Beloved by teachers and coworkers, he mentored many union staff, leaders
Posted: September 3, 2026
S am Moore, a revered Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association UniServ Director for more than 39 years who was beloved by teachers and colleagues, died earlier this summer. He was 80 years old.
Moore worked at HSTA from 1971 until he retired in 2011, spending most of that time as UniServ Director for Windward Oʻahu, serving teachers from Waimānalo to the North Shore. Moore also served as a UniServ Director in East Honolulu and Kauaʻi.
Moore mentored numerous HSTA veterans during their first years in the union, leaving a lasting impression on them, including its current and past executive directors.
HSTA Executive Director Andrea Eshelman said, “Sam was one of HSTA’s earliest staff members and his impact on our union cannot be overstated. For decades, he advocated tirelessly on behalf of Hawaiʻi’s educators, helping members navigate contractual violations, defend their rights, coordinate strikes and organizing efforts. Sam was a brilliant advocate who could cite the contract from memory, quickly rattling off language, article, letter and page number.”
“Personally, I will always be grateful for Sam’s mentorship, wisdom, and guidance. Like many others, I learned invaluable lessons from him about advocacy, organizing, and the need for staff to be strong allies for our members,” Eshelman added.
Wilbert Holck, HSTA’s former executive director who retired from the union in 2022, said Moore helped him learn the ropes when Holck joined the staff as a UniServ Director in 1989.
“When I started, whenever I had a question, if it was a contract question, I’d go to Sam. “He handled a lot of the tough cases. He was always willing to help, to stop what he was doing, and help us out with any question that we had,” Holck said.
“You never met a more passionate advocate for teachers. He knew that contract inside and out, and nobody could get anything by him,” Holck said.
“He was a great guy. But don’t ever mess with him in a grievance or an arbitration when he’s representing a teacher,” Holck recalled.
Joan Lewis, HSTA’s deputy executive director, remembered Moore fondly.
“When a fight was necessary, and in the early days of HSTA, the ‘fight’ was necessary, you always wanted to be standing on the same side as Sam. Yes, he was a relentless champion for teachers’ rights and demanded that administrators honor the teacher contract at all times, but he had no problem challenging all of us to step up and do the right thing,” Lewis said.
Lewis recalled how Moore rallied teachers in defense of a teacher at Enchanted Lake Elementary in the 1990s. She was a school-level leader whom Sam determined was facing retaliation from her principal because of her SLL status.
“Sam organized an islandwide event that required hundreds of us (teachers) to board buses around the island and ride to Lena’s school to picket the principal. All that coordination and action for one teacher! Sam later shared that the action was vital in demonstrating his core belief that an injury to one was an injury to all,” Lewis said.
Colleagues remember Moore as a charismatic ‘original advocate’
Jeanine Tsuchiya, who retired from HSTA in 2021 after 20 years as a UniServ Director, called Moore “the original advocate.”
“Without question, no one had as much passion as he did. He felt the distress of our members and was more hurt than they were by the mistreatment and injustices they endured, Tsuchiya remembered.
He would joke that the employer practiced “just cause” as “just cuz,” Tsuchiya said in a written remembrance about Moore.
“He put his heart and soul into his work. Everyone, except maybe the principals or employer, loved him and looked forward to being in his magnetic company,” she added.
“‘Oh look, a chicken!!’ If you spent any time at all with Sam, you would have heard him say this. Sam was a very smart man, but he himself would explain that his mind was having a party — all the time. Sam could be easily distracted, even (or especially) when we should be focusing on something serious like, say, a staff meeting,” Tsuchiya said.
As a second-year teacher at Hauʻula Elementary, Beverly Ikalani said she “was voluntold” to serve as the school’s HSTA head faculty representative. That’s when she met Moore.
“I was mesmerized by this engaging and charismatic person and thus never missed a meeting!” she recalled.
In a written tribute to Moore, Ikalani said, “I always looked up to Sam as he was so intelligent, confident, powerful, and a bulldog. I observed him in trainings and contentious meetings with the DOE, and I thought, ‘Wow, I wanna be like him!’”
In her last year at Hauʻula Elementary, the teachers had to file a class grievance, she remembered.
“He attempted multiple times to meet informally with the principal, but she would hide in her office, and Sam yelled through the open jalousies on the top, ‘I know you’re in there!’ This experience set the stage for the rest of my career. I was confident in my knowledge of the contract and continued to be a teacher leader in most of the schools where I worked,” Ikalani said.
Ikalani joined the HSTA staff as a UniServ Director and Moore served as her mentor.
“He taught us how to review investigative reports and potential contractual violations and how to prepare our advocacy notes. I continue to use that same format today. He taught me so much, and I attribute a lot of my success as a UD to Sam,” she said.
“Sam has done so much for so many people in labor unions, and he’s been my hero for many decades,” said Ikalani, who has served as an HSTA UD for 19 years.
Arlene Lee was a social studies teacher at McKinley High when she joined the HSTA staff in 1971, before the union won two representative elections to represent public school teachers in the state.
Moore, who was a special education teacher at Jefferson Elementary in those early days, was hired by HSTA around the same time. Moore and Lee partnered to represent teachers in the Honolulu district, which HSTA later named its Honolulu Chapter.
“Sam was very passionate about things, sometimes to the extreme,” Lee said with a chuckle.
He was also “very loud and very outspoken,” she said, noting that those qualities were really important in the early days of the union.
Like Moore, Lee spent 39 years at the union, working as a UniServ Director before becoming the governance specialist and finishing her career as the instruction and professional development specialist.
Yvette Robertson, a longtime secretary at HSTA, served as Moore’s secretary in the union’s field operations department.
“He truly believed and cared about protecting people’s rights,” she remembered. “He was never afraid to speak up and stand his ground.”
“He was a perfectionist! Sam’s knowledge, wisdom and brilliance were unmatched,” Robertson said.
Sam with his son Kimo
