THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 19, 1995 TAG: 9502170088
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 191 lines
TWO YEARS AGO, Ken Hakuta took a walk in the woods under a full moon with two Shaker scholars.
The trio was adventuring through old Shaker territory in Mount Lebanon, N.Y., where the religious sect's central ministry once was located. Around midnight, the group came to a hilltop clearing.
``We found ourselves in a very bright meadow - so bright,'' Hakuta recalled. It was a Shaker graveyard - their destination. All the grave markers had been removed, replaced by one large tombstone marked, simply, ``Shakers.''
``It was so bright, so noisy, I couldn't think,'' Hakuta said. ``So much energy up there. I felt I was at Grand Central Station. There was a buzzing sound in my ear. So loud, we had to shout to each other.''
Hakuta watched one of the experts, Andrew Vadnais, curator of Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts, walk to the tombstone and pat it. ``I told him he must be a reincarnated Shaker.
``Then he turned around and said maybe I was, too,'' said Hakuta, whose extensive collection of Shaker furniture and artifacts from that site goes on view today at The Chrysler Museum.
``Actually, I don't think I was. I'm too lazy to be a Shaker. I can't get up at 4:30 in the morning.''
With that, Hakuta - who made millions with his ``Wacky Wallwalker'' toy and is famous among kids as the host of PBS television's ``The Dr. Fad Show'' - let out a howling laugh.
But he wasn't kidding with the anecdote.
``That was the eeriest experience I have had in my whole life,'' said Hakuta, who recounted the incident in a phone interview from his home in Washington, D.C.
``I don't know what it means. That they didn't die in peace? That they have unfinished business?''
Such experiences deepen the tie that Hakuta feels to the Shaker material in his possession. It has become his heartfelt mission to restore, preserve and protect his collection of more than 2,500 items, including tables, chairs, built-in cupboards, farming and woodworking tools, baskets, storage boxes, eyeglasses and hand-woven clothing.
``This is not a little hobby. It is not an investment,'' Hakuta said. ``If you're going to do investment, you should do stocks and bonds.''
To Hakuta, the monetary value of his Shaker material is not important. ``You want to do something significant. I have spent a lot of my time and money to do this,'' he said, referring to storage, restoration, insurance, research and transportation of the works, among other costs.
``In income, it earns zero. I ask myself, `Why me?' I don't know. Somebody has to do it. I think it's important to do now. And hopefully, in 20 years or more, somebody will say `I'm glad someone did that.'''
About 100 works from Hakuta's collection are at the Norfolk museum, first stop on a two-year national tour. Earlier this month, two huge trucks left his art storage shed with 35 crates of Shaker items.
``I was so happy that my babies are finally on the road,'' he said.
Hakuta's collection is unique in several ways. Most Shaker collections in America, including the Shaker museums in Old Chatham, N.Y., and in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts, consist of works drawn from various communities.
But everything in Hakuta's collection came from one site - Mount Lebanon, N.Y., called New Lebanon when the Shakers founded their first American village there in 1785.
``It's sort of like the Vatican for Shakers. All the philosophies, the orders, the design of the furniture - everything came out of Mount Lebanon,'' Hakuta said.
Shaker exhibits and collections tend to focus on the so-called classical period, from about 1830 to 1850, Hakuta said. His collection extends from about 1800 to 1930.
Having examples from such a lengthy period shows how Shakers evolved with the times, Hakuta said.
On view are original benches from a Mount Lebanon meetinghouse that became a model for the all-important houses of worship at the 19 communal villages, which arose in such far-flung places as Sabbathday Lake, Maine, and Pleasant Hill, Ky.
The meetinghouse ``was probably the most sacred building of all,'' Hakuta said. ``That's where all the world's Shakers came to watch the Shakers shake.'' Which is how the sect got its name - for its distinctive dance, a whirling, leaping and shaking manifestation of the holy spirit evoked during services.
Hakuta's tale of acquisition also is atypical. In 1990, he bought the Shaker-made contents of Mount Lebanon for about $600,000, reported The Washington Post.
He cut the deal with Darrow School, owners of the site and its contents since 1929. A small Shaker enclave remained on the property until 1947, then moved to a Shaker village in Canterbury, N.H.
In the late 1980s, the financially troubled school was selling off pieces of the collection, according to the Post.
School officials approached Hakuta and his wife, Marilou, known as eclectic collectors with an enthusiasm for Shaker. After visiting Mount Lebanon, the Hakutas bought a few pieces, including a cupboard and tall clock.
Hakuta was attracted to the energy in the Shaker pieces. ``And the simplicity is so striking. When you see the real thing - wow! It's so human. Not like a sterile piece of furniture just sitting there.''
