Palolo Chinese Home honors benefactor
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
Eunice Chang Lum Chun, leaning on a cane, paused in the grounds of the Palolo Chinese Home yesterday to thank Honolulu attorney Wesley Fong for helping organize the new $500,000 heritage fund-raising campaign for the home.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
But it was 86-year-old Chun, Fong said, who should be thanked.
Chef Titus Chan prepares a meal at a fund-raiser for the Palolo Chinese Home. An $18 million expansion is planned for the home, which cares for seniors.
One of six children in a poor Honolulu family, orphaned at the age of 3 and raised by family friends until her arranged marriage at 15, Chun was a mother of two by the time she was 17.
To help support her family, Chun took up needle and thread as a seamstress, beginning a career that included the design of a immensely popular Chinese style blouse and blossomed into a lucrative business.
Yesterday, Chun was honored as a heritage patron of the 85-year-old home in Palolo Valley, and recognized for her gifts of her Makiki home, two condominium apartments, and $50,000 in cash, for the PŒlolo Chinese Capital Campaign.
"My culture is Chinese," Chun said when asked about the gifts, "and our culture is that we have to take care of and respect the old and be kind to them and help them."
Because her successful sons are retired and living on their own resources, and because she knows the quality of the home's care for her two brothers-in-law, Chun said, "I want to give to the Palolo Chinese Home."
Fong and others in the new fund-raising campaign see Chun's gifts as inspirational examples for the entire Chinese community, from which 35 organizations, including societies, clans, schools and veterans' groups, have already pledged support.
A heritage committee working with the Chinese community plans to raise $500,000 as part of the effort to build an $18 million expansion of the home to provide 88 new assisted living apartments, and a 40-bed skilled nursing facility.
Started as a home for aging bachelors among Hawai'i's first Chinese immigrants, the home was soon opened to women and, in 1920, to people of other ethnic backgrounds, who today make up half of 60 residents.
Like the home, the campaigns are open to the entire community, and several non-Chinese organizations have joined in the effort.
With the nation's highest life expectancy and least number of care beds per capita, Hawai'i is at the forefront of a world-wide aging crisis, said Capital Campaign Co-Chairman Ted Jung.
"For the first time in the history of mankind," Jung said, "people 65 years of age are being asked to care for parents who are 85 years old."
Leigh-Wai Doo, chief executive officer of the home, said its expansion plans include outreach, day care and respite care to help seniors "age in place" in their own homes as well as provide assisted residential care.
As for Chun, she also has plans for places other than Palolo.
"I am giving $100,000 toward building a place for seniors to gather in the Chinese village of Zham Heung, the homeland of my husband and my parents," she said.
Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.
