Fong resilient in financial feud with son

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hiram Fong gingerly exits his white Cadillac Seville and, with the aid of a walker, makes his way slowly up to Suite 498 of the Finance Factors headquarters he once presided over.

At 96, Hiram Fong Sr. says he's not ready to give up. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

In the same moment, Fong blamed his financial problems on his youngest son and daughter-in-law and exposed years of ill will that had been building between them.

"The actions taken by my son, Marvin, and his wife, Sandra, have left me with no other options," Fong said in a statement at the time.

At 96, with both his health and wealth fading, Fong nevertheless remains the sharp-minded, defiant underdog who went from selling hand-caught crabs to the U.S. Senate chambers after Hawai'i gained statehood in 1959.

"You tell my friends not to worry," Fong said last week in his Finance Factors office. "I'm going to be all right. I've gone through many, many, many battles, and this is one in which I'm taking just like the others."

These are undeniably hard times for Fong.

He's been using a walker since he slipped on the steps of his home in 'Alewa Heights six weeks ago while picking up a newspaper. The fall left him with a pair of broken ribs on his left side and a compressed vertebrae.

He's still getting used to new hearing aids. And for the past year, he has been undergoing dialysis treatment three times a week at St. Francis Medical Center for kidney failure.

He also lost sleep in the days before he filed for bankruptcy and made the decision to issue the statement blaming Marvin, essentially making public what had been quietly simmering for some time.

The problems between father and son remind senior U.S. District Judge Sam King, Fong's longtime friend, of a line from Shakespeare's "King Lear": "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

"Sen. Fong's situation," King said, "is tragic."

Perhaps the worst part of the past few weeks is that Fong can no longer walk through Chinatown and downtown for lunch, where he would reconnect with old business and political allies and touch the hands of the people who once voted for him as a Republican in a Democrat-dominated state.

He used to have a reputation for possessing a vigorous appetite. Now he eats a carefully selected lunch at his desk, sometimes alone, isolated from the warmth and sympathy that has been generated since his bankruptcy filing.

"No," said Fong's oldest son, Hiram Jr., 63. "He doesn't hear much of that, to tell you the truth."

Even as his health worsens and his legal problems grow, Fong finds optimism.

Some of the patients Fong sees at his dialysis treatments have lost limbs to diabetes, and Fong counts himself among the lucky.

"He says, 'I'm 96, mostly everything's working. I've got more years to go,'" Hiram Jr. said.

"Junior," as he's called, says the final chapter has not been written on his father.

"He's a fighter," Junior said. "He's always been a fighter. He's always been a minority. So he doesn't give up."

If it's too soon to begin writing the end of Fong's career, it's certainly not too late to recap his story so far.

Sau How Fong and Lum Shee Fong immigrated to Hawai'i from Kwangtung province in 1872 — just two of the 45,000 Chinese immigrants who came to work on Hawai'i's sugar plantations. They had 11 children in all and their seventh — Ah Leong Fong.

Ah Leong Fong caught fish and crab by hand and sold them to make money for the family. He shined shoes, delivered poi, sold newspapers and caddied for golfers.

He graduated from McKinley High School in 1924 with other children of immigrants, or immigrants themselves, who went on to positions of power and wealth in Honolulu. Among his classmates were businessman Chinn Ho, former Supreme Court Justice Masaji Marumoto and real estate magnate Hung Wai Ching.

Ah Leong changed his first name to Hiram "just because it was a good name,'' he once said. Others said it was an homage to Hiram Bingham, one of the first New England missionaries to reach Hawai'i in the early 1800s.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Hawai'i in 1930 — where he edited both Ka Leo, the student newspaper, and Ka Palapala, the yearbook. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1935 and returned home to work as a deputy city attorney.

Fong founded a law firm, married his high school sweetheart, Ellyn Loo, in 1938, and raised four children: Hiram Jr., a former state legislator and Honolulu city councilman; Rodney L., who cares for the Senator Hiram Fong's Plantation & Gardens Inc. attraction park in Kahalu'u; and twins, Marvin-Alan and Merie-Ellen Fong Mitchell.

In 1938 he also won a seat in the territorial House of Representatives and spent the next 14 years in the Legislature until the Democrats took control.

In private life, Fong amassed a fortune from land, real estate, insurance and investments. But when Hawai'i gained statehood in 1959, Fong ran for one of the Senate seats at the age of 52. It was a second chance at a political career that lasted until 1977, when he retired.

The following year, Marvin graduated from California Western School of Law in San Diego with his own ideas about how the family's money should be managed.

The family had formed a real estate investment group and Marvin returned home to find banks demanding a year's worth of mortgage payments on rental homes, Marvin Fong said. The rent had been collected, but spent elsewhere, he said.

Then his father's idea for a $3.6 million, four-tiered barge and showboat restaurant called The Oceania on Honolulu's waterfront went bust.

"It was crazy," Marvin said. "My brother (Hiram Jr.) can do nothing wrong. My brother is his favorite because he has his name. Instead of disciplining him, my father just bails him out. My father has to handle all of his problems and gets himself into financial problems."

Growing up, things went well between Marvin and his father, he said, "as long as I listened to him."

"Then I go to college, I go to law school and I'm supposed to think for myself," Marvin said. "You know, he's not always right. The Chinese from the old country thinks it's a paternalistic society and you have to do everything your father says. I don't agree if he's steering you down the wrong path."

Marvin filed suit in October, alleging that his father and his mother reneged on an agreement to option their stock to Marvin and his wife. Marvin said it was a move to protect Fong's assets and interests.

"I never thought I would have to sue my dad, I never wanted to," he said. "But he should accept me for who I am. I can't be a yes man."

Marvin communicates to his father now only through instructional letters, which his father ignores, or at contentious board meetings.

"I can talk to my dad until I'm blue in the face, but he won't listen to me," Marvin said. "So I won't try anymore."

For now, when his body is willing, Sen. Fong tries to resume something similar to his old routine at Finance Factors on Bishop Street.

His office there is decorated with reminders of a simpler life on the Windward side, a trip with grandchildren to the Great Wall of China, a White House dinner with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and an oil painting of Fong in his prime, with dark hair.

Next to the portrait rests another memento, a gift from the former Marshal of Manchuria to Fong on his 88th birthday.

And since he began learning how to read and write Chinese five years ago, Fong is proud to translate the symbol. It's a sign of good wishes as well as a testament to a life that has stretched across 96 years.

"It means longevity," Fong said. "Long life."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.