KALAWAO, Molokaçi — Tom Walton prayed for a miracle to save his life and got it, then felt compelled by an indescribable force to jump on an airplane and travel across an ocean so he could kneel before Father Damien’s grave today.

Walton, 63, wept as he placed a blessed Vatican flag and his own rosary beads at Damien’s grave, then pumped his fist in victory.
“I’m just saying thanks,” Walton said after a moment between tears. “We did it. He did it.”
As soon as he learned of Damien’s canonization in Rome tomorrow (10 p.m. today Hawaii time), Watson left his home in Dana Point, Calif., on Friday, boarded a flight in Los Angeles, then rode a mule down a jagged, three-mile, serpentine trail to get to the rugged and remote Kalaupapa Peninsula yesterday at a cost that will run into the thousands of dollars.
“It was worth it,” Walton said. “It’s the trip of a lifetime. I haven’t even slept yet.”
The story of how Damien ministered to the outcasts of society of their day — which grew to a total of more than 8,000 Hansen’s disease patients beginning in 1866 — is drawing even more visitors to the tiny Kalaupapa Peninsula as his elevation to sainthood continues to attract worldwide attention.
Visitor Jeff Heinold of Haleçiwa told National Park Service rangers Tim Trainer and Amy Sakurada what they already know: More and more people touched by Damien’s work are bound to flock to Kalaupapa National Historic Park after today.
“The word is out,” Heinold told the rangers. “You’re going to have your hands full.”
Kalaupapa typically gets about 10,000 visitors annually, Sakurada said, a number that’s expected to rise this year and going forward as a result of Damien’s sainthood.
Other visitors, such as registered nurse Teddy Harrison of Hawaiçi Kai, booked her trip to Damien’s grave as soon as the date of Damien’s canonization was announced earlier this year.
She and her husband, Franklyn, had made the trip two years before when Teddy realized too late that she had nothing to leave at Damien’s grave. So today, Teddy was determined to do it right.
Some of her elderly patients had crocheted five yarn leis, which Teddy adorned with the names and photographs of 20 of her relatives, to include them in the journey.
“To me, nursing is very spiritual,” said Teddy, who teaches at the küpuna education center elder pal program at Kapiçolani Community College and wore brown hospital scrubs today. “As a nurse, I’m so touched by Father Damien’s life and work and death. I felt like this is where I had to be at this exact moment.”
But the future is uncertain for Kalawao, where Damien ministered to the sick until his death in 1889 of Hansen’s disease, and the relatively more modern Kalaupapa Settlement nearby.
The remaining 19 Hansen’s disease patients have been promised free health care, housing, food, electricity and water — all for life — by the state Health Department.
The youngest patient is 70 and the oldest are in their 80s, said Norman Soares, who leads visitors around the Kalaupapa Peninsula on a bumpy converted school bus through Damien Tours.
“Unknown to us today is what is the future after the last patients leave Kalaupapa,” said Soares, who is 64.
The 2€-mile-wide peninsula, separated from “Topside Molokaçi” by 1,700- to 2,000-foot sea cliffs, is owned by the state of Hawaiçi, federal government and Department of Hawaiian Homelands, which face increasing pressure to cut costs, said Mark Miller, who lives in Kalaupapa and serves as the settlement’s administrator for the state Department of Health.
Of Kalaupapa’s roughly 100 full-time residents, about 40 work for the Health Department and 40 for the National Park Service, Soares said.
There are remnants everywhere of Kalaupapa’s past and evidence of present-day efforts to keep the settlement alive:
Soares pointed out a battered Ford Model A truck nearly engulfed in overgrown grass that once had a tree growing out of it.
“It’s been a long time since it was last driven in Kalaupapa,” Soares said.
But plenty of work continues to keep the settlement operating.
Scott Fontenot was hired in July as a temporary National Park Service employee to repair and landscape more than 8,000 graves of patients and those who worked and died here.
So far, Fontenot has removed invasive plants and straightened headstones at a couple hundred graves — work that he considers an honor.
“It makes me feel very privileged to be here doing this work,” Fontenot said.
And visitors, of course, continue to arrive.
Nora Reinhardt, a 59-year-old cattle rancher from Holt, Mo., was raised Roman Catholic and remembered the schoolgirl images in her head as she read about Damien in Catholic school.
But Reinhardt realized only last week that her first trip to Kalaupapa coincided with Damien’s canonization.
“I’ve had this fascination with Damien since I was a little girl,” Reinhardt said today as she admired the gorgeous scenery while simultaneously shuddering at the horrors of how people were abandoned here.
“Father Damien was so brave,” Reinhardt said. “It just shows that one person can make a difference.”
Walton was diagnosed with Barrett’s esophagus in October 2007 and learned that he had a pre-cancerous condition with no cure once it develops into cancer.
“The doctors all said there was nothing they could do,” Walton said.
So Walton prayed as hard as he’s ever prayed for anything.
“I prayed to God, but Damien was always in my thoughts,” Walton said.
In April, Walton was cleared of the condition.
And on Friday, he knew he had to come to Kalawao and visit Damien’s grave.
“I’m just saying thanks,” Walton said with tears pouring down his face. “I just had to let him know that everything he was — everything he did — is so appreciated.”
While Damien soon will be known as St. Damien, Mother Marianne Cope is one step away from sainthood for her own work in Kalawao and Kalaupapa.
She has been designated by the Vatican as “Blessed.”
And everyone here hopes that Cope will become the second Catholic saint from Kalaupapa.
As the path to sainthood proceeds for Cope, Miller — the settlement’s administrator — continues to pray to her every day, hoping for a miracle for a more modern-day problem.
“I pray to Mother Marianne every night,” Miller said, “for the long-term continuation of Kalaupapa.”