an endowment scholarship

Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said: “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” For the Chaminade alumnus and late Thomas “Tom” Siu-Wing Watt ’68, the journey was arduous, painful but worth the years of struggle. At the tender age of 3, the Honolulu native broke his back, requiring surgery at Shriner’s Hospital. Nine years later, he would spend a year at Lē'ahi Hospital, after contracting spinal meningitis combined with a case of tuberculosis.

“Tom and I held one common belief: You get where you’re going by your own action,” says his widow Carol-Anne Tucker-Watt, during a phone interview from her home in Contra Costa County, CA. “Although his family was of modest means and firstgeneration immigrants, Tom always took responsibility for his actions, which led to his successes.”

Concerned that her son would not fare well at Farrington High School, Watt’s mother, Rose Mui-Kwai Chun Watt, decided to enroll him at Saint Louis High School, after seeing young boys in the neighborhood nicely dressed and mildly mannered, and attending the Catholic institution. She wanted the best for all of her five kids, providing them with opportunities to succeed in their adopted country.

“She arrived in Hawai'i in December 1940 as an actress and Chinese opera singer,” says Tucker-Watt of her late mother-inlaw. “And Tom’s father was a musician and his paternal grandfather was relatively well known as an opera singer who once performed in San Francisco.”

Fame and fortune, however, did not follow when the family immigrated to Hawai'i. The couple would work at chop suey restaurants as a waitress and a cook, scrimping and saving to give their kids the chance to get ahead. And returning to China was not a viable option, given World War II (1939-1945), which some historians consider started in China in 1937, two years before German tanks blitzed Poland, four years before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the culmination of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949.

“Although they had a chance to return to China, she (Rose) knew that they would not have the opportunities there, especially her daughters,” Tucker-Watt notes. “They embraced the idea of the American dream.”

The young Watt certainly did, developing close friends at Saint Louis and finding academic success. After high school, he aspired to be an engineer—one of three popular professions chosen among Chinese immigrants at the time—and enrolled in the engineering department at the University of Hawai'i Mānoa.

“The professors of the introductory engineering classes assumed that the students were already familiar with the fundamentals of mechanical drawing, but Tom was not,” Tucker-Watt explains. “It did not take long for him to decide that he and UH were not a good fit, and that he would need to pivot.”

Having attended Saint Louis, Watt was familiar with the Chaminade campus, and several of his Saint Louis classmates were already attending what was then Chaminade College. There was one problem: Chaminade did not have an engineering program, so he decided to pass on his engineering books, drafting board and T-square to his younger brother and switched to a business major where he could apply both his math and English skills.

“He was immediately more comfortable and relaxed once he segued to Chaminade and embarked upon his new academic path,” Tucker-Watt says. “However, it was not easy. He made it clear to his mother that she had sacrificed enough for him, and that he would pay for everything at Chaminade College by himself.”

This meant that when Watt was not in class, he was working, first at the California Packing Co.— Del Monte’s predecessor—and later at the Bank of Hawai'i. There was no time for extracurricular activities at Chaminade.

“Chaminade always held a place close to his heart,” Tucker-Watt says. “After retirement from a long and successful career with the Social Security Administration, Tom was able to connect with fellow alumni living in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as students about to start at Chaminade.”

After 37 years with the government agency, in both technical and managerial positions, Watt retired after undergoing treatment for hypopharyngeal cancer. He would battle cancer twice more, but ultimately lost the fight on July 15, 2017 in San Leandro, CA.

The couple had been together for more than 35 years, yet they never had long discussions regarding funeral plans. But Watt would occasionally make his wishes known. One of them was to have Frank Sinatra’s version of “My Way” played at his funeral. And another was “to fly,” according to Tucker-Watt.

“He made it clear that he was fine with cremation, but he did not want his ashes buried, stuck in a niche or dumped over the side of a boat,” Tucker Watt says. “He wished for his mortal remains to be ‘free like the wind.’”

When the time came, Tucker-Watt and Tom’s children—from his first marriage— chartered a helicopter on O'ahu and released his ashes to fulfill his final wish.

“But having done this meant that there was no headstone; nothing to mark his time on earth,” Tucker-Watt says. “And so it occurred to me that the best way to give him an ongoing legacy was to endow a scholarship at Chaminade.”

The scholarship has a single criterion: Students have to maintain a 3.5 grade point average, something that Tom successfully managed to do while studying at Chaminade.

“He would have been proud, and glad that he could help young Chaminade students,” Tucker-Watt says. “I miss him terribly, but I still feel his guiding hand. He still has my back.”