Letters to the Editor – 5/28/14

Misspent money

Your fine editorial cartoonist Dick Adair’s drawing of a laied-off nurse of St. Francis Hospice – departing with an empty wheelchair, as she passes a Happy Nurses’ Day sign – spoke to all of Honolulu’s hearts. Forty nurses just lose their jobs there as that facility closes. Faithful and long-tenured staff, the most patient and giving souls on earth for such positions.

The reason given for St. Francis closing? Lack of money.

What?! After St. Francis Hospital shut down and was sold temporarily, there was a canonization of their St. Marianne (that cost millions), commercial mail order ventures, and even after this hospice layoff, primetime news ads by this order that cost $1,000 per 30 seconds. As an RN who cherished working with these sisters at Kalau-papa Hospital for 10 years, I have to sadly ask, what is happening here?

Ruth Freedman
Manoa

Kill UH football?

I wasn’t around when Laurence Snyder was president of UH (1958-63) and was run out of office for wanting to kill the Manoa football program, per Bob Jones’ column “A Look Back at Past UH Presidents.” But I’d love to be around when the next UH president has the courage to say that football is a big hole in the ground into which UH pours money that could be better spent on scholarships and research.

That’s why I applaud BYU-Hawaii for announcing plans to drop athletics at its Laie campus and focus on education. Now I’m waiting for them to do the same at their main Provo campus. But anybody really think that’s going to happen?

Wayne Lee
Honolulu

The real payoff

As always, I got a kick out of Ron Nagasawa’s column about teaching his children the importance of Mother’s Day. But while he may have been grateful they have heeded his lessons in planning this year’s celebration, and that they still need him to pay for the Mother’s Day meal, I can guarantee his greater satisfaction will come when they start to pick up the tab – especially on Father’s Day. That’s when he’ll know they’re really grown up.

Al Silva
Honolulu

Good advice

Just a quick note to say how much I like Amy Alkon’s Advice Goddess column. That’s mostly because I learn valuable insights into my own friendships/relationships. But some of the people who write to her are so weird/off, it makes me feel really sane/balanced by comparison – kind of like the characters in Chuck Shepherd’s Weird News.

Lisa Oshiro
Honolulu

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