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Doubtful about taking on Attorney Anthony's offer in Honolulu, Quinn discussed it with an old St. Louis friend, Bill James. Remarking on the possibilities in growing Hawaii, James said prophetically: "If you go, you'll be Governor in ten years." The Quinns, by then parents of two children, talked it over. Says Bill: "That Boston weather was wet that winter, and the kids' snow suits wouldn't get dry, and Nancy wasn't feeling very well—so she said, 'Lord, let's go!";
The Push. The Quinns moved into a house on Portlock Road near Diamond Head, where many a newcoming mainland family settled down. A bright lawyer, gifted with exuberant charm and bottomless energy, Bill soon had his teeth sunk into virtually every aspect of island life that appealed to him—especially theatricals (Mr. Roberts, Brigadoon) and politics ("Politics is a happy combination of theater and law"). Some acquaintances say that Quinn was really a Democrat, but switched to the G.O.P. because the Democratic Party in the islands lacked stability and purpose. Says he: "I had a choice: I could either join the Democratic Party and drag my feet or join the Republican Party and push. I decided to push."
Quinn had plenty of pushing room. Before long he was addressing meetings, joining the Community Chest (he later became chairman), becoming active in Roman Catholic Church groups. His trademark was his singing voice, and rare was the gathering that Quinn did not entertain with a sweet version of Ke Kali Nei Au, the old Hawaiian wedding song. "Boy," says one friend, "if there was a microphone in the room, you could bet that Bill Quinn would wind up in front of it."
Flowering Business. Just as Quinn was winding up for big things, so were Hawaii's booming new enterprisers. Millionaire Chinn Ho, 55, became the first Oriental director of a major island estate, also heads his own investment and land-development combine. Others started up airlines, banks, insurance companies and scores of smaller businesses ("The poor Chinese," goes a Hawaiian gag, "is the one who washes his own Cadillac"). From the mainland, too, came fresh capital and nien with big ideas. Pink-cheeked Millionaire Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser jolted the Big Five by plunking down $18 million for an apartment-hotel resort called "Hawaiian Village," starting a $350 million "dream city" in Oahu's Kokohead area. Sheraton Hotels took over four splendid Waikiki Beach hotels, including the Royal Hawaiian and Moana, and made them pay. The venerable Bank of Hawaii brought in a new president from California, Rudy Peterson, and Peterson in turn brought with him such surefire mainland business-getters as charge accounts for credit loans and a factoring system for a growing textile industry.
Another innovator was ex-Army Mess Sergeant Maurice Sullivan (now married to the daughter of a Chinese grocer) who combined with other small grocers in Oahu to buy food stocks by carload lot direct from mainland suppliers. Soon he eliminated Big Five middlemen, who had long controlled virtually all imports from the mainland, is now the owner of the modernistic, eleven-store Foodland chain of supermarkets.