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Dialogue Robert (Bob) C Kiste: Mentor and Friend of the Pacific brij v lal The Contemporary Pacic, Volume 31, Number 2, 477–494 © 2019 by University of Hawai‘i Press 477 Robert (Bob) C Kiste: Mentor and Friend of the Pacific Brij V Lal This article is drawn from the introduction to a previously published volume, Pacific Places, Pacific Histories: Essays in Honor of Robert C. Kiste (Lal 2004), which honors Bob Kiste and celebrates the contribution he made to the promotion of Pacific Islands studies in the latter half of the twentieth century. By the time Bob retired from the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa (uhm) in July 2002, after serving as director of the Center for Pacific Islands Stud- ies for twenty-four years, his reputation as the world’s premier encour- ager and publisher of the best scholarly research on the Pacific Islands was secure. Colleagues, collaborators, research students, staff, friends, and admirers all benefited from Bob’s support, generosity, and vision for Pacific Islands research. Bob was a remarkable person who embarked on a remarkable personal and professional journey, resulting in a fundamental, enduring contribution to Pacific Islands studies unlikely to be repeated anytime soon. Like many others, Bob found his place in the Pacific Islands through chance—or fate, if you will. His was an improbable journey. Improb- able, yes, but not exceptional, for while the roots and routes vary, with different points of departure and different personal and professional des- tinations, most of us have also come from just or nearly as improbable backgrounds. In Bob’s unplanned and unpredictable journey, we can all recognize markers of our own special moments, coded allusion to our own various dispersals, sounds of our own footsteps. Like him, many of us are pioneers in our own way: the first in our families to graduate from college, enjoy secure academic careers, make enduring cross-cultural friendships, travel to distant and sometimes previously unheard of places, or simply do something outside the realm of family tradition. We are all full of “firsts” The Contemporary Pacic, Volume 31, Number 2, 478–494 © 2019 by University of Hawai‘i Press 478 dialogue • lal 479 of one sort or another. Like many of us, Bob was a man of many places whose ideas and imagination of those places changed over time. Change, in fact, was a constant in Bob’s life. When I first proposed the idea of a book of essays to Bob sometime in the late 1990s—which appeared as Pacific Places, Pacific Histories in 2004—he was genuinely taken by surprise. He was flattered at the thought but felt he did not deserve the honor. He was that kind of person: prod- uct of an earlier generation, slightly reticent, emotionally uncomfortable in the public limelight, not one to bask in the glory of his achievements, always distributing credit around. When I persisted, he agreed to let me proceed but on the firm understanding that, while he would cooperate, he would prefer not to know what the book was about or who might be asked to contribute to it. I respected his request, eventually compiling a list of the “usual suspects” with the assistance of some of Bob’s close friends and colleagues, all of whom agreed to abide by my request to keep the project secret from him. When contributions began arriving on my desk, I needed to talk to Bob about his life. He agreed, though still with no firm idea of the theme of the proposed book nor of the contributors. We met in his office in uhm’s Moore Hall in late January 2002, and over a weekend of sustained conversation, several hours long (all on tape), I obtained details of Bob’s journey. He was completely candid about people and places he had encoun- tered, about his own disadvantaged family life in the American Midwest, his professional work and its satisfactions and disappointments, and his reflections on the Island world he had come to call home. What follows is based largely on our conversation—but not all of it is, I should hasten to add, because some things in the privacy of a confidential conversation must perforce remain private. Bob Kiste was born on 26 August 1936, into a poor family in remote, rural Spencer, Indiana, population two thousand. His father, Edgar, and his mother, Hazel, were typical Midwesterners of their time in their atti- tudes, values, social relationships, and expectations of what life had to offer. That is, they were devotedly churchgoing, unskilled, and untrav- eled, eking out a meager existence at the end of the Great Depression, the father as a factory employee and the mother as a housewife, living in rented, small, inner-city apartments in Indianapolis. That experience of poverty and deprivation, that limited and limiting life, marked them as it