Paul Loo

Loo was 75 when he retired in April after 47 years with Morgan Stanley. He would have turned 76 on July 14.

He had been on a post-retirement trip with his wife, Violet, daughter Pamela Mayer Loo, and son Rodney, who works in Morgan Stanley's San Francisco office, and five grandchildren, said Gwen Pacarro, who took over as complex manager of the Honolulu Morgan Stanley office when Loo retired.

"This is the big thing he had envisioned — taking the family to Europe," Pacarro said. "They were about to go on a barge trip down the Thames, I believe. But now the grandkids are going without him."

The family will bring Loo's ashes back to Honolulu for a service that has yet to be scheduled, Pacarro said.

"Morgan Stanley and the community at large will really miss Paul Loo," Pacarro said. "He's been an institution. You don't run across someone like Paul Loo every day. He will be a legacy."

In 1965, Loo, Eureka Forbes, Elizabeth W. Kellerman and the Rev. Edmond Walker were the primary movers behind the establishment of Hawai'i Pacific College, which later became HPU.

Loo was the lone survivor of the group.

Last year, HPU renamed its Windward campus theater the Paul and Vi Loo Theatre after a "significant" donation from the Loos.

The newly renamed theater debuted with its run of "The Lion in Winter" from November through December.

Loo graduated from Punahou School in 1948, then received a B.A. with distinction from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. He served in the Army as an artillery officer in Europe then returned to Honolulu as deputy chief underwriter for the Federal Housing Administration.

He was also chairman of the state ethics commission and president of the former Honolulu Stock Exchange.

Loo also was a member of the Hawaii Business Roundtable, Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu, the Clarence Ching Foundation and Kukui Gardens Housing Development. He was also a director of C. Brewer Ltd., an associate trustee for the University of Pennsylvania and a member of both the HPU and Chaminade University boards of trustees.