RA couple of years ago, June and I invited our friends Ralph and Lynn Cramer to go with us to the summit of Mauna Kea.

Being from Pennsylvania, they were well-prepared for northeast-like cold weather and snow. Being from Hawai‘i, we wore light windbreakers and shorts.

As we drove up the mountain, we passed people parked along the side, shoveling snow into their pickup trucks. A bare-backed guy on a snowboard went cruising past. And others were coming down.

We made the turn heading up to the last climb. I told Ralph and Lynn that my Pop had had the contract to make the road to the summit with his bulldozer. I’d gone off to school on O‘ahu, but my brothers Robert, Kenneth and Guy and my brother-in-law Dennis Vierra would drive the fuel truck and grease up the tractor for him. That was him on his D-9 in the PBS special “First Light.” You can see his name, Richard Ha, on the bulldozer. I’m junior.

At the summit, our friends were awestruck. We walked over to the east to look toward Hilo, and then across to the west to look toward Kona. Lynn said that her son was probably on Mt. Blanc right then. She tried to call him, but could not get through.

We were parked next to the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope where my son Brian worked for more than a year. June called him at Ft. Rucker, Alabama, where he was a Apache helicopter pilot. He told her, “Watch out for the icicles hanging from the observatory.” I contemplated what had just happened for a bit. What a small world, I thought.

I walked over to a pickup truck full of snow and chop suey kids and asked, “What you guys going do with the snow?” The guy sounded local, though not necessarily Hawaiian. He told me they always go up to get snow. They were going to get all the kids together to make a snowman at his grandma’s grave at Kukuihaele.  It had become a family tradition.

When I think about that now, I think: We definitely must try to make sure that he and his future ‘ohana can always keep on doing that.

I told Ralph and Lynn how when we were youngsters we would go to Hapuna Beach in the morning, and then on the way back to Hilo, still dressed in swim shorts and slippers, we would drive up to the summit, run around a little, jump back in the car and head down.

That was more than 40 years ago. We must make sure we do what’s necessary so we can pass on those types of experiences to future generations. With respect, courtesy and common sense, we can make it work for all of us.