A trip to the Big Island of Hawaii earlier this year brought my wife and me into contact with a small piece of Connecticut history. The story has its beginning during the latter part of the 18th century with the birth of a young Hawaiian by the name of Opukaha'ia. From his own account, written much later, both of his parents were killed during one of the frequent territorial wars that were fairly common with primitive tribes. Opukaha'ia, who was 10 or 12 at the time, fled from the warring parties carrying his infant brother on his back. A spear thrown by a tribal adversary found its mark and killed his baby brother.

After living for some time with an uncle, Opukaha'ia yearned to leave the island and find a place to live in peace. With the arrival of a sealing ship in Kealakekua Bay, he saw his opportunity to flee the island. Upon boarding the ship, he met another Hawaiian lad, Thomas Hopoo, and together they arranged to leave the island. It was while Opukaha'ia was on the ship that the sailors anglicized his name to Henry Obookiah; the name we commonly use when referring to him today.

Edwin Dwight and other Yale students began to tutor Obookiah, and Edwin's uncle, Yale President and Congregational minister Dr. Timothy Dwight took Obookiah into his own home. Later, after leaving New Haven, Obookiah moved from farm to farm around Torringford and Litchfield, Connecticut, Andover, Massachusetts and Hollis, New Hampshire, planting, harvesting and always studying. Under the tutelage of various instructors, in a single decade, Obookiah went from illiteracy to eloquence and excellence in speech and writing.

By 1817, a dozen students, six of them Hawaiians including Obookiah, were training at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut to bring the Christian faith to people around the world. However, the following year Obookiah fell ill with typhus fever. Though at first seeming to respond to treatment, Obookiah soon grew weaker and died on February 17, 1818. Before he died, Obookiah expressed his desire to return to Hawaii when he said, "Oh! How I want to see Hawaii! But I think I never shall - God will do right - He knows what is best."

Obookiah was buried in a hillside cemetery in Cornwall, Connecticut, where he remained for 175 years. In 1993, a group of his descendants, spearheaded by Deborah Lee, a distant cousin to Obookiah, arranged for the remains to be returned to Hawaii. Connecticut State Archaeologist Dr. Nicholas Bellantoni assisted by Dave Cooke, Dick LaRose, Gary Hottin and Mike Park, who was Dr. Bellantoni's instructor of osteology at Central Connecticut State College, performed the exhumation over a two-day period in July 1993. Obookiah's remains were then removed to Henry Fuqua's funeral facilities in the north end of Hartford. It was here that Dr. Bellantoni and Mike Park did a complete forensic examination of the bones after which they were placed anatomically in a koa wood coffin that had been flown in from Hawaii. Large green ti leaves that were brought by his descendants from Hawaii were placed in each corner of the coffin for Henry's return journey home.

Following a memorial service at the United Church of Christ in Cornwall, Obookiah's remains were returned to Hawaii and re-interred at Kahikolu Cemetery in Napo'opo'o, overlooking Kealakekua Bay in South Kona; the bay where he first fled his native land so many years before.

After Obookiah's death, his friend, Edwin Dwight, published the young islander's "Memoirs" in the form of a brief biography. The little book so stirred the interest of New Englanders in Hawaii as a field for missionary work that in 1820, fourteen missionaries volunteered to carry his message to the Hawaiian Islands. One of those sailing with that first company of missionaries was Thomas Hopoo, the fellow Hawaiian who had traveled to America with Obookiah.

While my wife and I were in Hawaii, we had the opportunity to meet Deborah Lee and to visit the cemetery where Obookiah was re-interred. At that time we also attended a special service commemorating Henry Obookiah. Most of the Christian churches in Hawaii, on one Sunday in February, continue to remember and honor Obookiah as the first Hawaiian convert to Christianity and a young man whose zeal was the inspiration for the first missionaries who ventured to Hawaii. And now, after so many years, Obookiah is finally home.