Why an Edmond North family is asking the wrestling community to help Hawaii fire recovery
Liza and Nathan Williams have made a home for their family in Edmond over the past few years, getting all five of their kids involved with their sport of choice, wrestling, with Nathan even helping coach the girls team at Edmond North High School.
But as immersed as they are in Oklahoma, home is Hawaii.
Lahaina, to be exact.
Since Tuesday morning when a cataclysmic wildfire started roaring across the island of Maui and tearing through the historic town of Lahaina, the Williamses have been scrambling to get details. How are their family members? What about their friends?
Many of those friends are part of the wrestling community, and as recently as a month or so ago, some of them were in Oklahoma training and competing with the Williams kids and other Edmond North wrestlers.
“All of the Hawaii wrestlers that came here are OK, and all of them on the team are accounted for and are OK,” Liza Williams said of the wrestlers at Lahainaluna High School. “Now, that means they are alive and safe. Do they have a home? Most of them do not. But they are alive and with their family.”
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Even as the Williams family works to get in touch or stay in communication with many back in Hawaii, the Edmond North wrestling community is rallying. A GoFundMe account has been started to aid wrestlers and their families in Lahaina. Listed under "Maui Fire Donation," the funds raised may help the Williamses, too; they have a house back in Lahaina and will need to travel to Hawaii to assess damage.
The hope is that people who love wrestling will join the effort.
The Williams family, after all, knows how welcoming the wrestling community can be.
Three years ago, Liza, Nathan and their children came to the continental U.S. after the winter wrestling season concluded in Hawaii. On the islands, big, competitive wrestling tournaments are difficult to come by during the offseason, so in order to get exposure to better competition, the family flew to the lower 48 and planned for an extended stay, living in an RV and traveling around to different tournaments.
In early March 2020 while the kids were training with a coach in Illinois, the family starting making plans to go back to Hawaii.
Then COVID hit.
A friend from Oklahoma had a house in Luther and offered its use to the Williamses. They figured they’d stay until COVID ended.
“And well,” Liza said, “COVID never ended.”
The pandemic kept visitors from traveling to Hawaii and shut down much of the tourism industry in Hawaii.
“There were no jobs,” Liza said. “It was completely locked down.”
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That prompted the family to decide to extend their stay. They left Luther and settled in Edmond. Liza and Nathan's oldest, son Oscar, was a state runner-up last season and helped the Edmond North boys to a runner-up finish at state. Their oldest daughter, Bella, finished undefeated for a second consecutive season, won another state title and helped the Edmond North girls to a runner-up finish.
Younger sisters Clover, Sasha, and Nika wrestle, too.
But when the school season is over, the Williams family keeps right on wrestling. And over the past few summers, they welcomed wrestlers from Lahaina to come and stay with them for several weeks during the summer. The wrestlers could go with the Williams family to wrestling tournaments and train with the kids during the downtimes.
Edmond North head coach Andy Schneider welcomed the Lahaina wrestlers, too.
“Coach Schneider’s so graciously allowed them to come train with the team,” Liza said.
While the wrestlers benefited from the exchange, so did the Williams family.
“It brings Maui back to us, and that’s what we love,” Liza said. “My kids love having them. It’s nice to feel like home has come to us here.”
But this past week, the Williams family’s connection to those wrestlers has magnified their worry about the fires in Lahaina.
“We’re not just concerned about us and our family but our wrestlers,” Liza said.
“These are our people.”
And because of the scope of the devastation ― by late Friday, 80 people had been confirmed to have died in the fires, and in Lahaina, more than 2,200 structures have been destroyed ― it is difficult to conceive of the impact. Maybe Oklahomans understand better than most because of our history with deadly tornadoes. But still, Lahaina (population 13,216 in the 2020 census) was hit in a way that is hard for anyone to fathom.
“Ninety percent of them lost everything,” Liza Williams said of Lahaina residents. “They don’t have a single thing but the clothes on their back.
“It’s been something I never ever thought I would experience, I never wanted to experience.”
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She knows from past tragedies that people in Lahaina have always focused on the children in times like these. Find a way to get them back to the things they love. Return them to a sense of normalcy as soon as possible.
But this time?
Normalcy seems far away.
Even though the high school is OK ― “Which is just a miracle,” Liza said ― that doesn’t mean the kids will be allowed in it any time soon.
As for the wrestlers getting back to their facility to train and work out?
“I don’t think it’ll happen for weeks,” Liza said.
The recovery in Lahaina will be slow, but the Williamses hope the wrestling community in Oklahoma will be able to help the wrestling community there get back on its feet. They know, after all, how much wrestling here has done for their family.
They hope it can do the same for their Lahaina family.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok or on Threads at jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Hawaii fires: Family asks Oklahoma wrestling community to help Lahaina
