People Briefs
People Briefs
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Erin Coleman has become the first female pilot for Air Marshall Islands. It may take a while, however, for islanders used to an all-male cast of pilots to get accustomed to seeing Coleman in the cockpit as an experience on her first flight in August demonstrated. “There was one woman on the flight from Kwajalein,” she said. “When I closed the door of the plane, she said, ‘oh how nice, we have a stewardess.’ I said, ‘no, I’m a pilot. Please fasten your seatbelt.’” Coleman, daughter of Elma and Dike Coleman, gained her U.S. commercial pilot’s license after more than a year of flight training in Honolulu.
The new chief pilot of Guam-based Asia Pacific Airlines is a woman from Rota in the Northern Mariana Islands. Captain Alicia Atalig, recently took on the job with Asia Pacific. The airline flies fish, mail and other cargo in and out of Palau, Chuuk, Yap, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Majuro as well as Hong Kong, Manila and Manado in Indonesia.
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Grant H. Ismael is the new administrator of the Kosrae Visitors Bureau. The appointment was made in late August by the KVB’s board of directors. Ismael, who comes from a prominent Kosraean family, heads a recently privatized visitors bureau. Also appointed were Assistant Administrator Justus Alokoa and office secretary Juanita B. Charley.
Michael Field, the Agence France Presse’s Pacific correspondent who has written extensively on Nauru’s off-shore banking industry that has been accused of laundering billions of dollars in Russian Mafia funds, was banned from entering Nauru to cover the Pacific Forum in August. He was banned last year from covering the Forum in Kiribati because of stories about pollution in Tarawa, and is also barred from entering Tonga. In an editorial, The Dominion of New Zealand, commented on Nauru’s action: “Muzzling the media is the resort of failing leaders, not far-sighted ones.”
Adm. Dennis C. Blair, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Command (CINCPAC) told senior policymakers, defense officials and academic experts from the United States, Asia and the Pacific recently at the East-West Center that Asian nations are realizing that “no framework for security in the Asia-Pacific region will be complete without unprecedented cooperation among regional armed forces.” Blair said there is growing awareness that force alone will not quell insurgency without political accommodation. Federated States of Micronesia President Leo A. Falcam, U.S. Congressman Doug Bereuter and former U.S. Ambassador to S. Korea, Tunisia and the Philippines Stephen W. Bosworth were among the high level participants.
Sue Rabbit Roff, a senior research fellow at Dundee University in Australia, investigating British nuclear tests at Maralinga during the 1950s, said that recently obtained documents from the Australian Archives prove that servicemen were used as nuclear guinea pigs. “The British government lied in court on the issue of whether or not British and Australian service personnel had been used deliberately for human experiments during nuclear weapons tests in Australia,” she said.
Northern Marianas College President Joaquin M. Sablan, Jr. has been voted the new chairman of the Pacific Postsecondary Education Council, replacing the outgoing chairperson, Susan Moses, President of the College of Micronesia in Pohnpei. All colleges in the Micronesian region, the American Samoan Community College and the University of Hawaii and Hawaii community colleges are members of the council.
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The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project announced the addition of two prominent Pacific Republicans: David J. Sablan of Guam and American Samoa’s Amata Coleman Radewagen as new members of the Project’s National Board of Advisors. The non-partisan board, comprising prominent political, business and policy leaders, advises the Project in its goal to dedicate more landmarks after President Reagan. Sablan is a local Guam business executive and chairman of the Republican Party of Guam; Radewagen runs the Pacific Islands Republic Liaison Office in Washington.
Continental Micronesia President Bill Meehan received a recognition award from U.S. Commander-in-Chief Pacific Admiral Dennis Blair for the airline’s help in returning the 24 crew members of the U.S. Navy surveillance plane from China to Guam earlier in the year.
Vanuatu student Anna Naupa, a master’s student in geography at the University of Hawaii, has won this year’s Heyum Endowment Scholarship, a $3,000 award. The late Renee Heyum, long-time curator of the university’s Pacific Collection established the Heyum Endowment Fund UH to assist Pacific Islanders studying in Hawaii.
Four Pacific Island women competed in the women’s 100-meter dash at the world athletic championships held in Edmonton, Canada in August: Detsalena Ollson of Nauru, Twinsannew Sam of the Federated States of Micronesia, Peoria Koshiba of Palau and Priscilla Walenenea of the Solomon Islands. Their times were about two seconds off the winners and they didn’t qualify for the finals. Of the four, Koshiba had the fastest sprint time of 13.50 seconds.
In August, American Samoa lawmakers confirmed Gov. Tauese Sunia’s nomination of Tuiteleleapaga Peseta Fue Ioane, a retired Sergeant Major of the U.S. Marine Corps., as the new police commissioner, replacing Te’o J. Fuavai, who was rejected by the Fono in March. Tuiteleleapaga, a veteran of three tours of combat duty, retired from the Marines in 1982, with notable honors, awards, citations and decorations. Also confirmed by the Fono are new cabinet members: Dr. Uiagalelei Lealofi, former Education Department official, as director of the Department of Human and Social Services; and Lauti Simona as director of the Department of Administrative Services.
Lt. Derek Dostie is the new officer in charge of the U.S. Coast Guard unit in American Samoa. He replaces Lt. Thomas Griffitts who left recently after serving a two-year tour.
The Business and Professional Women of American Samoa (BPW) has reappointed Minnie Tuia as president, serving a second term in office. Jennifer Joneson, succeeded Salaia Gabbard as first vice president, Lydia Faleafine.
Nomura succeeded Debra Willis as second vice president, Maria Walker took over from Sia’a Alama as secretary, and Merrilee May returned for a second term as treasurer.
In Memoriam American Samoa radio personality and station manager Mark Gerek was lost and presumed dead after scuba diving off Fagatele Bay in August, prompting a search and investigation of the incident by the U.S. Coast Guard. Gerek, a native of Wisconsin, had lived for several years in Portland, Oregon working in the broadcast industry, and had moved to American Samoa in March to work for KHJ-FM radio. Gerek and friend John Harrison, both scuba diving instructors, went diving together. Neither Gerek’s body nor his diving equipment had been found at press time.
The last civilian appointed governor of American Samoa, H. Rex Lee, died of pneumonia on July 26 in La Jolla, California and was buried in Cuvier Park. He was 91. A native of Rigby, Idaho, Lee was the last federally-appointed civilian governor in the Territory. He served just prior to the Territory’s first gubernatorial election in late 1977. After the election, Governor Peter Tali Coleman whom Lee succeeded in his first appointed term from 1961-1967 succeeded Lee.
