Shirley is a retired teacher of English, Speech and Drama who has taught in Hawai’i, Michigan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. As the youngest of seven children of a mother who cooked Chinese and a former Hawaiian cowboy father who made great pumpkin pies and beef stew, she didn't have to do much in the kitchen. But this changed with marriage, children and a move to the "mainland." No longer able to depend on family or the profusion of inexpensive culinary establishments of Honolulu, she had to learn fast if she were to enjoy any of the foods she had grown up with. A quick study, she delighted her family and students as she further honed her skills through her involvement with the Flint International Institute, for whom she produced an annual ethnic festival. Her teriyaki "shish kebobs" earned so much money for the Institute that she became the youngest "Honorary Member" in its history.
When challenged by Lisa to go into the restaurant business, she expanded favorite family recipes to feed a crowd. After a summer of recipe testing, menu planning , kitchen organization, and training of cooks, Shirley managed to return to teaching in the fall, confident in the foundation she and Lisa had established for the business. She also visited the restaurant frequently to cast a critical eye --- and taste buds in order to keep the hired chefs to the high standards she had set.
As enjoyable and gratifying as the experience was, Shirley could not resist the opportunity to join her husband, a former professor and Director of Theater at the University of Michigan, Flint, in teaching jobs abroad. Returning from overseas, she retired again in 1996. However, as a volunteer teacher of English, she continues to "purvey culture" (as a dear friend puts it) to foreign wives, often interrupting language lessons to show them how to produce a healthy breakfast of oatmeal! She resides in Honolulu, Hawai'i with her husband, Gene.
Lisa is an organizational effectiveness consultant and leadership coach to major corporations (see her website at CreativeChange.biz). She is the product of a multicultural household --- Chinese-Hawaiian on her mother’s side and French-Italian on her father’s side. Throughout Lisa’s childhood her family was active in international activities and introduced their communities to their special multicultural cuisine --- whether it was fund-raisers for local charities or entertaining friends at home or in the restaurants they later owned and operated. By high school, Lisa had also caught the entrepreneurial bug --- baking bread and sweets for the local farmers’ market.
In college, as a social science major, living in Japan, first as a student and later working for United Press International, she became well acquainted with contemporary Japanese cuisine and cooking trends. Little wonder then that Lisa dropped out of graduate school to go into the restaurant business! She opened her first operation in 1981, running it for six years before opening the Diamond Head Cafe in Kerrytown, Ann Arbor, a charming old world style mall. She developed the restaurant concept and recipes for the Diamond Head Cafe, which she ran for another six years before retiring in 1993.
Writing Remembering Diamond Head, Remembering Hawai’i was a five year project that combined writing and recipe testing with a deep exploration of her cultural heritage. Lisa continues to indulge in her love of food. She reads cookbooks and cooking magazines, is a member of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor, and of course, continues to experiment with fusion cooking!
Remembering Diamond Head,
Remembering Hawai'i