Walter Francis
Dillingham
Male
United States of America
1875-04-05
Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America
1963-10-22
Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_F._Dillingham
Walter F. Dillingham was born in Honolulu, in the Kingdom of Hawaii. His father was Benjamin Dillingham who founded the Oahu Railway and Land Company. His mother was Emma Louise Smith, daughter of missionary Lowell Smith. In 1889 he moved to the United States to attend school in Auburndale, Massachusetts, and then Harvard University from 1898 to 1900.
He first worked as a clerk for his father, and then managed the Dowsett Company and founded Hawaiian Dredging Company. In 1904 his father was hospitalized and he managed the OR&L. From 1907 to 1913, the Governor of the Territory of Hawaii was Walter F. Frear who was married to Dillingham’s sister Mary Emma.
In 1909 he constructed a dry dock at Pearl Harbour which eventually became part of the US Navy base. He also enlarged the ports of Kahului and Hilo. On May 2, 1910 he married Louise Olga Gaylord in Florence, Italy. During World War I he worked for the US Army Motor Transport Corps in Washington, DC. After his father died in 1918, he and his brother Harold Garfield Dillingham inherited the family businesses.
Dillingham served on several commissions for the Territory of Hawaii, including the tax appeal court from 1908 to 1910. In 1919, Dillingham built a large house at Papaʻenaʻena, an ancient Hawaiian altar to the surf and place of human sacrifice to the god Kūkaʻilimoku, on the slopes of Diamond Head. The home, called La Pietra, is now a private academy for girls. It was named after the estate of his wife's relatives where they were married, Villa La Pietra.
Dillingham drained the wetlands of Waikīkī in the early 1920s and created the Ala Wai Canal, on whose banks the Hawaiʻi Convention Center was built. He helped suppress Japanese Hawaiian plantation workers’ calls for better labour conditions during the Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920, as chair of the Hawaii Emergency Labour Commission. The Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association-sponsored commission petitioned the U.S. Senate to lift an 1882 ban on importing workers from China, hoping to use Chinese migrant labourers to replace the Japanese and break the strike.
In 1948, Dillingham Airfield, a small Air Force base near Mokulēʻia, Hawaii, was named for his son Captain Henry Gaylord Dillingham, a B-29 pilot who was killed in action over Kawasaki, Japan on July 25, 1945.
His son Benjamin Franklin Dillingham II (1916-1998) ran with the Hawaii Republican Party against Daniel Inouye for the Senate in 1962 and lieutenant governor in 1974 but lost both elections. The other Senator from Hawaii, Hiram Fong, gave the eulogy at his funeral after his death October 22, 1963. Fong said he lived a life that “spanned the full spectrum of Hawaiian history”. Dillingham is buried at the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park in Kāneʻohe.
In 1961, his son Lowell Smith Dillingham (1911-1987) merged the remains of the Oahu Railway and Land Company and the Hawaiian Dredging and Construction Company to form the Dillingham Corporation. It was sold to private investors in 1983 for $347 million.
A daughter Elizabeth Dillingham (1921–2011) married investment banker Myron Arms Wick Jr. (1915-1990) in 1940.
1896 - 1897
2
2
1
1896 - Hawaiian Islands amateur Championships (Amateur)
1895 - Hawaiian Islands amateur Championships (Amateur)
Round 1
Sumner Charles Hardy 1 *
Walter Francis Dillingham
6-3
6-2
6-2
Final
Walter Francis Dillingham 1 *
G.T. Smith
6-4
6-2
8-6