At their final meeting of the year, the Punahou Board of Trustees honored Thomas Kosasa ’63, who is retiring from the Board this month. While most of the Trustees joined the meeting via video conference, Board Chair Mark Fukunaga ’74, Advancement Committee Chair Wendy Crabb and President Mike Latham ’86 were able to assemble in the boardroom, socially distanced, to bid a fond aloha and mahalo to Kosasa for his incredible service to Punahou School.
Kosasa is a professor at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, Chief of the Reproductive Endocrinology Division and Co-director of the Pacific In Vitro Fertilization Institute.
He entered Punahou in 1957 as a seventh grader from Aina Haina Elementary. At Punahou, he was a member of the National Honor Society and Rifle Team, which won the Hawaii State Championship in 1963. At Dartmouth College, he was Captain of the Rifle Team, which won the Ivy League Title, and he Graduated with Distinction with a degree in architecture in 1967. He gradated from Dartmouth Medical School in 1971, and finished his residency and fellowship at Harvard Medical School.
He rose to the rank of Major in the U.S. Army; is an accomplished pilot and flight instructor with an ATP rating; a seasoned race car driver with a first-place finish in the North Atlantic Road Racing Series driving a Porsche; the author or co-author of more than 60 professional journal articles and book chapters; and has welcomed an amazing number of a new lives into this world as an obstetrician-gynecologist. With all these accomplishments and interests, many people wonder if there’s anything he can’t do.
Kosasa is also one of the most generous donors to the School in its 179-year history. He and his family launched the Sidney and Minnie Kosasa Community for Grades 2 – 5, naming it in honor of his parents. He also made the pledge in May of 2019 that officially put Punahou over the top of our $175 million Ku’u Punahou Campaign.
“What stands out is Tom’s quiet confidence and incredibly warm character,” President Mike Latham ’86 said. “He is a true gentleman in the full sense of that word. We are deeply grateful for all that Tom and his wife, Mi, have done for Punahou. They have made an enormous difference and will always be an integral part of the Punahou ‘ohana.”