ABOUT MEN

By Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writer

Reporting is a challenging job. The experience of being on deadline with an A1 story is akin to waking up with a term paper due at 5 p.m. and having done zero preparation. String enough of those days together and, by the end of the week, I am ready to mosey down to Murphy's on Merchant Street.

My grandfather, who is entering his 92nd year of life, calls what I do "hiding behind a computer."

Before anyone accuses him of belittling the source of his grandson's rent, let me provide some context.

Venancio Constantino began almost six decades of manual labor when he was 8. One of 10 children born to peasant farmers in Bacarra, Ilocos Norte, Philippines, my grandpa would help his dad in the rice paddies by guiding a wooden plow affixed to the back of a water buffalo.

The work prevented him from educating himself, and when he was 16, he came to Hawai'i to work on the sugar cane fields.

For years he toiled with other migrant laborers,working 10 hours a day for 75 cents a day, cutting cane by hand. He vividly remembers emerging from the fields covered with black soot from head to toe, a result of the cane being burned before it was harvested.

And he still remembers what the lunas used to identify field laborers: the bongo number.

"5199," he says triumphantly, leaning back in his white leather lounge chair, his legs folded neatly in front of him.

He married my grandmother shortly after the start of World War II. He then spent nearly 30 years with the Navy, painting buildings and doing general maintenance work at Barbers Point, now known as Kalaeloa. My grandmother, a product of immigrant Filipinos living in Kahuku, worked as a food service worker in the officer's club on the same base.

But do not mistake my grandparents' humble roots for foolishness.

My grandfather is a smart man with a quick mind that hasn't failed him. Grandma is a voracious reader, and if my byline is absent in the paper a day after she knows I was working, I get an earful.

With what little they had, they raised two children, both college-educated, one of whom went on to finish graduate school.

Now, everybody has heard parents bemoan the days of their youth when they worked twice as hard for less than young kids make today. As a kid I rolled my eyes and tuned my parents out.

But no deadline, holiday shift or early-morning call from a source can compare to the decades my maternal grandparents spent busting their butts to serve others. Only when you step out into the professional arena and take stock of your status do you truly understand what it took to get you here.

My grandparents' experience is just one of thousands of stories that came from the plantation workers who sacrificed their youth to establish a better foundation for their families.

Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.