Hung Wo Ching was a savvy entrepreneur who went from shoeshine boy to the boardrooms of Hawai'i's most prestigious companies.
His rescue of the company now known as Aloha Airlines, which was near bankruptcy when he got involved in 1958, is widely viewed as Ching's greatest accomplishment. But Ching also was a big-time developer, a university regent, and a Bishop Estate trustee.
What set him apart in the years just before and after statehood, however, was that Ching was a successful Asian-American in a world dominated and controlled at the time by white businessmen.
Ching was born in 1912. His father was a cook on an interisland steamship and his mother took in laundry. Ching attended the University of Hawai'i, Yenching University, Utah State, Cornell and Harvard.
From 1948 to 1958, he developed eight subdivisions. After that, he bought a 10 percent share in the struggling Trans-Pacific Airlines and nurtured its growth, renaming it Aloha Airlines.
Not long after his death in 1996, at 83, Ching was fondly remembered by Aloha old-timers who recalled the no-nonsense, bow-tie-wearing businessman for his personal touch, Every Christmas day, Ching would tour the Islands on a company jet to shake hands with employees and wish them good luck.
