"My mom was worried about me," Ian says. "She was confused because I loved school and she didn't."

"I wanted him to play football," Liava'a says. "I was an athlete and I wanted him to be an athlete."

Football also held the potential of a college scholarship. Ian, who is 6 feet 1, told his mother he was just too busy to play football.

"It took me a while, but I learned," says Liava'a. "I realized that what Ian has is better."

In the third grade, Ian made a wooden plaque on which he drew a building he labeled "Harvard." That plaque hung on his bedroom wall for years.

"He always wanted the best for himself," says Liava'a. "But that's OK, because he was willing to work hard for it."

Ian's hard work and his family's untiring support took him to Yale one summer and Japan the next. He attended the Presidential Classroom Scholars program at Georgetown University, studied international relations at Stanford, represented Hawai'i in the National Forensic League debate tournament held in Utah this summer and at the National History day competition. He was student body president and earned Eagle Scout honors.

This year, when Ian Tapu graduated from his mother's alma mater, it was announced at the ceremony that he had received a full-ride academic scholarship to Dartmouth. His tuition, room and board, books, even tickets home for Christmases and summer vacation will all be covered — a package totaling $42,000 a year for four years.

All the family members and friends who had bought those plate lunches and laulau cheered.

"It's a blessing for us, for something like this to come our way," Liava'a says. "He will lead the way for others. His cousins look up to him and say, 'If he can, I can, too.'"

As for Harvard, Ian's thinking law school. And after that, he says, "I'm thinking governor."