James Austin Wilder
If you were a Boy Scout, a citizen of the Territory of Hawai'i, an artist, or just an American kid in the first half of the Twentieth Century, there's a good chance that you would have heard of "Kimo" Wilder, or "Pine Tree Jim" as he was known in some circles. You might have read one of his books: Jack-Knife Cookery or The Pine Tree Patrol. You could have seen his movie, Knights of the Square Table, about Boy Scouts, starring Wilder and now lost forever. You could have seen his portrait of Prince Kuhio (Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole) hanging in the Throne Room of the Iolani Palace. Perhaps you would have witnessed his pageant on the island of Kauai depicting the arrival of Captain Cook in the Hawaiian Islands. If you were really lucky, you might have been a member of his Boy Scout Troop, "The Queen's Own," sponsored by deposed Queen Liliuokalani. It was one of the first troops in the U.S. A little later, you could have been part of his Sea Scout Ship. Wilder was one of the most fascinating characters of his time. He was born and died in Hawai'i, but lived in many parts of the world and traveled, literally, around it.
James Austin Wilder was born in 1868, the son of a prominent businessman, Samuel Gardner Wilder. The senior Wilder was a Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, under King David Kalakaua. Wilder himself once played poker with the king. He didn't understand the stakes and the teenager lost a rather large sum of money to the king. He shamefacedly had to ask his father for it. Samuel gave him the money and the king's chamberlain had the good grace to forgive the debt and return the money. Wilder never gambled after that. Few Americans today think about the Kingdom of Hawai'i or its end. In short, however, the kingdom was a constitutional monarchy, governed by sovereigns who were elected. It was also a multiethnic kingdom, in which citizens and government officials might be of any race. The Wilders were strong monarchists and were prepared to fight to defend the kingdom. The revolution, when it came in 1898, was bloodless and there was no fighting to be done. The family later became United States citizens and supported the U.S. government ever after.
As a youth, Kimo went to military school and to Harvard with Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, who later served as a Territorial Delegate to Congress. They remained friends (even though when they were adults Kuhio admitted it was he who had stuffed gum in Wilder's bugle at a parade, causing Kimo a great loss of face), until the death of the Prince. Wilder was a bearer of a Kahili, the ceremonial black-feathered staff carried at funerals of Hawaiian royalty, one of a very few non-Hawaiians ever to do so.
As a young man, Jamie, as his family called him, went off to Japan, the Ryuku Islands, Borneo, Guam and Ascension Islands in a span of three or four years. He married Sarah Harndon, who was later known to all in Hawai'i as "The Divine Sarah," in 1899, and together they traveled the world. The couple traveled to Japan, Southeast Asia, India, Europe and sometime later spent months in Bora Bora and Tunisia. During their travels they managed to have two children, who tagged along on their around-the-world jaunts.
The family always had fascinating adventures. Of course, the world was a very different place then than now. Wilder's personality, gracious and charming, allowed him to, shall we say, "con" his way into and out of many interesting situations. They once smuggled a large quantity of his favorite pipe tobacco into Spain, which was strictly forbidden, by tucking the cans under Sarahs' voluminous skirts. On another occasion, Wilder managed to "distract" a customs official to the extent that he was able to get a brand-new automobile into France without paying duty on it. His life was interesting enough that his daughter, Elizabeth Kinau Wilder, wrote a book, Wilders of Waikiki, about their adventures.
Wilder was a portrait painter and a very good one. Most of his art has been lost or disappeared into private hands, but some remains. His portrait of Prince Kuhio is stored away in the dusty vaults of the Hawai'i State Archives. Fortunately, he didn't have to earn his living that way, because he seems to have given much of his work away. He had a good income from his share of his late father's shipping company and a very good manager to make the money prosper, so, while he was never a rich man, he always lived comfortably.
It's hard to say exactly when Kimo got the scouting bug, but it was quite early and it consumed the rest of his life. Lieutenant General Baden-Powell (pronounced Poe - El) had written some books on scouting in England, where a movement had started by 1907 and Wilder was certainly aware of it. He started the Queen's Own in 1911. That same year, Kimo and Harvey Hitchcock started what is now the Aloha Council, Boy Scouts of America, in Honolulu. Wilder was the first Scout Commissioner, which meant he was the (unpaid) executive head of the organization. In 1917, he started Sea Scouting in Hawai'i. He wasn't the first to realize the value of a program just for older boys, but he was the one who made it happen. His connections in Washington and at Scout Headquarters in New York, along with his financial independence, made him the man for the job. He went to James E. West, head of the B.S.A., and suggested they make this an official Scouting program. West objected that they had no funding and nobody available to take on the job full-time. Kimo volunteered to take on the job and fund the department himself. He thus became the first and only Chief Sea Scout of the United States. Out of his efforts came Senior Scouting, Exploring, Venturing and all the other programs that exist in Boy Scouting today for older youth (girls included). His friendship with the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ensured that the Sea Scouts were able to play a role in World War One and thereby establish themselves in the eyes of the nation.
