and annual Kaanapali fortnight for perpetuity at 15 thousand buckaroos more than 40 years ago! And I once brought the top two (in age order!) O’Keefe family jewels (nieces and nephews) all the way to Hawaii once. It was tremendous fun to reward them with luxury hotel life and First Class travel. Afterwards, my poor sister Jane had to survive weeks of Richie and Joseph blurting out funny expressions and/or crazy things I said, mimicking me.

But re-living giggles is the best souvenir. With at least seven trips to Hawaii, I have visited all but one of the islands that is reachable by tourists. Yeah, you guessed it: I am one of those people who gets Lanai and Molokai mixed up. Obnoxious. True. But also blessed, lucky and so fortunate. Got my first…and last… sun poisoning there. And have had perhaps some of the biggest laughs of my life.

One foray to the deep Southern end of Wailea, on Maui about 15 years ago brought what I call a sit-com belly laugh moment and perpetual giggle memory one night after I had unpacked in a “cement block East bloc” sun blanched monstrosity that had a hotel name on the front. ((Sorry, I compete with myself to create the longest imaginable sentence, if you know what I mean, in a comma and dash or ellipsis … kind … of … way. Chris Cuomo hated…the… ellipses. ))

Off tangent: Many of Hawaii’s oldest tall buildings resemble the ugliest apartment buildings you have ever seen. Like no design, no architecture was involved. Just slabs, white paint and occasional vegetation and rocks. Anyway, it was off season and deserted…only augmenting that special “The Day After” Chernobyl-esque look. A couple of friends were dropping by: fellow Hotel and travel addicts DJ and Heidi among them. Both years later would run TV shows. Hotel addicts are usually successful. These two both happen to be two of the funniest people I have ever known.

So when I opened the door for their hotel-addict “inspection” it was my turn to be funny. “Welcome to the Chernobyl Hilton!”, which is evidently what they had just said to each other in the East Berliner Dresden-esque hallway. We all dissolved into a symphony of laughter, unable to stand on our feet, collapsing in giggles….which we would re-live for days and, even, years.

DJ ran “The Insider” and “ET” for years. Heidi helped give birth to “Baby Daddy” on ABC Family. Its the coolest thing. Her genius quips now come out of the mouths of actors in a Friends-calibre ensemble. I can ear-detect a Heidi line on episodes of the show. On another guffaw fest mini-trip, in which Heidi had a cameo, to San Francisco, she, with impeccable timing, I might add, blurted out somewhere near Union Square: “I love San Francisco! Even the homeless guys are cute!!” And DJ and I often speak in twin language. We often blurt out a punchline the other one is simultaneously about to say. Our life sometimes feels like a sit-com….with only us providing the laugh track. This is a gift and one of the purest joys of friendship. Kinda like drunk on friendship, if you will. And no better place to get drunk on friendship…than in Hawaii.

Working in the daily broadcast biz, stress is sometimes the air that we breathe. The busy Habitrail of TV production that makes trips to Princess K’s Homeland all the more important. Where the Brady Bunch jumped the shark into high drama and Hawaiian history is certainly a place to cherish.

DJ and I recently met up again in Maui…and of course there were 99 laughs a minute…and yes, we re-lived the Chernobyl Hilton Memory with a quick giggle. Years can go by, but the laughs of friendship feed our spirit forever.

This last trip was a late Fiftieth Birthday gift to myself, after a particularly rough and tumble patch in my life….a return to my earlier self. The peace and serenity of the ocean and islands nestled in it and the Great Sun setting neatly in between Lanai and Molokai (or is it Molokai …and …Lanai??) One night in a dark, rural part of the Big Island the universe around me was like a Planeterium…the clearest view of the night sky and its planets, stars and comets galore! Incredible. Such clarity and crispness and a reminder of our own nothingness in such a Universe of gases, heat, water and light.

On the Big Island…the namesake of the entire State….it felt like I saved the best for last: my final day and night were spent with an old friend and colleague Ginny Vicario…hands down the greatest camerawoman to grace and gorgeous-ize network TV news. Period. Anchors and reporters know more than anybody just how good she was..and how beautiful she made them look! Her retirement was really a loss. But for decades she lived through some amazing history and helped millions to see it clearly and beautifully.

On a trip a couple years ago, Ginny met a veterinarian with his sweet old rescue dog Ruby who he literally saved as a five week old puppy…and soon was Drunk on Love. Cupid’s arrow-dust still glistens in their 5 acre corner of paradise…a magnificent home on the rustic easternmost point, the one that gets “Virgin air” …some scientists claim its the cleanest and purest air in the world. Pacific-purified. A great place for Ginny’s second act after a 40 year career in television. She and her now husband Bill are opening an animal and pet clinic. Ginny, in no time, will be regaling islanders and injured puppies with the stories of filming huge interviews with Barbara Walters, life onboard every Presidential campaign since forever… and comparing manicures with Hillary Clinton on her final 27,000 mile Secretary of State Finale-Hoorah Tour.

And so it goes….as my inspiration, Linda Ellerbee, said: My five day trip recently was a reminder of the giggles that love and friendship bring all of us on a daily basis. And due to a recent miracle in my life: I have learned to live …and live to learn…and most definitely LOVE the great words of my beloved mother Bernadette a long time ago: “Get High on Life!” (and Hawaii.)

And, yes, I buried the lead.