Manaʻo Nui proudly supports the Dave Lyman Memorial Scholarship Fund mission to enable Hawaiʻi’s aspiring maritime industry leaders to attend California State University Maritime Academy, or Cal Maritime—Captain Dave Lyman’s alma mater.

To make a very rich, memorable story short, Lyman was a prominent figure in the maritime industry in Hawaiʻi and the world. A “local boy,” as the scholarship fund vice president Captain Ed Enos explains, Lyman’s family was fairly well-known for their local community involvement. His mother taught at Punahou School; the family later became more recognized around the advent of the Hokuleʻa’s early voyages. Lyman was the senior captain of the boat in 1978, on the famed night when the Hokuleʻa crew was pressured to depart in rough weather, and the voyaging canoe capsized. Over the years, as Hawaiʻi’s harbor pilot, Lyman became the “go-to guy” to ask about anything happening in the maritime industry, appearing on radio shows, on TV stations, and in newspapers. “He was just one of those people who, once he walked into the room, things just lit up,” Enos says. “An extrovert; people just kind of gravitated toward Dave.” He sailed and took trips around the Pacific and beyond, making lifelong connections in Japan, the east coast, and in Europe. “Most of his time and effort and energy,” Enos says, and much of the activities Lyman was most involved in, “was for the betterment of other people.”

However, a tragic accident on a ship disembarking from Kauaʻi in January 2006 led to Lyman’s untimely death. It shocked the entire maritime industry in the Hawaiian islands and around the world. The Dave Lyman Memorial Scholarship Fund was established that same year to continue his work and realize the dream he had for local youth of Hawaiʻi. “There’s a lot of local kids that want to get in the [maritime] industry and don’t know how, or they know how, but there’s no school for them here,” Enos says. “It really frustrated him…The best people to be employed in the maritime industry in Hawaiʻi were Hawaiians.” He says Lyman would look around himself and realize there were people involved in the industry who, like him, had to go to the mainland for formal training and come back. Most local families feel the difficulty of their kids attending college off-island. The purpose of the memorial fund was to encourage and enable local youth from Hawaiʻi to attend Cal Maritime, Lyman’s alma mater; receive the formal training they needed; and return home to succeed in the maritime industry in Hawaiʻi.

Enos believes that if Lyman were to see what the Hokuleʻa crew was able to accomplish during their three-year voyage around the world before returning home to Hawaiʻi in June 2017, he would be very excited. “I know that [Lyman] felt and believed back then that too many European academics didn’t give Polynesian navigators the credit that they were due, not just for exploring the Pacific, but for traveling the Pacific on a regular basis,” Enos says. “I think Dave valued the ability for some ancient Polynesian guy to stand on the beach, get on his canoe, push it out, sail over the horizon and several weeks later, show up to a place exactly as he planned with no instruments…everything that he had to get from point A to point B was in his brain.”

The leadership and board members behind the scholarship fund engages with Hawaiʻi’s local youth at college fairs and even social media. Enos himself works with other programs such as the Kānehūnāmoku Voyaging Academy to encourage students of Hawaiʻi to explore the world of navigation. Manaʻo Nui’s assistance helps to perpetuate this cause. Even beyond financial aid, the scholarship fund aims to connect with young students and propel them toward the opportunities and resources available on the islands to fulfill their—and Lyman’s—dream for Hawaiian youth.