“She's so energetic, so full of faith.”
That's how friends remember Meli Watanuki, a Kalaupapa patient resident who died in May 2026 at the age of 91. Sister Barbara Jean Wajda laughed when she described Watanuki as a “ball of fire.”
“Fire gives out light and energy. She always had this twinkle in her eye,” said Wajda, who is a Kalaupapa resident and member of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities. This is the same congregation that Saint Marianne belonged to; She cared for people with Hansen’s disease in Kalaupapa, a remote peninsula on Molokaʻi’s northern coastline.
Watanuki was from a small village in American Samoa.
“My favorite moments with her is when she talks about her childhood with my dad and my uncles and aunties and her story about back then she was growing up in Samoa,” said Rosa Key, Watanuki's niece, who works for the Kalaupapa National Historical Park and has lived in the settlement for 30 years.
Along with Watanuki's strong faith as a devout Catholic, Kalaupapa resident Sister Alicia Damian Lau, also of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, remembers her friend as joyful.
"She loved to have parties, she loved to see people having fun,” said Lau.
But life wasn't always easy for Watanuki. In 1952, when she was 18 and still living in American Samoa, she was diagnosed with Hansen’s disease and received treatment. Key said Watanuki then moved to the U.S. in 1958 for more opportunities and settled on O’ahu.
She married and had a son. In 1964, when her son was 3, she had to go to Hale Mohalu in Pearl City, a rehabilitation facility for Hansen’s disease patients, for additional treatment. Her family came to visit her once, and she tried to stay in contact, but then they never came back, she told PBS Hawaiʻi during a 2014 interview.
In 1969, when the state's Hansen's disease policy of exile to Kalaupapa was lifted, Watanuki was one of the last people to move there. She went voluntarily, wanting to be closer to friends there. It had been home for her ever since. At the time of her death, Watanuki was one of three patients still living in the remote community.
After her move to Kalaupapa, she married her second husband, Teetai Pili, who died in 1981.
In 1995, Watanuki traveled home to American Samoa for a family celebration for her marriage to Kalaupapa National Park employee Randall Watanuki, according to Key, who remembers the occasion fondly. Shortly after their wedding, they traveled to Rome, where Watanuki met Pope John Paul II.
During her life, she also went to Rome and the Vatican City for the canonization of Saint Damien in 2009 and Saint Marianne in 2012.
Watanuki was the founder of the guided Kalaupapa Saints Tour, which reopened last fall for the first time following the COVID-19 pandemic. It made Watanuki happy, according to Lau, the Kalaupapa resident Sister.
“To have it running while she was here and with us, I think, just brought life to her, you know, to see, hey, yeah, another one of my dreams came true, and that was so important for her," said Lau.
The tour can only be operated by a resident, and members of Watanuki’s family have decided to stop the tours following her death.
Wajda said Watanuki’s loss is felt heavily. “It's a hole in our hearts. It's an emptiness in the community."
Watanuki also ran Kalaupapa’s small general store. "Her chair in the store at her desk has her picture on it, and a lei on it,” Wajda added.
In May, Watanuki’s memorial service on O’ahu drew more than 600 people. Key said Watanuki and her husband, Randall, used to invite groups to Kalaupapa, and she connected with many people.
In Kalaupapa, it was a more intimate service last week — but still crowded.
“When we had our services here, I have never in my years here seen the church being so packed with people,” said Lau. “It was just a wonderful feeling to look back and see every single seat taken, plus some other chairs were put out, you know, in it, and it just shows her dynamic and how she was, you know, and how people really loved her.”
At both services, her family and friends sang a Samoan farewell song.
During her burial in Kalaupapa, the ashes of some of her beloved pets were laid to rest with her.
“All of a sudden, I saw other people coming up with urns,” recalled Lau of the burial. “Six of them. It was her cats and her dogs that had passed away. She loved her animals.”
Her niece Key said it's the daily routines she’ll miss most.
“I remember she gets off work from 11 o'clock, and then she passes by my office and honks the horn, and everybody in my office is like, ‘Aunty’s outside!'" recalled Key. "They recognize the horn because she seems like she's the only one that honks the horn in this place … and she goes, ‘What time you get off?' That kind of everyday [interaction], I will tremendously miss, and just knowing that she's not going to come by anymore.”
Key laughed while describing how the community would "miss this little short lady" driving her car, even though no one had "the nerve to step up and say ‘you cannot drive anymore’ after all these other accidents. They refuse to take the key from her."
Then Lau, who was listening to this anecdote, chimed in: “Somebody said to me, you know, 'I saw a car, but I didn't see any driver, but I saw two dogs!'”
“This aging lady was very short in stature but not short in too much other stuff,” said Wajda. “Meli never hesitated an inch of breath in a moment to speak her mind.”
One time, after encountering unwelcome visitors to Kalaupapa as she was working alone in the church, Watanuki told them to leave in no uncertain terms, according to Wajda.
“I asked her, 'Aren't you afraid then to be down there alone?’ And she says, 'I am never alone.' She says, 'I always have Saint Father Damien, Saint Mother Marianne, and Joseph Dutton. And I talk to them, they talk to me, I sing, I pray, and they keep me safe.' And that is like the kernel of faith that was just such a central part of who she was as a person,” Wajda said.
For Key, her aunty's legacy is vast.
“She's everywhere here in Kalaupapa.”
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