Center for Labor Education & Research, University of Hawaii - West Oahu: Honolulu Record Digitization Project

Honolulu Record, Volume 10 No. 7, Thursday, September 12, 1957 p. 2

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New Sunset Mortuary First To Be Built Outside City Limits

The first mortuary outside the city of Honolulu on Oahu was dedicated last Saturday at the Sunset Memorial Park Cemetery in Pearl City.

It will serve rural Oahu, as well as the city area.

Its services include an insurance program which is planned to help take care of funeral and burial needs. The insurance plan underwritten by Grand Pacific. Insurance Co. can be converted into cash. Because rural Oahu is populated mainly by workers' families, the management of Sunset says the insurance program will be of assistance to the residents.

Sunset Memorial Park with its new building, which combines chapel and mortuary, represents an investment of more than $150.000. Pour years of planning and organizing resulted in the present expansion.

When completed it will have more than 12,000 interment and urn properties. Its area is seven acres.

The Garden of Eternity for urns now being completed is the first open, outdoor type in the Territory. A waterfall and rock garden will, be located by the garden. The garden is located next to the mortuary and will accommodate 850 urns.

An urn garden with five times the capacity of the Garden of Eternity will be built in a beautifully landscaped area.

In about six months, according to Gordon K. Wongham, president of the Sunset Funeral Home. Ltd., outdoor garden patio crypts should be completed.

Presently a $3,500 shrine measuring about seven feet in height is being completed in Kyoto, Japan. The funeral home will provide services for all faiths.

The chapel has sliding shoji doors replacing some walls, and the interior decor of the whole building follows the Oriental motif. The color scheme throughout the interior is turquoise, aqua, silver and charcoal.

p /> I do not say that at odd hours a patient must be given the regular hot dinner or supper. Few people would expect this.
 
But what is so complicated about opening and heating a can of soup, making some toast, or preparing instant coffee or tea? Why cannot a night nurse do these simple things after the kitchen to closed? Is it just too much trouble?

It is only common humanity to feed the hungry. If our hospitals are too big, too complex, too impersonal to do these small kindnesses for the sick, something is very wrong.