marked Bob. Rural Indiana was not going to be his place if he could help it, he decided early in life. He began dreaming of something different, 480 the contemporary pacific • 31:2 (2019) more adventurous, more meaningful than fifty-mile family reunion car trips between Indianapolis and Spencer. I know the feeling well, coming from a village background myself. An awareness of places beyond the dusty, featureless horizons of the rural Midwest came to Bob slowly, through big books and bigger encyclo- pedia sets that traveling salesmen sold to families keen to give their children an education they themselves did not have, and through the bedtime stories that his mother read to him. One book—the first he really remem- bered—that made a deep impression on him, that fired his imagination and interest in strange and faraway places (after all those years, he still had a copy of it), was Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels (1941). It is an accessibly written and profusely illustrated collection of stories that curious children everywhere still find enchanting: stories about great rivers, bridges, pyramids, and tall buildings, about mythical places and monumental historical events, about Athena’s Temple, and Kheope’s and Khepron’s tombs, about Alexandria and the Tiger of the Alps. Even now, more than a half century later, they make faraway places come alive, their magic fresh. For instance, Baghdad (before the bombs!): “The domes are shining so brightly they seem to be on fire. Groves of palm trees close around them, trees that wave in the hot desert wind. A broad river, lined with garden, flows nearby. Overhead is the burning sunset sky” (Halli- burton 1941, 159). Bob went to Arsenal Technical School with no idea of what he really wanted to do, trying his hand at carpentry, drafting, and print workshop. Literature and history, as taught by Midwestern teachers with limited intellectual and cultural backgrounds, with emphasis on dates and dry facts, held no appeal for him. That deadening experience of rote learning is familiar to many of us. More interested in sports than study—sports, not religion, is the opium of the masses, including well-heeled university pro- fessors!—Bob left high school with an undistinguished academic record. He also left behind him a narrow fundamentalist faith that regarded all pleasure-giving things as evil—drinking, smoking, sex, cinema, even soft drinks—and a culture that regarded anything different—Jews, Catho- lics, African Americans, and other minority groups—as undesirable and threatening. After high school, university. Ambition was one thing, though, and financing university education quite another. That problem, too, is familiar to many of us. Fortunately for Bob, the Korean War provided a way out. By 1954, the shooting war was over, but young boys, including dialogue • lal 481 many of Bob’s friends and contemporaries, were still being drafted into the army. Draftees were entitled to three years of university education on the GI Bill, volunteers four years. Bob volunteered. He joined the army. Unfortunately, accounting and finance, his allotted tasks there, did not suit Bob’s temperament, and his lack of enthusiasm was noticed. Prospects for promotion and a fatter paycheck looked decidedly bleak. Bob began looking for alternatives. When an overseas posting opportunity presented itself, a friend—a fellow Hoosier in the personnel section—managed to get him listed for Hawai‘i. The other alternative—no alternative at all—was a winter posting in Korea. In December 1955, Bob took a troop ship to Honolulu. He recalled: “I had no idea that the voyage upon which I was embarking would have enormous consequences for the rest of my life.” His first encounter with the Pacific taught him that Magellan was flat wrong—even though he did not know then who Magellan was, he told me with a chuckle. The Pacific Ocean was anything but pacific. Hawai‘i was different, though. It hooked him the moment he saw it for the first time from the deck of his ship at dawn, just before Christmas 1955. “I knew I was seeing something special,” he said, “something very special. I was struck by the place. Nothing in my imagination had prepared me for this experience.” The contrast with what he had left behind could not have been greater. Nor more welcome. By the time his tour of duty was over two years later, Bob had decided to stay in Honolulu, lured by the seductive beauty of the place, its relaxed multicultural lifestyle, and the youthful pleasures of the beer-soaked beach culture of Waikīkī. He was scheduled to leave in August, enough time to get his papers processed. Unfortunately for him, the departure date had been advanced to July without his knowledge, the discharge papers still not finalized.

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