Well I hope some one remembers Me. For I was there .. 1966, 1967 !! I also was able to return to Pago Pago 2 years ago for one day. I meet the current director of KVZK TV station (what's left of it anyway) who remembered me, and he told me there was a group of original Dept of Ed. personnel using an email similar to : CoConut_Telegraph @ Yahoo.com to stay in touch with others, but it turned out to be a bad address and I never was able to get in contact with anyone as a result.
The wind made a soft whistling sound as it slipped through the wire screens. The sound was always there, along with the constant background booming of the surf crashing on the edge of the reef just a hundred yards from my back door.
The salt spray, carried in the south east trade winds, coated the copper wire screens that faced the ocean, turning them green by the day after they were first put on the house.
The moist breeze carried the smell of the sea and salt through the open rooms, leaving a crystalline layer of salt on wooden walls, and left the woven floor mats, the cushions on the furniture, and even the sheets on the bed always feeling slightly damp.
Swains Island, a doughnut shaped low coral atoll that is geologically part of the Tokelau Islands, has been privately owned by the Jennings family since 1856. In the 1960’s it had a total population of about 30 people from Tokelau, who call their island “Olohenga”. Although the Samoan islands are 200 miles south, Swains Island has been under the administration of the Government of American Samoa since 1925. A boat is chartered by the Jennings family once or twice a year to deliver a few supplies and to pick up the dried coconut copra that is the only source of external income.
My only trip to Swains Island was in 1968, the year I taught Level III Science on television for third and fourth graders and Level V Oral English television lessons for high school students in American Samoa. Paul Pedro, a science curriculum supervisor for the department of education had family there, and invited me to go along.
I was pleasantly suprised to see Paul Pedro, my former colleague in teacher training in this video as the Television Teacher. Of all the curriculum content they could have choosen, it appears to be a lesson in personal hygiene relating to cleaning one's fingernails! Not one word was mentioned about how the English language was being taught so effectively through the ETV program.
I came to American Samoa in 1965, and was assigned to assist in the opening of the new consolidated elementary school at Pago Pago, where Cantley George was principal. I served in that capacity until June.
In August I was assigned to move with my wife and son to Aunu'u to open the new school that was nearing completion there. We were the first palagi family to make their home on Aunu'u. I served as the principal of Aunu'ufou Elementary School from September 1965 through July 1967. My daughter Lynne was born just after the the big hurricane of 1966.
"President and Mrs. Johnson witness an instructional television class in session at Manulele Tausala (“Lady Bird”) Consolidated School,October 18, 1966. Governor and Mrs. Lee are at left."
I set up the display at the school for the President to see. The Ideal was that all 5 or so channels would appear at once to President Johnson on separate Tv's that I had arranged in cabinets next to each other, as he walked into the room. ( To impress him no doubt) As I gave the signal by radio to Mt. Alava that the President was coming into the class room the guys at the transmitter site flipped on power to the transmitters all at once, and they thus immediately blew the circuit breaker for all the power on Mt Alava. We had to stand around quiet a while while they reset the circuit breaker, and then they brought the Educational Channel Transmitters and ETV Program signals back on one at a time for the president to see.
Swains Island, a doughnut shaped low coral atoll that is geologically part of the Tokelau Islands, has been privately owned by the Jennings family since 1856. In the 1960’s it had a total population of about 30 people from Tokelau, who call their island “Olohenga”. Although the Samoan islands are 200 miles south, Swains Island has been under the administration of the Government of American Samoa since 1925. A boat is chartered by the Jennings family once or twice a year to deliver a few supplies and to pick up the dried coconut copra that is the only source of external income.
Recent comments