Children of the late Charles K.C. Goo, owner of the original Old Plantation Store, said it was the Lord who led their family to Laie when their father was called upon to open a store for the students of the Church College of Hawaii. K.C. Goo owned and operated the Old Plantation Store for 31 years.
K.C. Goo, alongside his wife Mildred York Kwai Chun, also served missions in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia. Throughout his life his children said he faithfully served the Lord and the Laie community, and they shared fond memories and lessons learned while working in their father’s store.
The Old Plantation Store
Charles Wai Hing Goo, son of the late Charles Kan Chiu Goo, said, “When the [Church College of Hawaii] first started, President David O. McKay was wanting to start school or classes right away while the college was being built. In 1955, they broke ground for the college to be built.
“In the meantime, to start the school, they had some old army barracks that they purchased. … These barracks were converted into classrooms, dormitories, a cafeteria [and] different buildings. They [also] wanted to have a snack bar and a general merchandise store for the students.”
W.H. Goo said the Church invited his father to move from Honolulu to the town of Laie to open up a store for the students.
Gerry Goo Nihipali, daughter of K.C. Goo, shared, “Our family moved [to Laie] in August 1955, and I was 11 years old. The store was already there because it was the plantation store for the sugar plantation where they had goods and everything for the people who worked for the plantation.
“Dad was called by President Edward L. Clissold, who was the stake president, and he asked my dad to come down and open up a store and a fountain to serve food like hamburgers, hotdogs, drinks, soda [and] saimin, because the temporary college, [at the time], wasn’t going to have a cafeteria.”
W.H. Goo said, “He had a snack bar [on] one side for the students and a general merchandise store [on the other side].” He said his father not only had groceries, but he also had hardware items and candy.
W.H. Goo said his father would open the store at 7 in the morning to accommodate the high school students, and then the store would close at 9 in the evening. After school, W.H. Goo said he and his siblings would work in the afternoon for two hour shifts at the store. These shifts, he said, were organized for him and his siblings by their mother.
W.H. Goo added that when they got a little older, they were able to work as the cashier and check people going in and out of the store.
Nihipali recalled, “We had to learn how to use the cash register. We had to manually stamp the price of the product with a stamper onto the cans. We had to bag rice [and] flour. My dad had a big silver scooper, and we would scoop it into bags and bag it.” She also recalled cleaning the store’s refrigerator and the bags of onions and potatoes.
Another daughter of K.C. Goo, Eloise Goo Tyau, shared her memories working at the Old Plantation Store. She said by the time she was born, her family had already moved to their home in Laie. At the age of 12, Tyau said she began working at her father’s store.
Looking back, Tyau said working at the store taught her the importance of being responsible and dependable. She said she would take the dinner shift, working form 4:30-6:30 p.m. on school days so her father could go home, have dinner and take a break.
Tyau added, “I think that’s also where I’ve learned to be clean and organized, because we all had to sweep up [the floor] and organized the shelves.” She said the chore they hated doing at the shop was doing inventory.
Helen Goo, the wife of W.H. Goo, recounted her memories of the store. She said, “[K.C. Goo’s] store was not very big, but he had almost everything you needed, and if he didn’t have it, he was very happy to go to town to get it for you.” Every Wednesday, she said, they would go on town runs to pick up whatever supplies and items they needed.
Helen Goo recalled a time when someone came to the store and said, “Oh, Brother Goo, I need a lawn mower and I don’t have the chance to go to town.” She said her father-in-law wrote down the information and the next time he went to town, he picked up a lawn mower and brought it back to them. “He did a lot of that,” she said.
Sometimes, Helen Goo said students would come to the store and she would watch as her father-in-law would give them a box and say, “Pick up what you want.” He would just give the groceries to them for free, she said.
W.H. Goo said his father owned and operated the Old Plantation Store for 31 years, starting in 1955, until it was demolished in December of 1986.
From 1986 to 1989, W.H. Goo said he and his wife served as mission president and companion in Hong Kong. After returning from their mission, three years after the demolition of the store, he said they built a house in the original location of his father’s plantation store.
Helen Goo commented, “I miss having the store, but when we went on a mission, our grandpa knocked down the store and saved the land for us to come and build this house, and we are grateful for that.”
Remembering the late Charles K.C. Goo
Tyau said of her father, “He may seem gruff on the outside, but he was very generous.”
Helen Goo echoed Tyau and commented, “If you do not know [K.C. Goo], he seems really mean. It’s just his character. He seems very stern, but he is very kind hearted. He did a lot of charitable work by giving groceries and giving things away, and he doesn’t talk about it.”
Tyau said their store was closed every Sunday but said sometimes people would come and ask for items they really need. “He would go and open the store and get it for them and he called himself the one-man relief society because he would help people when they needed it.”
W.H. Goo said, “My father was very generous and helpful.” He said his father allowed people to buy their groceries on credit at his the store since many of them didn’t receive their paychecks until the end of the month.
Helen Goo said sometimes her father-in-law didn’t get paid when people promised to pay him at the end of the month. Still, she said he would say, “I’m very blessed, so it’s okay.”
Helen Goo shared, “I remember one [time] I was teaching part-time at the Laie Elementary School and I had a Samoan lady who worked with me … say, ‘Sister Goo, I want to tell you something about your father-in-law,’ and I thought, ‘Oh no, maybe my father-in-law scolded somebody.’”
She continued, “[The Samoan lady] said, ‘Christmas time we were feeling very sad because we didn’t have money to buy our grandchildren toys and gifts for Christmas.’ She said somebody knocked on their door. She opened the door and there was my father-in-law. He held up an envelope and he said, ‘I don’t know why I am here, but I have a feeling that I need to come and give you this.’”
K.C. Goo had given the family $500, she explained. With tears in her eyes, she said her co-worker expressed gratitude for what he had done for them that Christmas. “My father-in-law does things like that often when he feels the promptings of the Spirit.”
When young married students would come to the store, Hellen Goo said K.C. Goo would say, “Today, you don’t buy tomatoes. It's very expensive. Cucumbers are on sale. You buy cucumbers today.” She said her father-in-law was very concerned about how the students spent their money.
Led to Laie
Nihipali said she and her siblings were young when the family moved to Laie, so it was more of an adventure for them. It was not until later, she said, she realized how blessed they were to live in the Laie community. She said they were fortunate to live close to the temple where they performed baptisms and later served as guides at the temple’s visitors’ center.
Tyau said she found out in her dad’s autobiography the main reason he moved to Laie was to be closer to the temple. She commented, “The [store] gave him the opportunity to do that, to be able to come and live close to the temple.”
W.H. Goo echoed his sister, “My father felt such a great peaceful feeling in the temple. He wanted to live closer to the temple.”
In 1950, W.H. Goo said the family was sealed in the Laie Hawaii Temple. “By living closer to the temple, my father was able to be an ordinances worker and sealer. At the age of 80, he and my mother went on a temple mission to Hong Kong. Prior to that, they were on another temple mission in Taiwan in 1984, and they also served a mission in Australia.”
Nihipali said she did not know if their family would have remained active in the Church if they had not moved to Laie. “It was a blessing that my dad accepted that calling to move here to Laie.”
W.H Goo said it was the Lord’s hands which brought them to Laie to serve the people there and also to help their family grow closer to the Lord.