A different type of New Year’s celebration will take place on Molokai January 18. For the first time ever, Molokai will hold a Chinese New Year Tiger Parade to honor the beginning of the Year of the Tiger.
Hope, strength and unity is the Molokai Chinese Cultural Club’s theme for the parade. Since a community’s wealth begins with its children, one part of the tiger parade celebration is a keiki art contest. Kumu Edrian Apo signed on all of her 30 Kaunakakai School third graders into an art contest called “Year of the Tiger & Me.” A Molokai native with Chinese heritage, Kumu Apo is cultivating future hopes in her keikis artistic expression and helping them to think creatively.
One of the panel of judges in the art contest is Oliver Ah-Sun Young. He is also one of the four kupuna honorees at the parade celebration. He traces his Chinese roots through his father, a district magistrate on Maui. Mr. Young served three years in the U.S. Army with one of those year served in Pisa, Italy at the end of World War II. He also volunteered to become a parachutist and glide man while in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg and earned his jump wings.
Oliver A.S. Young
Many older Molokai residents remember Mr. Young dressed in his olive drab uniform. Since retired as field sergeant, Mr. Young served 24 years at the Molokai Police Station.
Married 57 years to Lily Young, Mr. and Mrs. Young remain active in volunteer work at the Maui County Retired and Senior Volunteer Program. Their church work had also brought them to far places working as missionaries.
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