Twenty-three graduating seniors accepted their diplomas on Saturday at Ke Kula Kaiapuni 'O 'Anuenue, a ceremony that — to the relief of 'Anuenue's beleaguered principal — included kisses and hugs on a campus that came to represent ground zero for O'ahu's swine flu outbreak.

"Nose to nose represents the sharing of ha, or the breath of life, and this is very important to Hawaiians. ... At graduation, in spite of the swine flu, we went ahead with the Hawaiian way of greeting," Principal Charles Naumu said yesterday.

Crews scrubbed the Palolo campus yesterday, part of the routine, end-of-the-school year cleanup. And Naumu dared to hope that his campus has finally returned to normalcy since a third-grade teacher and a student were diagnosed with swine flu the night of May 12.

Over the next several days, the number of swine flu cases connected to the Hawaiian immersion school quickly mushroomed to include nine more children.

"We were the first and we had the most cases," Naumu said.

Parents responded by keeping as many as 150 of 'Anuenue's 353 students out of school. And when the school year finally ended on Friday, a dozen or so students still had not returned.

Naumu now hopes to reconnect with their families before the next school year begins July 30 — just one more task he's taken on since 'Anuenue became intertwined with swine flu.

The job of running 'Anuenue already was considered one of the toughest in the Department of Education. 'Anuenue's principal has to oversee separate elementary, intermediate, high school and Hawaiian immersion programs, and children are bused in every morning from the Leeward Coast, Windward side and Central O'ahu — and driven in from all over the island.

"Being a principal at any school is an enormous challenge," said Stephen Schatz, complex area superintendent for the Kaimuki, Roosevelt, McKinley complex area. "In 'Anuenue's case you have the added job expectation of speaking Hawaiian and understanding the Hawaiian culture and being able to perpetuate the culture through the educational program."

FLU 'POSTER BOY'

Naumu, who's normally soft-spoken, found himself with a new job requirement to communicate almost daily with officials with the state Department of Health, Department of Education, worried faculty, staff, parents and children — and to grant almost daily news interviews in which he urged common sense hygiene.

"Charles was calm under pressure," Schatz said. "When a leader shows that he's under control, then people tend to follow that example."

But nothing in Naumu's 36 years as a Hawai'i educator had prepared him for his role as "the poster boy, the person behind the flu" at the age of 63, he said yesterday.

So Naumu put his trust and faith in federal and state health guidelines that dictated that it was more important to identify swine flu patients and isolate them to contain the spread rather than shut down the school.

While some parents supported Naumu's stance, others blasted him.

Calls came into the school blaming Naumu for perpetuating a supposed conspiracy to spread swine flu among Native Hawaiians.

Others left race out of the equation, but stung Naumu with the suggestion that he would jeopardize the health of his beloved students.

"How come you never close the school?" Naumu quoted his critics. "Why are you putting students at risk?"

The emergence of swine flu at 'Anuenue pushed Naumu far beyond his comfort level.

Naumu — who joked that he was born "half Hawaiian, half haole and a quarter Oriental" — was raised an only child in the Damon Tract neighborhood of Pu'uloa.

"I learned to stick to myself, mind my own business," he said.

He spent four years in Kamehameha Schools' Junior ROTC and ran sprints at Kamehameha. He then enrolled in four more years of ROTC at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he also played setter on BYU's volleyball team before joining the Air Force Reserve.

Naumu then spent two years on his mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, where his bicycle was run off the road and doors were slammed in his face.

"LDS, the Mormons — some people like us, some people hate us," Naumu said. "I've been criticized and challenged before."

MORE WORK TO DO

To get through the swine flu crisis, Naumu relied on his military training — "I have that military devotion to duty," he said — and his faith that state and federal officials were right in keeping the school open while scrambling to keep the disease from spreading.

With an incubation period of seven days for swine flu, state epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park told The Advertiser last month that the best advice for 'Anuenue was to control the spread and let the disease run its course.

Health inspectors made three separate visits to 'Anuenue to educate faculty, staff and parents. And suddenly on May 20, eight days after the first cases were reported at 'Anuenue, the spate of swine flu cases connected to the school suddenly ended.

"Our school got the brunt of the hysteria," 'Anuenue parent and staff member Leilani Kamalani said. "We're happy with the way (Naumu) handled it."

Yesterday, Naumu flipped through newspaper articles he saved chronicling the spread of swine flu through his campus.

Naumu, ever the educator, wants to use the most difficult period in his professional life as a teaching moment.

"I'm trying to make this a learning process," he said. "If we don't learn from history, learn from our mistakes, we're going to make them again."

Naumu has been eligible to retire from the DOE for seven years, but believes he still has more work to do at 'Anuenue.

He's trying to navigate through a budget crisis, work on the curriculum and ready the school for whoever succeeds him at what may be the toughest principal's job in all of Hawai'i.

"This school is very fragile," Naumu said. "But I believe we have been strengthened. I'm not ready to leave yet."