Never could get to Hawaii, but - - *I SENT A PROXY!!* LOL
My son, Kevin, a military brat until age 14, enlisted in the Army with a goal in mind of obtaining help to get a college degree.
He excelled in Basic Training, earning Top Honors, and given the career field for which he'd applied - training to be an air traffic controller. Assigned to Ft. Rucker, Alabama for the basic FAA course, he married his sweetheart in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Completing that introductory course, his orders were for Schofield Barracks in Hawaii!
In his 4 military years, he never had to play Army games or suffer - strictly FAA training, and even managed to complete his college courses except for 13 credit hours.
The last year in was at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, where he was given a commendation (and grateful letter from the pilot!) for bringing in a civilian pilot flying from Florida to Michigan; utterly lost in fog without instruments to facilitate navigating in the pea soup skies. Kevin managed to locate him and bring him down safely on his military airfield.
After discharge, he returned to Florida and completed the 13 hours for his degree, and applied to FAA for a position...bad timing, for that is when President Reagan was warring with the air traffic controller unions and froze hiring.
Kevin enrolled to get his Masters in Business Administration at the University of Florida, to begin in September, but in August the union controllers were out of a job, hiring freeze lifted, and he was in a wide open field, stationed in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and later West Palm Beach.
He advanced to being a Supervisor and then on staff as a Trainer, and one year took over management of the tower in Ft. Pierce for a whole year when the Tower Manager there was let go.
After 9/11 he was offered a sidestep into the new Transportation Safety Agency - TSA.
With uncertainty in FAA, considering now going to the outside for contract controllers rather than government employees, he chose to protect his government years, able to remain right at WPB, and needed a new challenge.
He is in charge of training the trainers for security handling, has 23 years government service; and can retire in 4 years.
Returning to the subject of Hawaii, it is *especially" dear to me -
my first grandchild, a grandson, was born in Hawaii in 1978!
B.J. is now 27, in Air Force Communications in Colorado Springs, Colorado...
The state threads are probably the most time-consuming, and it's really hard to choose *what* we must leave out, but I tend to trim mine a LOT because I believe they should be a *tease* and make one want to visit. :)