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Bishop E. Lani Hanchett 
The Rev. E. Lani Hanchett was the first priest and bishop
of the Episcopal Church of Hawaiian ancestry. Bishop Hanchett
was born in Honolulu on 2 November 1919, of Mary McGuire and
Alsoberry Kaumu Hanchett. His father was the first doctor of
Hawaiian descent to practice in these islands, the first City-County
physician in Honolulu, and the first doctor at the Shingle Memorial
Hospital in Ho'olehua, Moloka'i. Dr. Hanchett was graduated from
the Kamehameha Schools, Harvard College (A.B., 1910) and Harvard
Medical School (cum laude, 1914).
The eldest child of eight (seven boys and one girl), Bishop
Hanchett was educated at Iolani School (class of 1937), the University
of Hawai'i, and at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific,
Berkeley (1958). He was originally a pre-med. student and worked
at the City-County Hospital from 1938-1941 at the corner of Miller
and Punchbowl. The Hanchett family, notable in modern Hawaii,
is an heir of earliest New England and of ancient Kauai. They
are descended on the one hand from Thomas Hanchett, deacon, who
came to Connecticut from England about 1634, and on the other
hand from the line of Kaumualii, last King of Kauai. It was Salem
Hanchett, whaler, who had the good sense to leave New England
to become a citizen of the Hawaiian kingdom on 27 May 1848. He
married Aluha Aka, a descendant of Kaumualii. Salem farmed at
Koloa, operated a ferry on the Waimea River, and won local renown
as the "sailor who rode horseback with his wooden leg strapped
behind him." He died in Honolulu in 1893 at 97 years of
age.
E. Lani Hanchett married Puanani Akana, a graduate of St.
Andrew's Priory (class of 1937), Her family came from Kalihiwai,
Kauai, where they fished commercially, having formerly the konohiki
to squid, mullet and akule. Puanani was the fourth of nine children
born to John and Julia Spencer Akana (Priory 1911). They were
loyal church people who, when there was no priest at their church
in Kilauea, drove each Sunday the 27 miles to Kapaa. After their
marriage, Lani took a position in the Navy Yard at Pearl Harbor,
supervising the supply department servicing naval aircraft. The
attack on 7 December found him on Ford Island.
From late 1945 to 1950, Lani Hanchett worked in the Territorial
Tax Office in Lihue. He became full-time youth worker for the
island of Kauai in 1950, trained as a lay reader, and read for
orders. Ordained deacon in 1952 at the home church of the Akana
family, Christ Church, Kilauea, Kauai, he and his family left
that very day for Holy Innocents', Lahaina, Maui, where - together
with Fr. Norman Ault - he was later ordained priest by Bishop
Harry Kennedy on 19 September 1953 (Ember Saturday). That day
he stayed after the ordination for a grand Lahaina luau, with
Emma Sharpe and her family and friends in charge of food and
entertainment.
Between ordination to the diaconate and to the priesthood,
Lani and Puanani Hanchett had quite an adventure. They and the
Rev. Richard Trelease (later Dean of St. Andrew's Cathedral,
Honolulu, and a bishop of the church) and 13 Episcopal Young
Churchmen crossed and recrossed the mainland by purchased bus.
Together they visited the General Convention in Boston. The hula
they danced on the steps of Holy Trinity Church in Boston's Copley
Square was the most fun, some observers said, that Boston had
since the Tea Party!
As Archdeacon of Maui, Hanchett was instrumental in helping
the church people of that island to establish Camp Pecusa at
Oluwalu and in assisting the people of Moloka'i to establish
Grace Church, Ho'olehua. The church was located within sight
of the Shingle Memorial Hospital, in whose chapel the Hanchett
family was baptized, and where his parents both served.
At St. George's, Pearl Harbor for the year 1960-61, Fr. Hanchett
was called to St. Peter's, Honolulu in September 1961. As rector
of St. Peter's he not only served the parish, but also the diocese
as: director of summer camps and youth conferences; member of
the Board of Directors; Council of Advice; director of the Finance
Committee; committee on Christian Social Relations; Chairman
of the St. Andrew's Priory Council; and alumni representative
on the Iolani Board of Governors. He served the community at
large as a member of: the advisory board of the Queen Liliuokalani
Trust Estate; the Oahu Committee for Children and Youth; the
Board of Directors of Hawaii Planned Parenthood; chairman of
the committee for Institutional Chaplaincies of the Hawaii Council
of Churches. E. Lani Hanchett became our suffragan bishop on
30 December 1967 in St. Andrew's Cathedral, Honolulu, and later
our diocesan bishop. He died in August '75.
The Hanchetts have four children: Stuart (Iolani 1966), Carolyn
(Priory 1960), Suzanne (Priory 1963), and Tiare (Priory 1972).
The church in Hawai'i may rejoice that by the grace of God a
child of her own land and people was matured enough to be called
to serve us as priest and bishop.
- (Taken from the November 1967 Hawaiian Church Chronicle)
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