Once upon a time there was a little girl from Chicago,
City of the Big Shoulders,
And there was a little boy from Kekaha, Kaua‘i,
Tiny Town of Big Cane Fields,
And the little girl grew up to attend the University of Wisconsin, in Madison,
City of Oscar Mayer and Rennebohm Drug Stores,
to where the little boy from Hawai‘i also made his way
before World War II, left to serve, then returned,
And they met in Der Rathskellar,
renown Dining Hall on the Badger Campus,
where I was essentially conceived, although not actually until 1954,
on the Island of O‘ahu,
Land of Diamond Head – Lē‘ahi as it is called here –
and of Waikīkī Beach, a name famous around the world,
was then born in Kapi‘olani Hospital
(where Barack Obama would be born seven years later),
grew up in Honolulu,
City of State Government,
attended the University of Hawai‘i for my undergraduate education,
went off to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin,
where I sat down to have a beer in Der Rathskeller,
toasted the chance meeting between that girl and that boy,
who lived out their lives happily, for the most part, ever after.
Lanning Lee 