Death and legacy
Hitchcock died in Honolulu on January 1, 1943, after personally witnessing the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
He had three children: Howard Harvey Hitchcock, born March 26, 1899, Joshua Dickson Hitchcock, born February 24, 1901, and Helen Hitchcock Maxon, born June 17, 1906.
Hitchcock is credited for bringing home Boy Scouting from a California visit around 1910. He worked first with Paul Soper of the YMCA, and then James A. (Kimo) Wilder to establish Troop 1 and became its first scoutmaster. Hitchcock and Wilder were both artists,
having similar backgrounds in art and travel, even sketching the grounding of the steamship Manchuria together in August, 1906. Wilder was cousin of Hitchcock's wife, and son of steamship company founder Samuel Gardner Wilder.
Hitchcock wrote: Visiting such men as could be found who were interested I obtained all the data then available with a series of photographs from the East illustrating [Boy Scouts] activities and with these came back to Honolulu where I proceeded to organize a troop (now Troop I) which at first consisted of one patrol. It was later known as the Rainbow troop from the variety of colors represented in its personnel.
In 1966 his son Harvey donated a painting of the volcano goddess Pele which was displayed in the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park visitor center. In 2003 the Volcano Art Center had a special competition for Pele paintings, in an effort to create a more modern and culturally authentic rendering.
The Bernice P. Bishop Museum (Honolulu), The Boston Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Isaacs Art Center (Waimea, Hawaii), and the Oakland Museum of California are among the public collections holding paintings by David Howard Hitchcock.
Hitchcock is called the first homegrown artist in Hawaii with international recognition.
