Stacey B. Gilman

Stacey B. Gilman came to Oʻahu from New Jersey as a young visitor whose life was full of the ordinary hopes of late adolescence. At 19 she was far from home, spending a holiday with family in Waikīkī — the kind of trip many take to feel the ocean and celebrate together. Those who recall the few public records available describe her as traveling with family members, including a sister, and enjoying a Fourth of July evening by the water.

Though public detail about Stacey’s life before that visit is limited in accessible records, the basic facts that are documented make clear that she was a real person with family connections and plans interrupted far too soon. After being struck by a gunshot on the evening of July 4, 1981, she was taken to a hospital in Waikīkī where she died later that night. The loss was sudden and left family and community members with grief and unanswered questions.

Because formal, family-authorized obituaries locating fuller life details have not been found in readily available archival sources, what remains best to hold onto is a simple human truth: Stacey was a young woman away from home with family around her, and her life mattered beyond the brief public record of how it ended. This remembrance honors that humanity — a young life on the threshold of everything ahead, remembered with respect and quiet sorrow.

If you have memories, photographs, or family-corrected details to add to this remembrance, those contributions would help ensure Stacey’s life is remembered with the fullness it deserves rather than only the circumstances of her death.