The school invited the couple to buy the whole collection, but leave it at Darrow. The plan was to bring together the objects, many of which were in disrepair, into several buildings that would serve as an on-site museum.
The deal took. A year later, Hakuta recalled, he was frustrated that no move was made to centralize the Shaker objects for restoration. Indeed, the school often made access to the objects difficult, he said.
Enraged, Hakuta showed up with a crew of art movers and trucks to tote the works away. He warned the school and made sure the media was on hand. Six hours later, Hakuta and crew drove off with the legacy of Mount Lebanon Shaker Village.
Both sides fumed. The school's encounters with Hakuta were ``enough of a negative that we never plan to deal with him again,'' school board chairman Earl Samson III told the Post.
Hakuta said he felt justified in his actions. ``A lot of the Shaker furniture had not been taken care of.''
A rare circa 1800 cupboard was found in the bedroom of a teacher's daughter. ``She kept her `Wheel of Fortune' game in it,'' said Hakuta, aghast. Valuable pieces were in everyday use to store clothes, even janitorial supplies, he said.
He gathered the objects and took them to a warehouse in Howard County, Md.
``I've become a fanatic about keeping this collection intact,'' said Hakuta, who owns 32 enormous meetinghouse benches. ``My museum friends say, `Ken, it's such a storage problem. You should keep the best examples and sell the rest. Then you can use the money for maintenance and storage.'
``Generally, I like to ignore expert advice. So I don't do that.
``If we ever want to restore the meetinghouse, we need those benches, right? So somebody has to keep them intact.
``What if I sold them off one by one? Well, they'd have to be remade.''
On the face of it, Hakuta, 45, might seem an unlikely Shaker caretaker.
The austere simplicity of Shaker furniture seems timeless, while Hakuta is linked, at least in public terms, to trendier attractions.
Children might recognize him as the wacky Japanese-American host for ``The Dr. Fad Show,'' aired since 1988 and now in reruns, though not locally. In the 1980s, Hakuta made $20 million, The Post reported, after buying the worldwide rights to a Japanese toy - a sticky octopus he named ``Wacky Wallwalker.''
That's the colorful glob kids throw at walls, then watch as it slime-walks its way to the floor.
Hakuta boasts progressive kin. His uncle is Nam June Paik, an avant garde artist who is considered the father of video art. Hakuta's personality is similar to Paik's - fun-loving, eclectic, inventive.
But Shakers were progressive too, Hakuta said.
They were a very clever people credited with many significant inventions. A short list: the wooden clothespin, the circular saw, the first wrinkle-free and water-resistant fabric, a ``tone-o-meter'' for setting the pitch of Shaker songs. They even originated the idea of selling garden seeds in little paper packets.
From a peak of 6,000 members, the sect has dwindled to as few as eight members, all at Sabbathday Lake in Poland Springs, Maine, Hakuta said.
Shakers often are confused with Quakers, or the Amish, Hakuta said, but are quite different. Like monks or nuns, Shakers take a vow of celibacy and live together communally.
Shakers, also known as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, are a hard-working, pacifist sect. They live quiet, orderly, devotional lives, striving for a constant spiritual mindfulness in the manner of Zen Buddhists.
A visitor to a Shaker community was told by a believer that ``their furniture was originally designed in heaven, and that the patterns have been transmitted to them by angels,'' reported a 1937 book on Shakers.
``I think I like things that are spiritual,'' Hakuta said. In his Victorian home are Korean pottery, Pennsylvania-Dutch, Inuit and native American objects and Surrealist paintings, all of which have spiritual, religious or philosophical underpinnings.
In scouting the Darrow School for Shaker material, Hakuta went into attics crammed with significant items. ``I remember literally bumping into this grave marker.''
When the ultra-tidy Shakers realized they would leave ``The Mount,'' as they called it, they yanked up the markers rather than leave them to uncaring property owners, he said.
The one he bumped into bore the name of Elida Barbour, who died in 1860 at age 4.
``You see, I have three boys,'' Hakuta said. ``I had no girls. And I was so touched by that. She must have been an orphan child. Came to the community and died.
``I almost cried, seeing that. And to see all these objects, strewn all over, not taken care of. And here's her grave marker, rusting away in an attic. Just randomly there. Just there.
``All those things make me feel I really have to take care of these babies.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MAX AGUILERA-HELLWEG
Ken Hakuta feels a duty to restore and preserve his vast Shaker
collection.
Color photos courtesy of The Chrysler Museum
ART OF THE SHAKERS: (1) CANDLE STAND, (2) BOTTLE CARRIER, (3) SCROLL
ARMED ROCKER, (4) STORAGE BOXES AND MEASURES, (5) BISQUE DOLL, (6)
TILT-TOP WORK TABLE, (7) TALL CASE CLOCK
by CNB