“In doing what we ought we deserve no praise...”
St. Augustine quote from Chew Chong Ching’s Senior Class Photo
I have my father’s face, the high cheekbones and rounded contour that made me a spitting image of him. I often wanted to look like my mother with her classic Asian oval —shaped countenance and single eyes slanted just enough to deem attractive. But it was my father’s heart that I could understand, his compassion for me evidently displayed as he asked me why I cried so easily when the tenor of his voice turned stern. As far back as I can remember, my father always took me places…to doctor’s appointments and football games, and anywhere else I wanted to go. He didn’t seem to mind my tagging along, too, on his personal errands. When I entered college, I spent most Saturdays of my freshman year eating breakfast with him before he dropped me off at the University for a half-day of classes. It was over these breakfast times of Portuguese sausage fried rice and Kona coffee that he encouraged me to overcome my shyness by restoring my confidence in myself. Exude confidence because you are just as good as anyone else. Somehow, when your father tells you that, you can’t help but believe that at least to one important person in your life, you mattered. Although my shyness persevered into my mid-twenties, I am so grateful for the words he brought, opening windows of light for a personality in progress.
Because of his basketball career, my father traveled a lot in my early years. His homecomings were a mix of tearful greetings because of this stranger who had come home followed by gleeful anticipation at what gifts he had brought me. I could not fathom the depths of his love for basketball until my retirement in my sixties when I began to read about his basketball conquests as player and coach. It has taken me long to sift through the numerous scrapbooks he and my mother had put together for themselves, but really most importantly, for his children. Barbara and I are so grateful to be part of a story than began with abandonment and culminated at its highest point into a distinctive career. But even more so, the intrigue of how the athletic ability of one man could provide perseverance through hard times speaks not only of him, but of the culture and times he lived in.