Voices of Hawai`i • Oral History Project

GOODSILL: Will you tell us what brought you to Hawaii?

TAYLOR: Well, I had just finished the University of California at Berkeley. I went through in three years because World War II was going on and they wanted to get us in and out as quickly as they could. While there I met a cadet named Stan Taylor! Stan and I dated but not for very long because he was about ready to be sent overseas. His parents traveled from Honolulu to California on an awful freighter to meet me. Both sets of parents got along well and they figured that we were going to get married, so they might as well go along with it. Stan went off to get more training in flying. When he came back Stanley and I were married in San Francisco, in November 1944. He went off to war.

I was able to come to Hawaii to live with Stanley Shattuck Taylor and Lucile Mchean Taylor. Mr. Taylor originally came to Hawaii to work for Fisher Corporation after World War I and subsequently started Honolulu Paper Company. The Taylor family goes all the way back to a paper mill at Camp Taylor in California.

My husband was Stanley Shattuck Taylor, Jr. He was born in Honolulu in 1922 and went to Punahou and then the University of Virginia until the war started. Then he went into the naval air force reserve. Stan resigned from the Navy at the end of the war and later became a stockbroker in Honolulu. (He was a smoker and unfortunately got lung cancer and died in January of 1979 at age 56.)

I was born in San Francisco on Sept 12, 1924. I’m 93 years old! We lived the life of the 1950s and 60s. Our first son was Stanley III (1946), Jeff (1947), Emily (1953), and Stephen (1958). I spent most of my time in the car pool. Thursday was my day to drive. And if I broke my leg the ambulance was to drive from Maunalani Heights, swing by Punahou School, pick up the kids, buy the kids an ice cream, send them home and take me to the hospital. Betty Long drove Tuesday and Maris Gray had another day. We never switched days.

GOODSILL: How did you start your career with the newspaper?

TAYLOR: When I went to school at Cal there were no men so there were no distractions. They figured if you were strong enough to play football you should be carrying a gun, so there were no sports. Consequently, I got a very good education. I majored in journalism. Once in Honolulu I became a columnist and feature writer on the Star Bulletin staff for almost 30 years. I was secretary in the Junior League and a couple of charities.

Mrs. Farrington offered me a job with the Honolulu Star Bulletin. I had to have a personal interview. (The Farmington’s owned the Star Bulletin at this.) They knew I could write but I guess they didn’t know if I knew how to use a fork. Well, I was duly inducted into writing the society column! (said soto voce) This is awkward to talk about … we covered the Hawaiians, the Chinese and the haole but the columns avoided mention of the Japanese.

GOODSILL: Well, this was just after the war with Japan and it stood to reason. Not right, but human nature.

TAYLOR: Well, I guess that is right. I don’t know who read the column, but I stuck with it for about 12 years. Then finally there was a general feeling among the editors that society writing was kind of dumb, so I shifted over to interviewing, which I’d wanted to do all along.

I interviewed lots and lots of people. Some were funny; some were not. The hotels would call when celebrities were coming in and say, “So and so will be here, please arrange an interview.” The celebrity got the publicity and it was good for the Star Bulletin. One of my interviews was with Howard Cosell. I’ll never forget it. He said he would meet me by the pool at the Royal Hawaiian at 3:00. So at 3:00 the photographer and I went in. (I always went everywhere with a photographer). There were three men sitting there and I could not tell which was which. So finally I went up to one of them and said, “Mr. Cosell?” He stood up and said, “I, said Cosell, am Cosell.” He was really arrogant but very pleasant. We talked about football - a game about which I knew virtually nothing.

I learned a lot from talking to such a variety of people. I still have a box of the interviews I took. My kids have never heard of some of the people. Fame is fleeting. The columns were usually one column wide and 12” long. I wrote 3 columns a week.

GOODSILL: Did you have to come up with questions to ask the celebrities?

TAYLOR: They were so used to giving interviews that they usually took the lead and said what they had planned to say. Coby Black, who was a friend of mine, did the same thing for the Advertiser. Sometimes we interviewed the same people. (laughs)

GOODSILL: Tell me about the newspaper business back then.

