Hawaii

"When Kaiser arrived in Spokane in 1907, the West was unquestionably ripe for industrialization; had he not stepped in to play a leading role in this development, others would have. Between the world wars, his contributions paralleled those of his nineteenth-century predecessors in emphasizing development of the regional infrastructure. He and various partners helped set the stage for an increased pace of economic development by constructing hundreds of miles of paved roads and pipelines, dozens of bridges and tunnels, and several of the huge dams authorized by the federal government during the Depression. From 1939 on, Kaiser entered an ever-widening circle of industries, including cement, magnesium, shipbuilding, steel, aluminum, housing, building materials, and nuclear power plants. His medical program eventually spread east, but when he died it served mainly the West. Kaiser hoped to begin a West Coast automobile industry, but logistical and other problems persuaded him to center operations in Detroit; the automobile endeavor was his single, obvious failure. Kaiser’s contributions to western development reached far beyond the Golden Gate Bridge. After he “retired” to Hawaii in 1954, he promoted tourism, built hotels and a new city, and entered radio and television on Oahu."

"According to one long-standing acquaintance of Milken, his wife, Lori, had made him promise that on his vacation he would not work from 9 A.M. on; so Milken took his family to Hawaii, where he slept for a few hours in the late evening, rose at 1 or 2 A.M. and worked until 9 A.M.—by which time it was 2 P.M. in New York and most of the business day was over."

"When Kaiser arrived in Spokane in 1907, the West was unquestionably ripe for industrialization; had he not stepped in to play a leading role in this development, others would have. Between the world wars, his contributions paralleled those of his nineteenth-century predecessors in emphasizing development of the regional infrastructure. He and various partners helped set the stage for an increased pace of economic development by constructing hundreds of miles of paved roads and pipelines, dozens of bridges and tunnels, and several of the huge dams authorized by the federal government during the Depression. From 1939 on, Kaiser entered an ever-widening circle of industries, including cement, magnesium, shipbuilding, steel, aluminum, housing, building materials, and nuclear power plants. His medical program eventually spread east, but when he died it served mainly the West. Kaiser hoped to begin a West Coast automobile industry, but logistical and other problems persuaded him to center operations in Detroit; the automobile endeavor was his single, obvious failure. Kaiser’s contributions to western development reached far beyond the Golden Gate Bridge. After he “retired” to Hawaii in 1954, he promoted tourism, built hotels and a new city, and entered radio and television on Oahu."

"Kaiser was intensely interested in aluminum boats. For years he had raced powerboats, both at Lake Tahoe and in national and international racing competition, and he worked constantly to improve his models. He closely monitored development of hundreds of different designs for both inboard and outboard boats, hydroplanes, catamarans, and other vessels. He explored possibilities in hydrofoil boats—large, fast vessels capable of carrying several hundred passengers on inter-island trips in Hawaii. However, most designs were for inexpensive outboards in the sixteen-to-eighteen-foot range. In the early-to-mid-1960s, the organization hired several small firms to build and market them. But Kaiser’s designers never developed models with “sex appeal”; buyers perferred wood and fiberglass boats. Aluminum boats never caught on, but they gave Kaiser hundreds of hours of pleasure."