Picture this same corner on the night of November 18, 1939. Cars roll up to a long covered entrance, and a marquee lights the sky above Kūhiō Highway. The Roxy Theatre has just opened, and 1,050 people are filing into the largest movie house in the Hawaiian Islands. It is the work of two Kapaʻa locals, William A. Fernandez and his wife Agnes Scharsch Fernandez, and it was designed by famed Hawaiʻi architect C.W. Dickey, modeled after the legendary Roxy in New York City. Ushers in black pants and crisp white long-sleeved shirts greet you at the door. Ocean breezes pour through tall vents along the walls, carrying the smell of salt and rain.

Inside, The Charles Kaneyama Orchestra is playing in the lobby. The opening night double feature is about to begin, "Lady of the Tropics" starring Hedy Lamarr, followed by "Goodbye Mr. Chips" with Robert Donat. Each night of the week brings a different audience together. Filipino night. Japanese night. Romance, drama, and comedy. Opera stars come too, the legendary Marian Anderson and Lauritz Melchior among them. The Roxy is more than a movie house. It is the only place in town where every plantation family, regardless of language or origin, gathers in the same dark room and watches the same flickering light.

And then there are the people who built it. Agnes Scharsch began her working life at fourteen years old, earning four cents trimming pineapple at Hawaiian Canneries to send her brothers to school in Honolulu. She would later say, "I built our home on pineapple savings." She and William built this theater on those same savings. The Roxy survived a flood in 1941 and decades of changing times, until 1992, when Hurricane Iniki tore through Kapaʻa and damaged it beyond repair.