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They make the miles slip away.
Blending just the right music with interesting banter and, at times, important, breaking news, radio DJs have long served as our travel companions on Maui's roadways. Many a drive around this island has been spent with the likes of McAvoy Layne, Fusayo Koike, Ron Vaught, Kathy Collins, Henry "Boy" Kana'e, Pat Patterson, Kenny Cruise and too many others to name. They got us from A to B, from Lahaina to Kaupo.
AM radio was still king when we started at The Maui News. There were dark, early-morning drives listening to an Oahu station for about 10 minutes before the signal disappeared on the turn onto old Mokulele Highway. We'd go from Larry King telling stories in a fancy New York studio to Filipino programming on KMVI. The music seemed happy, and while most of the words spoken by the fast-talking DJ did not compute, there would occasionally be a "Noda Market" or "Hinode rice" to give context.
FM overtook AM as the dominant format, and now we have satellite radio, podcasts and streaming. The DJ you're listening to could be thousands of miles away or a voice recorded days or months earlier. That's one of the things we appreciate most about Maui's beloved nonprofit, all-volunteer, Mana'o Radio. The station's DJ-driven programming can be eclectic, but you know it is live and from the heart.
For the past few years, our Friday evening drives were uplifted by a show on Mana'o called, "Down Deep With Duncan Mack." We never met Mack, but could picture him dancing around the studio with a big smile on his face as he spun James Brown's "Gonna Have a Funky Good Time." He played the song every Friday, cutting in occasionally to drop silly puns and observations. Other regular bits were his Zen poetry moment and weekly essay on life, love, happiness and, eventually, the pancreatic cancer that took his life.
As his voice grew weaker and his essays more resigned to his fate, we're sure we are not the only stranger who was relieved and happy to tune in and hear him on the air. Or to shed a tear when they learned he had passed away last week.
Mack's self-avowed goal was to "enliven us, to give us joy and pleasure, to bring us together in a community that is animated by the shared experience and the collective satisfactions we get in taking the journey together."
Many DJs have roamed this island's airwaves, but none like Mack. The station's independent format allowed him to chart his own course, which he seemed to take as a challenge to deliver us to a better place than when we started. Mack's wisdom and positivity, his love of life and for this island's people made our Friday night journeys a weekly highlight.
Thank you, Duncan Mack, for all the wonderful rides.