110 degrees magazine - Index

110 degrees magazine - wlinks_may08 - Index

ABODE I BY BARBIE KONCHER I PHOTOS BY RUSSELL BYRNE
MY LIFE OF POLITICS,
ART, AND PASSION
Back in the 60s I joined the hippie upheaval that was sweeping through our
society. The fact is that I’m a hippie yet. I haven’t worn tube tops in a while,
but you should see my fringed vest, leather clothes, peasant skirts, and batik
blouses! In my opinion anything that was ever cool is forever cool. I refuse to
be pushed around by the aimless and contrary winds of current fashion. At
least not much.
Even though I was outwardly a member of the counter-cultural revolution,
I guess it was mostly a style thing because I never did any drugs. Nor was I
ashamed of the excellent job I had working for the government as Secretary
to the Commanding Officer of the Naval Amphibious Base.
The base is located on Coronado, an island right in the middle of the San
Diego harbor. I was promoted to Admin Officer, which was a non-military
designation, and I was responsible for budget and personnel tracking.
I began designing jewelry as part of the hippie thing that I was pretending
to be part of. My first ones were made from wooden and glass beads cannibalized
from a plant hanger project that I was into at the time. I would make
beaded necklaces by stringing these along lengths of dental floss.
My friends started buying my necklaces so I had suddenly become a professional
jewelry designer.
FANTASTIC FAMILY
I am fourth generation Hawaiian and was born in Honolulu. My greatgrandfather
was a field supervisor; my great-grandmother a midwife. They
immigrated to the islands in the 1860s as part of an influx of German immigrants
who set up a thriving colony on Kawai. They never went back to
Germany and were buried on Kawai after 50 years of their peculiar German-
Hawaiian existence.
50 www.110mag.com May/June 2008
BARBIE IS BEGINNING TO SETTLE DOWN IN
HER VINEYARDS AT MARSH CREEK HOUSE
AND STUDIO FOLLOWING A WHIRLWIND
LIFE WITH THE GOVERNMENT AND HER
ART BUSINESS
My father was a cryptographer. My mom grew up on Oahu and met my dad
at a USO dance. She was one of the local belles that the military bussed in
for the dance.
That first dance was only a year before the bombing. Mom was in the
back yard on Maunalani Heights overlooking the harbor from which she
had a ring-side seat. Zeros were flying over her head; she could see the
faces of the pilots.
Dad was on a destroyer escort outside the harbor. The destroyer had fouled
its propeller so they were fortunate not to have been in the harbor during the
incident. They were under way and were able to dodge zeros who were trying
to drop bombs on them.
Dad and mom were married three years later.
The wedding wasn’t timed very well because almost immediately following
the ceremony dad was recalled to the carrier that he was stationed on,
called the Block Island. They were headed for Europe to take part in the
Normandy Invasion but were sunk by German subs before they got there.
My dad actually saw the torpedo that ended up sinking the carrier in only
five minutes. Fortunately, the sea was warm and dad was a good swimmer
because he spent two hours dog-paddling in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
until a French frigate fished him out of the water and took him to Casablanca.
The news of the sinking of the Block Island came while mom was in the
restroom of a restaurant where she was having lunch. When she came out
she sensed that something had happened that nobody in the room wanted
to talk to her about.
It was an awful thing for my mother because at that point she and dad had
only been married for a week. And it was two weeks before Mom finally
learned that her bridegroom had survived the sinking.