Grace Hagemann Scholarship Recipients

Left. Mallory Go. Right: Clara Merkel. Photos courtesy of Na Pu’uwai

Two Molokai college students have been awarded the Grace Hagemann Scholarship by Na Pu’uwai Native Hawaiian Health Care System for their interest in community and Native Hawaiian healthcare.

The scholarship is in honor of Grace Haaheo Kaawakano Hagemann, who was born in Pukoo, Molokai in December, 1894 and died on January 16, 1969, at age 74.

Hagemann had four daughters, Anna, Leonie, Katherine, and Anita. After a troubled marriage and the death of her husband in 1928, she became the sole supporter of her family, according to a bio on the Na Pu’uwai page for the scholarship. She was a cleaning lady for a doctor at a clinic at Pukoo, near Kilohana School, and grew most of her family’s food in her home garden. She also enjoyed gathering limu and making lauhala mats, baskets, and hats.

The bio describes Hagemann as a self-educated woman, with many descendants, including Na Pu’uwai’s founder the late Billy Akutagawa, working in the health industry. The Grace Hagemann Scholarship honors the legacy she left her ʻohana, of the value of education and service to others by awarding a $1000 scholarship award for Molokai students.

This year’s recipients are Mallory Go and Clara Merkel.

Go, entering her last year at Brown University, explained in a statement on the Na Pu’uwai website that “I hail from Molokai, Hawaii, a rural community that, like the rest of Hawaii, is disproportionately affected by physician shortage, inadequate prenatal care, and unintended pregnancies…As I prepared to enter my final year of undergraduate education, I recalled my own experiences and encounters within healthcare and am constantly surprised by how accustomed I was to evident inequities.”

Go plans on completing a PhD in epidemiology after fulfilling her Five Year Undergraduate/MPH with her master’s thesis focused on the variation of outcomes and
healthcare service utilization among neonates.

The other recipient of this year’s award is Clara Merkel, who is pursuing nursing at Grand Canyon University.

“Growing up on the island of Molokai, I have always harbored a deep-seated aspiration for higher education,” said Merkel in her statement on the Na Pu’uwai website. “The scarcity of accessible healthcare services on Molokai serves as a powerful motivator for me to pursue nursing as my chosen field of study.”