Community to honor Rev. Frank Chong,
a passionate advocate for social justice 

A memorial service will begin at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 19, at the Central Union Church, 1660 South Beretania St., Honolulu, to honor the life of the Rev. Frank Chong, minister, social worker and advocate for justice for the poor and disadvantaged, who died Sunday, March 9, after a long illness.

Chong most recently served as government and community relations manager for AlohaCare, a nonprofit health provider, but he will be remembered for his 25 of service at the Waikiki Health Center, where he was executive director, which serves at-risk people such as the working poor, homeless and runaway youth and seniors, and for his work as a lobbyist  for health and social causes. Before that, he was associate minister for Community Church of Honolulu.

For many years, Chong compiled the "Legislative Action Yellow Pages," what he described as an irreverant guide to the Hawaii Legislature. This was an annually updated roadmap to the legislative process, with helpful hints for community advocates, the legislative calendar, contact information and profiles of legislators and members of the governor's administration for a directory of information, insider tips and witty commentaries on the challenges of each session. For example, Chong's overview of the 2001 Legislative session began with this:

"The Year 2000 began with the threat of the Y2K bug. Everyone anticipated chaos but things  ended up being rather orderly and ordinary. The elections of November 2000, on the other hand, were supposed to be orderly and ordinary but ended up in chaos. It took 35 days for the presidential election to be officially decided. As the final electoral votes were being cast there were still groups counting the dimpled, hanging and pregnant chads in Florida. So a year that was supposed to start in chaos began with a whimper and ended with chaos.

"Here in Hawaii the election of the Year 2000 was low key, yet it provided the electorate with a number of interesting surprises."   

Chong, 63, was an active member of the Alliance for Health and Human Services which worked to smooth the privatization of what had been government programs to private nonprofit providers during the Reagan administration. He was also an early supporter of the initiative to create the Hawaii Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations.

Despite many years in the gritty world of Hawaii politics, Chong never lost sight of his goal. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin's obituary quoted his 2001 Yellow Pages, where he urged social service advocates to "always believe in people ... Our job is to empower people to live out those dreams they dream."