Mrs. C.C. Kennedy

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Laura Imogen Kennedy could have been the model for a 20th Century societal matriarch.

Young, beautiful and married to one of the wealthiest men in Hawaiʻi, she moved easily between Honolulu, Volcano and Hilo, where she hosted and attended dozens of dinners, balls and parties, traveled around the world, spearheaded several civic groups (including the founding of the Hilo chapter of the Outdoor Circle) and was a generous donor to all kinds of causes. She was an accomplished dancer, played the violin, and liked to golf. It’s said that she was the first woman on Hawaiʻi Island to own a car, a 1906 Cadilac that she traded in a year later for a Baker Electric Phaeton.

Her name (Mrs. C.C.  Kennedy) appeared dozens of times in local newspapers in the first few decades of the 20th Century. She was so well respected in Hilo that county officials named her an official commissioner of civic beauty and improvements. Among the improvements that she funded were an addition to the Hilo public library, a swimming pool for Hilo High, and restoration of the Falls of Clyde whaling ship, on which she had sailed into Hilo in 1900.

And she helped create the finest estate still in existence in Volcano Village, as well as the Liliokalani Gardens in Hilo.

Her husband, Charles Clark Kennedy, the inventor of a cane-loading machine, founder of the Waiakea Mill on the Big Island and later owner of Hawaii Electric Light Company, was an avid golfer and founder of Hilo’s first rowing club.  He was variously described as a businessman, financier, and “one of the leading sugar magnates in the world.” He was instrumental in building the road between Glenwood and Volcano so that he and his wife could more easily visit the area.