The business that we know as Koehnen's Interiors began with an act of bravado. On Friday the 13th, in 1929, following the American stock market crash, F.W. Koehnen opened F. Koehnen Limited. Located on Front Street, as Kamehameha Ave. was called then, the business sold jewelry and fine silver pieces and hung on through tough times. That was because Mr. Koehnen was an astute businessman, but he also had his young daughter Helie, who would be very instrumental in the success of the business.
When the April 1, 1946 tsunami occurred, Koehnen's was lucky. Damage to the store was minimal, thanks to the buffer of the buildings across the street. People pitched in to sweep out the water. Helie remembers the tsunami as a time when the community really pulled together. At the time, Helie was very pregnant with Karyl, who was born on April 19th. After the 1946 tsunami, with the help of Helie's husband, Carl Rohner, the store expanded its line of goods to include furniture. In 1956 the business acquired a new location at the corner of Front Street and Waianuenue.
Like so many businesses near Hilo's bayfront, Koehnen's was severely impacted by the 1960 tsunami. That evening, after getting word that a tsunami had been generated by an earthquake in Chile, the family and employees rushed to the store to move merchandise upstairs. That night, back at home up on Kilauea Avenue, the family watched from a bedroom window as the waves hit. Says Karyl, "It sounded like a freight train." Helie said it reminded her of the Pearl Harbor attack. Then the power plant exploded and sent the whole city into darkness.
Everyone gathered candles, flashlights, and brooms, and headed to the store. Inside, they trudged through ankle-deep black water. Karyl recalls feeling fish brush up against her legs. "All I could think of is, oh my God, there's eels and sharks in here." |
But dad said, "Honey remember, they've been displaced too." She says everyone worked to push the water out. About 3 in the morning, the family was helped out by a bank executive who had been at a party, still in his tuxedo, but he just hung up his jacket and took a push broom.
Helie says that the real shock was when the sun came up and they walked outside to look at downtown. "We didn't recognize anything."
Karyl recalls one especially odd sight: a cow floating on a clump of earth in the middle of the bay, mooing forlornly. "I mean the most pathetic thing you've ever heard. And all of a sudden here goes somebody in a little motorboat and he puttered out there and got a rope around her, and pulled her and this big clod of earth to shore."
That morning, as employees came to help clean up, they learned that everyone was safe. And it wasn't just employees who came to help. Karyl says "It was amazing the people who came to help, complete strangers who asked what they could do. That will always be very close to our hearts, as far as the people of Hilo are concerned." Koehnen's even saw this generous spirit exhibited by their wholesale leather and silverware suppliers, who took back all the damaged goods and replaced them at no cost.
Without that kind of generosity from the community and their mainland suppliers, Helie and Karyl say that Koehnen's wouldn't be here today. But with all the help from the community, they were back in business in a week. And the business continued to thrive. As Helie puts it, "After so many years doing business in Hilo, we've survived a lot of things: tsunamis and flooding, shipping strikes, and sugar strikes...It was tough going for anybody in business. It's tough going today." |
