Early Life

Mom was born Eloise Mae Lee on May 19, 1928, in Hilo, Hawaii. Her father, Ah Ming Lee, came over from China and didn’t speak English. Her mother, Elizabeth Lee was a local Chinese born in Hilo. According to Mom, she was sold to Ah Ming for a few hundred dollars when she was 16 years old. He was 44. (Yikes!!!) They had 4 children…Richard, Clement, Beatrice and finally the youngest, Eloise.

Officially, Ah Ming was a butcher who ran a pig farm…unofficially, he used the farm as a front to sell opium. Growing up on a farm, Mom would reminisce about eating stuff most people don’t like to eat…she loved gizzards and liver and chicken feet and all other kinds of guts. (Yuck!) She also recalls, as a young girl, going downstairs and regularly seeing old Chinese men passed out on the floor from the opium…that was her childhood.

In time, Ah Ming gambled away all the family’s wealth and left the family poor.  So, Elizabeth had work hard to raise and take care of her 4 kids. Mom said Grandma was really good at doing almost anything. She would sell things she cooked and sewed…and somehow that supported the family.

Since Richard and Clement were the oldest, they left home first, and were pretty much on their own with work. Richard worked as a carpenter, and Clement was working on Wake Island, and captured by the Japanese during the attack.  He was a prisoner of war, was later released, and settled in Okinawa. So it was just the two girls left at home, Beatrice (Bea) and Eloise.

Bea was driven, smart and studied hard to become a nurse and eventually she became the head nurse at Maluhia Hospital. Mom said she was the opposite. She was always the ‘baby’ and just wanted to have fun, play and dance…no real goals in life. As Mom put it, ‘I didn’t learn how to do anything…’

After Mom graduated from Hilo High School in 1946, she moved to New York City and started working in a department store. She also met a young Italian guy and quickly got engaged. Concerned about her ‘baby’, Elizabeth told Mom to come home…no more young Italian guy.

(Note: while Mom was in her 80s, she actually reconnected with her ‘first love’, the Italian guy from New York. It was a nice reunion, his wife and Mom became good friends.)

By this time Elizabeth and her two daughters are living on Oahu.  It’s the early 1950s and Oahu is populated with lots of military at Pearl Harbor and also lots of job opportunities. Mom starts working in Wahiawa…and at night she would be dancing at the clubs with the young sailors. I don’t know exactly how it happened but she meets a young, tall, and skinny hillbilly sailor from a small little town in Arkansas called Arkadelphia…His name is J.A. Luzader.

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