TAYLOR: Well, now days it is all done with computers. But in those days you had the back shop where the typesetters were located. I would type out the story and the editor would read it and make corrections. Then the city editor sent it to the back shop. They set the type in hot lead in wooden forms. They typed out the whole story leaving space for the headline, which someone had to write, and the photographs and the IDs on the photos. They would set up the whole page and make one print copy of it and send it back to the editor for review. If it was ok, with no typos, they would run the presses and print the paper.

A sideline of that was that they often spilled the lead on the soft pine floor. It ended up making the most beautiful floor you could imagine because it had these silver spots in it. Years later when the building was gutted, one of the photographers who had a house on the Big Island took all he needed for the interior of his house. He sanded it down and it was absolutely gorgeous and unique.

GOODSILL: Tell me about a day you remember.

TAYLOR: Ah, the day Kennedy died. All day long every day the wireless came in and if it were a big story it would go ding ding ding. But ordinarily it was one ding and in would come a report that there would be an earthquake some place you never heard of. One day in November it rang 4 times, ding ding ding ding, and news came over the wireless that President Kennedy was shot and probably dying.

Ours was an evening paper and so the deadline was early in the morning. But for the issues that went to the outer islands the deadline was 9:00 PM the night before. Those papers were printed at night then shot it over on the early morning planes along with the loaves of bread from Loves Bakery. It was unusual to do so at that time, but it was an interisland freight plane.

Anyway, on the morning that Kennedy was shot they slammed shut the presses because they were going to have to lay out a whole new edition to print. When they stopped the presses the whole building shook! The presses were so huge and so heavy. Ordinarily they shut down the presses slowly but not this morning. It was very rarely done!

GOODSILL: Ah! What years were you doing this work?

TAYLOR: In 1958 Stephen was in first grade. So I started around 1962 and I worked there for about 30 years. I sometimes wrote about weddings and wrote obituaries. I got a kick out of it all, except for the obituaries.

GOODSILL: You were a celebrity to me since you were in the newspaper “Ooh, Lois Taylor!” And I remember you had a glamorous photo next to your column.

TAYLOR: We have a Star Bulletin alumni club and we meet once a month for dim sum at Happy Days in Kaimuki. We have all aged! We knew everyone who wrote different columns. We were all in one room, the City room. The women’s section was in an alcove and the sports were across the aisle from us.

GOODSILL: What kind of work did Stan do?

TAYLOR: He was a stockbroker. I worked at night a lot because if the Mayor was going to give a party, the photographer and I would slog along. We went to all the social events and he took pictures of people dancing and that sort of thing.

GOODSILL: Did Stan ever go with you?

TAYLOR: No. He got up at the crack of dawn because of the time difference between here and New York where the Stock Exchange is. He left the house for work at 5:30 AM then came home to take a nap so he could have dinner with the kids. I did the mornings with the kids and he did the evenings. I was often just leaving all dressed up to go to some place when they were eating dinner.

GOODSILL: What changes have you seen in your industry?

TAYLOR: The biggest change is the computer. And the other thing is that the papers are much more inclusive locally. When we were married, Stan’s parents gave us a little house on Keoalolu Street. We had to go down to the Bishop Estate to change the ownership of the land. And they said, “We’ll have to meet Mrs. Taylor.” (said quietly) “They had to see that I was haole!” (said with shock and dismay!)

In the social column we pretty much stuck to the happy little parties, the kiddie parties, who was traveling to the mainland or to Europe and what they did.

GOODSILL: We have a photo of the Goodsill family going to the mainland and we are standing in front of a prop plane with lei up to our eyes. My father is in a wool suit and my mother in heels. It is a professional photo. Did your paper take these photos? How do you suppose we got it?
TAYLOR: Well after we published a photo in the paper you could buy a copy. You could call them and order copies.

It was an interesting job and a fascinating environment. I liked it and liked the people. You knew what was happening in the world. A lot of the stuff never got printed and the teletype clanked away.

GOODSILL: Talking to you has given me a glimpse into an industry I did not know anything about. Thank you for telling your story.

Interview Ends