By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

No wonder Charlie Chang was so hard to find. His name wasn't Charlie.

Leonard Chang got a call from his sister on Sunday morning. She told him to pick up the paper.

"That's you!" she said.

He couldn't believe it.

"I said, 'No way.' So I looked and then, 'Oh, yeah, that's my picture. Younger. A lot younger. But that's me.' So I read the story, and yeah! That's all the guys I used to hang around with!"

Chang's Army buddies from his days at Fort Hood, Texas, in the late 1960s had been looking for him for years. One of the guys, Joe Ard, has been battling cancer. His wife, Linda, has been on a mission to find all his old friends as a way to bolster Joe's spirits while he endures treatment. Chang was the only one she hadn't found after hours of Internet searches and countless phone calls. Finally, the Louisiana woman contacted the Advertiser.

"My daughter, she said, 'Mama, if this don't pan out, we'll try a history detective or we'll try Unsolved Mysteries. Mama, we goin' find him,' " Ard said.

All that time, she had been looking under the wrong name. "Charlie" was just a nickname the guys gave Leonard Chang during his time in the service.

"Charlie Chang, like Charlie Chan the detective," he said. "Charlie Chan was popular at the time."

The guys didn't remember his real first name, but they remembered his middle initials: Y.H. Chang used to say that stood for "young and handsome." That was the clincher.

"That's how I knew for sure," Chang said. "Y.H., young and handsome, that's me. Only now should be F.O. for fat and old."

The memories of those younger days are starting to surface. Chang had been drafted into the Army, sent far away from home to live among folks from very different cultures, but he found dear friends and shared good times.

He remembers going swimming with his buddies in Belton Lake and being surprised that, unlike the ocean at home, it was very cold and there were no waves.

"I came home on leave one time and I bought all the guys shorts, Hawaiian-print shorts, and I took it back to them," he said.

Chang used to have pictures of his Army buddies that he kept in a box at his father's house. The roof leaked and everything was ruined. Linda Ard is already planning to send Chang all the photos she's collected from the rest of the guys.

It's hard to tell who's more excited. Chang said he was "nervous all day" after he read the article. Linda Ard said she was going between laughter and tears. They planned to talk on the phone last night.

"Joe went through a bad chemo today and he's been on the couch since we got home," she said. "Wait 'till I tell him. This is wonderful."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.