LANI CUSTINO

Daughter of Vickie Ii. Lani Custino, hula dancer from a well-known family of entertainers, was born in Honolulu. Her career also included time as the late Kauai Mayor Tony Kunimura's secretary in the early 1980s -- and as secretary to the late Philip Gialanella, when he was publisher of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and president of the Hawaii Newspaper Agency.

Earlier, she had worked as an aide to Kunimura when he was in the state Legislature. But she was best known for her poetry-in-motion hula art, as one of Hawaii's leading solo hula dancers.

Her mother was the late hula legend Vicki I'i Rodrigues. Also, Lani studied hula under the famed Iolani Luahine.

Honolulu Star-Bulletin entertainment columnist Ben Wood once referred to the relatives as a "family of wonderful singers and dancers." Lani and other family members were longtime regulars on the "Hawaii Calls" radio show.

"Their mother, Vicki, was on the first broadcast in 1935," Wood said. The family had been entertaining for seven generations, he wrote.

" 'We all sang together as kids,' " brother Boyce Rodrigues told Wood. " 'When mama said to dance or sing, we knew we better do it.' "

Lani Custino died in 1998 in Las Vegas, where she had lived since August 1996. She was 66. Custino also was survived by daughters Luika Arellano and Vicki-Lani Kekuawela; sisters Nina Kealiiwahamana and Lahela Rodrigues; another brother, John Rodrigues; and eight grandchildren.


Biographical material from The Honolulu Star Bulletin.