Ginger “Keahi” Allen had a spirit of aloha as deep as the sea. A kumu hula with Midwestern roots and flame-red hair, she taught hula and Polynesian dance at the Kehulili O Keahi halau, or dance school, that she ran for the better part of five decades from her home in Encinitas. Though her house at the top of the hill at 4th and A streets near Moonlight Beach is now silent, for years it held the sounds of generations of dancers who learned from Encinitas’s grandmother of hula.

One of those early students was Linda “Leimomi” Nelson, who started lessons just shy of her fifth birthday in 1964 and has been dancing ever since, taking breaks only for the births of her two children. “It just became part of my life,” she says.

Ginger was more than a dance teacher to Linda and many other girls who danced with the halau. Naturally generous and affectionate, Ginger adored her dancers. “Every time you saw her it was with a hug and a kiss,” says Linda. “She became kind of a second mom many times in many girls’ lives.” Linda also remembers the way Ginger always presented herself just so, dressed in bright colors, with her hair, makeup and nails done, jewelry and perfume on, and a fresh flower in her hair. “She loved food and good conversation, and had a great giggle. She also had these expressions that would make us laugh as kids, like calling the chest the ‘bosom,’” she remembers.

So how did a haole girl from Des Moines get so interested in hula? Always enamored with dance, Ginger discovered hula after a move to Ontario, California, in the late ‘30s. There was a resurgence of interest in Hawaii at the time, and as her son, Mark “Ahi” Allen, put it, “She discovered hula because it was time for hula to make a reappearance in the American consciousness.” Soon hula became the focus of her life. She opened her first halau in Ontario and began making annual pilgrimages to Hawaii to take instruction from kumu hula there and immerse herself in shows, often taking in two a night.

“She completely adopted the Hawaiian state of mind,” says Mark. “She wished she was born in the islands—she would never tell you she was from Iowa. But what’s most important is what you hold in your heart, and she proved herself many times over to be as much aloha-filled as any Hawaiian is.”

When her family moved to Encinitas in 1959 she started Kehulili O Keahi, which for many years was the only halau north of San Diego. Mark says that in many communities in Encinitas, “it would not be unfair to say that either your daughter or your neighbor’s daughter had taken hula from Ginger.”

The ‘70s and ‘80s were bustling times for the halau. Ginger put a big emphasis on performance and missed no opportunity for her dancers. They were one of the longest-standing acts at the Del Mar Fair and for many years performed Christmas Day for veterans at the Naval Medical Center. They also danced at retirement homes, schools, graduation and anniversary parties, Encinitas Days, the Christmas parade and other community events. As Linda puts it, “If the Vons was opening, we were dancing outside the Vons.”

As Ginger ran the halau from her home, naturally her own children danced. Sons Gary and Mark learned hula and Tahitian drumming, as well as the fire knife dance from a Samoan teacher who came to the house. Mark also learned Maori dances during a year in New Zealand as an exchange student. Ginger’s daughter, Pam “Tehani” Allen, was also a talented dancer, with whom Ginger shared a special relationship. Pam eventually married and moved away, later coming back to the area and becoming Ginger’s alaka’i, or second in command, choreographing, teaching and designing costumes until her untimely death in 1987.

As they gained experience, students also had the opportunity to dance professionally. Ginger had a long-standing relationship with Benny Hanaike and his band through her involvement as a charter member of the Hui O Hawaii of San Diego, and Benny would book dancers as the floor show for his gigs.

Mark recalls, “All through my college years and up until I had my second child, my sister Pam and I, and later, Linda Nelson and I, danced professionally with Benny’s band, The Kanakas. Both my mom and Benny had agents who booked us into venues such as the Hotel Del, what was then the Convention Center in Mission Valley, the Kona Kai Club on Shelter Island and the various military clubs including the Admiral Kidd Club.”

During the “luau season” a core group of six to eight wahines and Mark would dance three to four times a week. It was an obligation Ginger took very seriously. “The law was, if Benny had a show, you had to do it,” says Mark. “I didn’t do anything without checking the hula calendar. It became a bit of a burden when we were young adults and needed to do our own thing, but it was a burden that you were willing to put up with because you liked doing it.”

Linda remembers being groomed for these shows as young as 13, gradually working up to becoming one of the main dancers. “It was great fun, and something that we loved to do. You got to hang out with your girlfriends and dress up in your costumes, and it was great money.” These were the days when girls wore false eyelashes and “falls,” long, dark hairpieces that attached over their natural hair, and lighter-skinned girls would even rub on body makeup to look the part. “On the way back from shows we’d be in the car ripping off our falls, ripping off our eyelashes,” she says with a laugh.

Ginger went to every performance whether or not she was part of the show. Trudi “Luana” Saltamachio was one of the next generation of dancers and remembers Ginger picking them up for shows. “She would show up in this huge, ocean-blue station wagon that she called her ‘holo-holo ka’a’, or ‘go-go car,’ and she looked just so from going to the salon the day before and would have a huge orchid in her hair,” she recalls.

Hula was a lifesaver for Trudi, who started at Kehulili O Keahi during a difficult time in junior high. “I threw myself into Polynesian dance. And Pammy was like an older sister—she pulled us aside and taught us how to do makeup and just simple girl things. Those kinds of girl-growing-up things were huge.”

Pam’s tragic death affected the entire hula community, but the family decided that the halau should continue. Pam had been teaching many of the classes, so Linda stepped up and took over much of the teaching, choreographing and costuming under Ginger’s guidance. Trudi also helped with the keiki classes, being Ginger’s “feet,” and eventually taught keiki on her own. Mark taught kane hula, Maori and Samoan dances to boys, including his son, Matt “Kekoa” Allen, as well as tending to the business side.

Kehulili O Keahi continued 18 more years until the family decided that Ginger’s health precluded running the halau, and the Del Mar Fair performance in June 2005 was the last under the Kehulili O Keahi name.
Ginger died in March 2006, but before her passing she gave her blessing to two new halau, which opened in her tradition. Linda and Trudi partnered to open Kehulili O Kailiani, and Ginger’s grandson, Matt, opened Ke Polani Ohana E Kai.

Both continue the legacy that Ginger lived for all her adult life, which was that aloha knows no nationality. If ever asked if she was Hawaiian, Ginger would always answer, “Adopted.” She felt like she was and was accepted by the kumu in Hawaii and the Hawaiian community in San Diego as such.

As Matt says, “I think for people like Linda and I [the culture] is adopted because we’re not Hawaiian, but it’s almost not adopted, because we grew up with it. Some people say, ‘So you’re like a fake Hawaiian?’ and I say ‘No, I don’t claim to be Hawaiian, but I grew up more Hawaiian than a lot of people did.’ It’s my family heritage. Linda didn’t have it in her family, but she considers my grandmother like her grandmother. ‘Ohana means family and we all consider ourselves one big ‘ohana centered around the grandmother—Ginger was the matriarch of this humongous hula family in Encinitas.”