Keala-o-Ānuenue

This website is my gift to you.

My first idea was to produce a book and a CD of writings and songs that would be gifts to everyone I invited to an event I held in 2025 in my homeland, Hawai’i. It was called Aka o Ke Ānuenue, The Afterglow of The Rainbow. It was a joyful occasion I considered my “memorial before I die.” You can see pictures on the page called “The Gathering.”

I soon realized the book/CD project would cost more money than I had,. Besides, most people no longer have a CD player. My dear friend and recording engineer Geoffrey Mays said “Why not make a website? You can put everything on it.” So I have, with many hours of help from my tech-expert friend Gary Turpen, because I am a computer dunce.

The website is complete except for the writing page. But you can see and hear the rest. Check back around January 2026 to see if I have finished the writing page.

My name is Keala-o-Ānuenue. It is Hawaiian and means The Path of the Rainbow. I received it when I was 15. I am also Sally-Jo Bowman, named at birth for a grandmother and two great-grandmothers.

The bare-bones stats:

Born Honolulu, 1940, to Hawaiian-English-Scots/Irish father and Swedish heritage mother.

Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu, Class of 1958. B.A. Journalism, University of Minnesota, 1963.

M.S. Journalism, University of Oregon, 1984.

Lifelong journalist with side trips in social work, public relations, advertising, editing and teaching.

Resident of Oregon since 1964.

For the first half of my life my names did not propel me. Crayons and pencils did, and singing.

As a kid I longed for a set of 48 crayons. In third grade I discovered there was a special teacher just for art! The art room had paints! And clay!

My parents both sang. My dad belted out Hawaiian songs with his drinking buddies. My mother   lullabied us to sleep at night and by day sometimes made up melodic ditties about household events such as dropping a roasting ham on the floor.

By the time I was in first grade, my mother had me writing little letters to her mother in North Dakota. I read The Weekly Reader at school and the kids’ column in my mom’s McCall’s magazine at home. I imagined my own writing in print.

In high school all this converged: My high school required a class in choral music every year. I loved it.  I also could choose year-round art as an elective. And I joined the school newspaper staff as soon as I was eligible in ninth grade.

The winding path that entwined music, art and writing slowly braided itself into a permanent road. Eventually I realized it is The Path of the Rainbow.  Some of the fruits along that path, in the form of this website, are my gift to you.