The Wilders had a home on the beach in Waikiki, on the spot where the Halekulani Hotel now stands, next to the Royal Hawaiian, which still sits in pink splendor on the beach. They had another up on Round Top, Tantalus, high above Honolulu. Whenever the couple was in Hawai'i, their homes were always filled with a variety of people: the rich and famous of the world, the upper crust of society in Hawai'i and the beach boys who would come and sing for them in the evenings. It was a fairly idyllic life in a Hawai'i that is gone forever.
In 1929, the Chief Sea Scout was asked to represent the B.S.A. at the second international Scout jamboree in England. Off he went, to be wined and dined all across the U.S. and Europe. When he returned, he was not well. Overweight and hypertensive anyway, the trip had done him in. He suffered a couple of minor strokes on his trip and a big one in 1930 that left him an invalid. According to his daughter, he had just met with a local Scout official, with whom he had a major argument. He continued to enjoy life as much as he could, although he eventually became blind. For an artist, this must have been a very hard blow. He was awarded one of the very early Silver Buffalo awards, the highest award in American Scouting, in 1930.
It's typical of Kimo that his life would intertwine with the rich, the famous, world and Hawaiian history. His daughter Kinau would marry Charles Butler McVay, III, a naval officer who was later the captain of the ill-fated cruiser Indianapolis. Sunk by a Japanese submarine returning from delivering the nuclear bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, many of the crew died. McVay survived and was unfairly convicted by a Navy Court Martial of negligence, despite much evidence that he was doing all that he could to keep the ship safe. In 1998, McVay was to be officially cleared by a special act of Congress, but he was long dead by then. Many old-timers in Hawai'i have heard of the tragic death of Wilders' older brother Samuel, who died at age eight, hours after falling into a vat of boiling sugar at the family mill at Kualaloa. The ruins of the mill can still be seen driving up the windward coast of O'ahu. There are streets in Honolulu named "Wilder" and "Judd." (Wilders' mother was a Judd).
Wilder could remember seeing Mark Twain during a visit to Honolulu during which time he, of course, paid a visit to the senior Wilders. Edwin Booth, the famous actor and brother of John Wilkes Booth visited overnight at their home.
Wilder had many scouting adventures over the twenty odd years of his career. Shortly after the troop was founded, a ceremony was held on the lawn of Washington Place, home of Queen Liliuokalani. The deposed queen presented them a banner she had sewed herself, with her motto, Oni Pa'a (Stand Fast) on it. Ceremonies ran long and the troop set off late for a hike across the Koolau Mountains for a planned campout on the windward shores. It started raining and Wilder decided they would camp far short of their goal, not even over the crest of the mountains. The boys put up their tents, but they proved less than waterproof. A lot less. Starting a fire was impossible. Just in the nick of time, the Divine Sarah showed up in a car with a big pot of stew and helped get the Scouts across the road to the Honolulu Country Club, where they spent the night in a basement.
Wilder always looked forward to an annual Sea Scout Camp held by the B.S.A. at spots on the East Coast of the U.S. mainland. He took a very active part in these during the early 1920's, sailing and leading activities. He kept a log of at least two of these, which now repose in the state archives of Hawai'i. On the final page of one of these, he wrote the following: "Boys begin to go at about eleven. This is quite sad. At least ten of them thank me–for what? I thank them. . . . Very sad. . . .I have a lump. . . Raining! All over!"
In 1934, James Austin Wilder passed away, leaving a great legacy. His books, his programs, his ideas, but most of all his personality would long be remembered by all who knew him. The number of young men and women who have been touched by his program and those that have resulted from it is impossible to calculate. Wilder was American hero and should be today an icon. Sadly, he is remembered very little. A liberty ship was named for him during WWII and of course he is memorialized in the current Sea Scout Manual, but there is no memorial to him in Hawaii or on the mainland, other than a small Sea Scout emblem at his grave site in Oahu Cemetery. Ironically, his grave is just a few steps away from the grave of the man who is considered the founder of modern baseball, Alexander Joy Cartwright. There is a large plaque on the road leading to Cartwright's grave, but not even a sign pointing to Wilder's.
© Winston R. Davis, 2005. All rights reserved.
Wilders of Waikiki by Kinau Wilder. Honolulu, Hawai'i. Topgallant Publishing Co., Ltd. 1978
The Pine Tree Patrol by James Austin Wilder, B.A., F.R.G.S. New York, New York. Boy Scouts of America. 1930.
Jack-Knife Cookery by James Austin Wilder. New York, New York. E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1929.
Knights of the Square Table (also known as The Grail). Copy of script in Hawai'i State Archives. According to notes there, the movie itself was destroyed by fire in 1921.
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