Neil Abercrombie: “I would like to amplify my formal statement with a few personal observations. The chairman has kindly indicated some of…”

“I would like to amplify my formal statement with a few personal observations. The chairman has kindly indicated some of the history of Senator Fong. It is interesting when I look down and see the word Hiram L. Fong, because he is so much of the history of Hawaii, we all think of him as Senator Fong. As has been noted, he was the seventh of 11 children of an immigrant family. If there was ever a story of Hawaii, of our rainbow people and our aloha spirit, it is Hiram Fong. He worked a lot of jobs and worked his way through school and did very, very well. He founded not only a prominent law firm but founded as well what became a financial empire. I have some real interest in it because the very first campaign that I ever ran was funded by Senator Fong's Finance Factors. I went down to get a loan. I thought if I was going to run against him, I thought the least I could do, in the spirit of bipartisanship, was to ask him to help fund my campaign. As a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, I went down to borrow $50. They said we cannot lend you $50, we have to lend you $200 if we are going to make any money on this. So I said, I will take it. I was able to run my very first campaign on Hiram Fong's dime, although I should say nickel, because that is what I passed out in the streets of Honolulu to represent the inflation that I thought we were going to have to deal with in those days. That was an innocent time. Senator Fong was always gracious.…”