Koamalu : a story of pioneers on Kauai, and of what they built in that island garden / by Ethel M. Damon. [Vol. 1, no. 2]

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K A M A L U

Accompanying this poem in prose came a rough pencil
sketch of the solitary islands raising their heads one by
one above and among the waves of the endless ocean.
To its resting place on one of those distant islands had
come the artist's painting in marble, the sculptured relief
which he names in such happy phrase, The March of
Blessed Souls toward the Light.
The work of Paul Isenberg at Lihue did not close with
his death in 1903. Many years before that time Pastor
Hans Isenberg had begun to carry out his older brother's
plans at Lihue, Hanamaulu and Koloa. After 1903 he
became president of the Lihue and Koloa corporations,
also director in other companies, and in this way added
labors in great variety and quantity to his many-sided
functions as pastor of the German colonies on Kauai. He
acquired American citizenship in 1905. For many years
he conducted the German school in Lihue, assisted first
by Mr. Joergens and later by Mr. Carl Maser. Teaching
duties were afterward surrendered to Fritz Rutsch, later
to his brother, Paul Rutsch, and in 1917, the final year
of the school, to Minna Maria Heuer. Although this
little school was conducted in German until 1915, the
study of English, it will be recalled, had been insisted
upon by Paul Isenberg from the very start, and strangers
often remarked how well grounded the children were in
English. During the last two years of the school it was
conducted entirely in English and its textbooks were
those in use in the public schools.
With Mr. Hans Isenberg it was ever a cardinal principle that "intense application to industry is one of the
highest tests of character and religion." One of the
projects nearest his heart, for he was rightly called
"friend, philanthropist and philosopher," was the building of the Lihue Plantation hospital in 1898. Daily he
mounted his horse and rode down to inspect its progress.
Daily he longed to have it at last in working order. It