LAWRENCE D. WASEL, O.D.
OPTOMETRIST
191 East Hastings Street (Ford Building) Vancouver 4, B.C.
For appointment Telephone MU 5-8739
COMPLETE VISUAL SERVICES EYES EXAMINED
竭公錄ni沙辜 载眼^Hbni歡
WHEN IN VANCOUVER BOOK AT
445 Abbott Street
Near Hastings Phone: MU 1-9541
• COMPLETELY RENOVATED
• LUXURIOUS APPOINTMCNTS
• CONGENIAL SURROUNDINCS
Dine where it's Different at the
Palatial LOTUS GARDENS
Diners' Paradise
Chinese and Occidental fare .., Oriental Setting . . . Quiet atmosphere ...Subdued music.
Dine there once and youflf dine there always
opportunities democracy."
have received from a
PACE FOUR
Big, assertive, possessed of great stamina and constant drive, Fong appears to be a man who has been on the go all his life. He is the seventh of 11 children. Both parents were Chinese. His father, Fong Lum Shee, was an indentured sugar plantation laborer who came to the islands in 1872 from Kwangtung Province, China, to work for $12 a month, room and board.
He was named Yau Leong Fong and in college changed his first name to Hiram because of his admiration lor Hiram Bingham, who came to Hawaii in 1820 with the first group of missionaries. (Fong is a member of the Congregational First Chinese Church of Christ. He went to Kalihi-waena school, St. Louis College and McKinley High School. It was always work, work, work. "I earned my way through high-school by caddying at Moanalua Golf Course," said Fong. "I walked so much in those days―they paid us 25 cents a round. All day walking," he laughed. "I have never taken up the game of golf."
Fong worked for three years as a clerk at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, then entered the University of Hawaii. "That's where my political career started." he said. "I was asked if T would stump for Pat Gleason who was run-n:ng for Sheriff. I proceeded him on the stumo every night ani extolled his virtues. He was elected. "In 1929 Miyor Fred Wright asked me to do the same for him and I did." In college, Fong worked as collector of installment payments for Aloha Motors, wrote a Chinese community news column for The Honolulu Advertiser at 10 cents a column inch (he speaks Cantonese), served as guide for $2 a night taking tourists to the Oriental temples.
He was on the rifle team, the volleyball team, was adjutant in the ROTC, assistant editor of the school annual, president of the YMCA and the Chinese Students Alliance. He graduated in three years with honors, "then I went to work again because I didn't have any money." Mayor Wright appointed him chief clerk of the Bureau of Country Waters, the poetic name the Suburban Water System used to have. He started work at $225 a month; later was reduced to $175 because of the depression.
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But he saved $2,000 and went to Harvard Law School. He got in because he was in the upper 10 per cent of tlie University's graduating class and because a Harvard alumnus and former Ter-
CHINATOWN NEWS, AUG.】8, 1959