Mourners pay their final respects to former U.S. Sen. Hiram Fong during visitation at Nu‘uanu Memorial Park and Mortuary this morning. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Fong's body lay in state in the atrium overnight, where visitors came to visit at all hours.

"You just had to really admire a person who went through all that he did," said Violet Yee as Fong's casket was guarded this morning by members of the Hawai'i Army and Air National Guard.

Yee lived down the street from Fong's home in 'Alewa heights, where Fong once told Yee's then-4-year-old son, "read, read, read."

Jeffrey Yee went to Notre Dame on a scholarship and is now a 38-year-old Air Force major — just like Fong once was. All these years later, Jeffrey Yee still remembers Fong's words, his mother said.

Moments later, the sound of an honor guard's shoe taps clicked in unison as eight airmen from the Hawai'i Air National Guard carried Fong's coffin, cloaked in the U.S. flag, to the back of a white hearse.

It was the final moment of the Capitol services for Fong, who died Aug. 18 at the age of 97.

Fong rose from poverty to the Territorial Legislature, House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, where he served for 17 years as the country's first elected Asian-American senator.

An Army Air Forces officer during World War II, Fong became a Harvard-trained lawyer who formed Honolulu's most racially mixed law firm for its day. He also was a businessman who earned and lost fortunes several times over.

At a Capitol memorial last night, friends, family, employees and government leaders spanning a generation of Hawai'i politics also remembered Fong's gentle side as a family man who enjoyed the simple pleasures of the earth and the hard work he undertook at his 725-acre botanical garden in Kahalu'u.

In his final years, Fong also became entangled in a bitter legal dispute with his youngest son, Marvin, over the family's business dealings.

Marvin, who runs the 87,000-square-foot Market City Shopping Center in Kapahulu, was not invited to sit with the family during last night's service and did not appear in the crowd.

Fong's high school sweetheart and wife since 1938 — 92-year-old Ellyn — was not able to attend last night and may miss this morning's services at Nu'uanu Memorial Park and Mortuary.

Last night, mourners remembered Fong for his humility, wit and generosity.

Honolulu Councilman Charles Djou did not know Fong in 1998, but asked for his advice anyway when Djou decided to run for the state House.

"He said, 'No matter what you do, no matter how high up you go, take care of your family and listen to your wife,' " Djou said. "It was sage advice that I follow today."

During Djou's successful election campaign, voters constantly told Djou that he had their support simply because of Fong's endorsement.

"They said, 'If Hiram Fong supports you, you must be OK,' " Djou said.

Last night's memorial began with an invocation and prayer by the Rev. Paul Brennan of the First Chinese Church of Christ, where Fong and his family worshiped and where Fong met Ellyn.

Brennan reminded the mourners to cherish "the gifts he shared with us: humility, fairness, courage, justice, compassion."

Senate President Robert Bunda called Fong "truly one of the great leaders of Hawai'i." Speaker of the House Calvin Say said, "Senator Fong brought honor to Hawai'i and to America." Former U.S. Rep. Pat Saiki insisted that "I stand in the shadow of what is Senator Fong. O He was truly a man of the Pacific."

Gov. Linda Lingle, attending the Republican Convention in New York, said in a message read by her chief of staff Bob Awana, "There are no words to convey the loss of this great man."

Austere beginnings

Fong was born in Kalihi on Oct. 15, 1906, as Yau Leong Fong. He was the seventh of 11 children born to Chinese immigrants Fong Sau Howe and Fong Lum Shee.

Early in life, Fong learned the lessons of hard work.

He picked kiawe beans to sell as cattle feed, sold fish and crabs that he caught by hand, shined shoes, delivered poi, sold newspapers, led tourists to shrines and carried clubs as a golf caddy.

At McKinley High School, Fong joined what would became known as "the famous class of 1924" that included future businessman Chinn Ho, former Supreme Court Justice Masaji Marumoto and real-estate magnate Hung Wai Ching among its doctors, educators and executives.

Like Fong, many of them were the sons and daughters of immigrants or first-generation immigrants themselves.

Fong went on to the University of Hawai'i where he edited Ka Leo, the student newspaper, and served as associate editor of Ka Palapala, the yearbook. He also joined the volleyball, rifle and debate teams and served as president of the YMCA and Chinese Students Alliance — all while working at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard as a supply clerk.

After only three years at UH, Fong graduated with honors.

During his 14 years in the state Legislature, Fong supported laws designed to help organized labor and ordinary people. In 1945, he worked to pass the landmark "Little Wagner Act," which allowed agricultural workers to unionize and earned himself the unwavering support of the ILWU, the politically powerful union representing plantation workers.

Force in Congress

In the U.S. Senate in 1965, Fong helped amend the national Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that continues to enable thousands of immigrants to be reunited with their families in the United States.

He was also on the powerful Appropriations Committee and wielded more influence than one might expect from a place as small and isolated as Hawai'i.

While liberal on such issues as civil rights, Fong was a staunch Republican. His support of President Richard Nixon did not falter, even as the Vietnam War deeply divided the country.

Beyond politics, Fong founded a half-dozen Honolulu companies that endure today, among them Finance Factors, Finance Realty and Finance Investment. But he was not always lucky in business, and financial failures like The Oceania, a Chinese-style floating restaurant that went bankrupt, remain a part of his history.

He retired from the Senate on Jan. 2, 1977, the ranking Republican on six committees, saying the long commute to Washington, D.C., had taken its toll.

But he remained active until late in life working on his tropical garden.

During last night's hourlong service, Auntie Genoa Keawe sang Fong's favorite song, "Ka'alaea," about the Windward side.

Fong's nephew, Randie Fong — head of the Kamehameha Schools Performing Arts Department — led the schools' concert glee club in singing "Hawai'i Aloha."

Finally, Fong's oldest son and namesake, Hiram Fong Jr. —

a former legislator and Honolulu city councilman — used the mist to invoke his father's memory.

"I'm not going to apologize for the rain," Hiram said. "As dad would say, 'Good. The plants will grow.' And if you were touched by Dad, may you grow as he did."