With the 50th and last annual reunion of the Church College of New Zealand set for next month in Temple View and the impending closure of CCNZ [New Zealanders pronounce the letter 'Z' as "zed") at the end of 2009, the annual conference of the Mormon Pacific Historical Society (MPHS) from March 21-22 on campus focused on the rich heritage of the Latter-day Saint high school and some of its ties to BYU-Hawaii.
As at Church College of Hawaii, which was renamed BYU-Hawaii in 1974, labor missionaries built CCNZ and the nearby New Zealand Temple in the 1950s. Some of those same labor missionaries were then called to similar service in Laie, where they helped extend the CCH campus, built the Polynesian Cultural Center and other projects. MPHS was founded at BYU-Hawaii in 1980 to help collect and study just such history.
Among the MPHS 2008 conference highlights:
• Keynote speaker Rangi Parker [pictured at upper left] from Temple View, New Zealand, shared selected results of her efforts over the past 20 years to collect old photos, journals and other memorabilia from former Latter-day Saint missionaries and their descendants. Some of her work is now on display in the New Zealand Temple Visitors Center.
"I've had the most amazing experiences of my life," she said of her frequent research trips to the U.S. mainland. For example, she showed a video clip in which James Crool of Blackfoot, Idaho, gave her a piupiu or traditional Maori flax-reed skirt that was worn at the signing of the treaty between the indigenous Polynesians and the British at Waitangi in 1840. The piupiu had been given to his father, Rulon James Crool, who started serving a mission in New Zealand at age 16, almost 100 years ago.
"This piupiu is very special to me," the younger Crool said, "and I know it means a lot in the cultural lives of te iwi Maori [tribes], and I'd appreciate if you would take this back with our love... It belongs with them. It doesn't belong in America."
In a reverse incident, she told of meeting the descendant of a former missionary in New Zealand, William Steward, and being able to give him a copy of his great-grandfather's journal.
• Dr. Jerold Ottley, who has been teaching on campus along with his wife for the past three years, recounted how being asked as an 18-year-old labor missionary in New Zealand to form a choir eventually led to his position as former director of the world-famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Prior to that time, he recalled, he was only interested in instrumental music.
"We had become known for a version of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah, a cappella, because we didn't have any accompanists," he said of their entry in Hamilton's Winter Fair. In awarding the missionaries first prize, a distinguished looking Maori judge said, "Watch this young man's hands, because they're hands of destiny. I had no idea at that time what he was talking about."
Ottley also proudly displayed the Maori whalebone carving former New Zealand labor missionaries gave him in 1988 when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir visited there.
• Dr. Scott Esplin, Church history professor at BYU in Provo, noted the importance of education traces back to the earliest days of the Church, with missionaries often starting up schools in remote areas, such as the South Pacific. In the 1880s President Wilford Woodruff encouraged stakes to establish scholastic academies, some of which still exist today, including BYU, while others have become public institutions, such as Weber State University in Utah and Laie Elementary School.
But most of these have closed according to Church policy regarding secular education dating back to the 1920s, Esplin explained. For example, the Maori Agricultural College (MAC) in Korongota, New Zealand, was slated to close when a serious earthquake irrevocably damaged the campus in 1931. The policy has also extended to more recent Church Educational System school closures in the South Pacific, including a primary school in Tahiti, Mapusaga High School in America Samoa, Pesega Elementary in Samoa, and CCNZ at the end of the school year in November 2009.
"The policy of the Church was to eliminate Church schools as fast as circumstances permitted," he said, noting the education of Saints in those areas previously served would be augmented by Seminaries and Institutes. He also said the establishment of CCNZ was largely due to the persuasiveness of Elder Matthew Cowley, and that the high school was allowed to continue as an "exception" until an "agonizing" decision — after two years of study and a personal visit by President Gordon B. Hinckley — was announced in 2006 to close it.
Esplin said the decision may prove to be another milestone for the Church in the Pacific as the influence of Latter-day Saint students then spreads more widely across New Zealand.
Other items covered at the MPHS conference included:
- Dr. Matt Kester, BYU-Hawaii Archivist, reported hundreds of digitized old photos and copies of missionary journals have been added over the past year to the online special collections of the BYU-Hawaii Archives, which are located on the second floor of the Joseph F. Smith Library.
- A paper by MPHS co-founder (along with the late Dr. Lance Chase) and BYUH history professor emeritus Dr. Kenneth Baldridge on the history of the Maori Agricultural College, a 1913-31 predecessor to CCNZ.
- Panel discussions by former New Zealand labor missionaries, and CCNZ faculty members.
Former New Zealand labor missionaries now living in Laie (left-right) who participated in the MPHS conference: Percy Te Hira, Leonard Ah Mu, Waha Elkington, Stan Curnow and George Kaka sang several of their missionary anthems
For more information on the Mormon Pacific Historical Society...