1924 Modest Millionaire Found

SCIENCE GOES ON A FISHING TRIP - Modest Millionaire Found

The Bulletin: San Francisco, Thursday, June 12, 1924

What manner of man is it that in late middle age buys and refits a schooner for a five year cruise in the Pacific so that he and his wife may find good fishing off remote little visited islands?

Just a fortunate fellow with enough money to do what most of us dream about you say.

But when this adventure seeking pair yield their pleasant plans to the burning importunities of a scientist and allow a program of scientific exploration to usurp their fishing schedule, so that they ruefully admit “ they will; have to fish between times,” what can you do except admit truth has run riot and chased fiction off the boards.

Finally, when these two fishermen adventurers extraordinary discover they can no longer keep their plans out of the public eye, and they try to hide behind the scientific phase of the amazing story and hope and believe they personally will not be mentioned and that the whole romantic business will be published as a scientific expedition, what can you do except thank heaven there is still a little modesty left in the world.

The fishermen adventurers out of the ordinary are Mr. and Mrs. M.R. Kellum, Fort Myers, Fla., who, with their daughters, Antoinette and Lalah, girls in their teens are guests at the Fairmont Hotel.

Kellum today completed the purchase of a schooner, a 170-foot vessel of 512 tons net displacement. Next Tuesday he will sail for Honolulu with his family and await the fitting out of the craft and her transfer from San Francisco to Honolulu. The schooner will be fitted with Diesel engines. She will be fitted with several comfortable

cabins. She will be provided with cold storage plant and other equipment necessary to transform her from a roughneck agent of commerce to a comfortable tramp able to stay away from port a half year or more at a time. She will carry a motion picture machine and radio of course.

By September the schooner, renamed, is expected to slip into Honolulu harbor ready for her romantic three to five-year tramp existence. At Honolulu she will pick up the Kellums and their scientists guests from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu- Emory, Ball, and Mr. and Mrs Wilder. The party will proceed to the Tuamotu group first, then loaf along from island group to island group, their only guide being their determination to avoid the beaten track. They expect to be gone at least three years, but will spend five if necessary.

ORIGIN OF RACE

They will not return until they have looked up every little-known or unexplored island in the Pacific. They will be furnished with charts of the island groups by the United States government. These charts will be corrected for the government by the Honolulu scientist to conform to the findings of the expedition. The origin of the Polynesian race will be investigated, as Roy Chapman Andrews is about to investigate the origin of the human race in the Mongolian dessert country.

Kellum was much disturbed when he found the Bulletin had learned of his daily searching via taxicab up and down the waterfront for a suitable ship. When questioned at the Fairmont today, he paced the floor for a brief minute , then turned to his wife with a helpless gesture : “You see, Mother, its no good trying to keep it to ourselves. It will get out and we may as well tell it all so that our part in it won’t be mentioned at least too much.”

“Because, you see,” and he turned to the Bulletin reporter, “it was really only meant to be a fishing trip in the first place.”

CRUSE FIVE YEARS

“Mrs. Kellum and I have spent the last five in making various trips in the Atlantic. We cruised around to all the places we were interested in. When we ran out of unusual places to visit we decided to turn to the Pacific. That was four months ago. I was in Honolulu shortly after that. Hubert E. Gregory, director of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, heard about the trip we were planning and begged us to take one representative of the museum along. He said the scientist wouldn’t be much trouble and would take very little room. He then persuaded us to take two of his men, and then three, and now the plan is to carry four persons from the museum. WE thought it would take the selfishness out of the trip to let them come along. They said it would be doing some good for science.”

Kellum, small of stature, tanned, quietly dressed, soft-spoken, extremely modest to the point of being almost shy, paused. “That’s all,” he said.

AND SOME FISHING

“As for ourselves,” he added ruefully, “the scientific business has pushed our fishing trip into the background. They will chart the voyage, decide where to go, and we will have to take our fishing between times. But I guess we’ll find enough fishing and fun at that, eh mother!”

Mrs. Kellum, very simply dressed, and with the appearance more of a tired work-worn farmer’s wife of the Middle West than a millionaires mate pleasure bound, looked up from embroidering a table piece and smiled ascent.

“Our two daughters who are with us here will not take the trip with us,” she put in “That is they will come along in the summer time when school doesn’t keep. The same is true of our two sons and one daughter now in Honolulu. They will come back to the States next fall to resume their school work.”

The Kellums have eight children. The two daughters, Antoinette and Lalah are students at a finishing school in Nashville, Tenn. Another daughter has just graduated from it and will tour Europe this summer by way of graduation gift from her travel loving parents.

“Please don’t mention us in connection with this trip ,” pleaded Mrs. Kellum.

“At least as possible,” added Kellum, and brought out a letter from Director Gregory of the Honolulu Museum to aid him in his plea. The letter is dated May 31, and addressed in care of the Fairmont Hotel. It reads in part: “ The Trustees and staff of the Museum are fairly bubbling with pleasure at finding that their dream of an exploring ship, reaching places otherwise inaccessible, has become a reality through interest of yourself and Mrs. Kellum.

“It takes some talking to convince the Trustees that you want your name submerged and that you don’t care a whoop what the ship does or where it goes so long as you two friendly souls can catch fish and render service by increasing knowledge of the Pacific.

“This leads me to think of about the names that would be appropriate to attach to the ship, to the expeditions, and to the resulting publications. If your don’t cares’ extend to the naming of the ship , I suggest we give some thought to selecting a well-sounding Polynesian word for some old time navigator, or hero, or for one of their beloved stars or flowers. It might be called “Pauhi” after the last princess of the royal Hawaiian line-a wonderful woman who devoted her life to the welfare of her people and who gave her wealth to endow the Kamehameha Schools and the Bishop Museum.”

But even the naming of the ship will be left entirely to the scientists. The Kellums are determined to have the “selfishness taken out of their fishing trip.”