Mahalo nui loa everyone. Your wishes of sympathy and prayers are very heartwarming and truly appreciated.
A little bit more about Kevin and our friendship:
We met in Freshman year in high school at an all-boys Catholic school although neither of us were Catholic. As we got to know each other better, I gave him the politically incorrect nickname of "Coolie," 'cause he was of Chinese descent (...no offense Delta...). This was born out of our World History class when Bro. O'Sullivan talked about the origins of ethnic races...it's a l-o-n-g story as how it got there but suffice to say, I tagged him with it because he was the only pure Chinese guy in our small tight group. His middle initials are "H.S." so I may have started calling him "Hop Sing" after the Bonaza character and then changed it to "Coolie," I dunno, was a lotta years ago. For the record, I was "Spaz" because of my erratic behavior so you never knew what I might say or do. Anyway, Kev was a man of few words so by the time we were Juniors, he was just "Cools."
As can be expected, we did a lotta fun and crazy things together and until we started having girlfiends, almost always did things together on the weekends. After high school, everyone in our bunch went to the University of Hawaii. Kevin and a couple of other guys transferred up to Mainland schools after our 2nd year but we always kept in touch. Believe it or not but we actually sent handwritten letters to each other (...that had to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, not the Interweb...) and used rotary dial phones to (rarely) call each other. I was one of the first guys he called when he left Purdue after just one semester and moved to Berkeley. Apparently he realized he didn't want to be an engineer and hated the cold weather as well. We talked about what he was gonna tell his Dad and his Plan B...it musta been one heck of phone bill!
Kev enrolled at UC Berkeley and ended up majoring in English. He then went to law school at the University of Washington, graduated then moved back home. After a few years, he got married and moved to Maui and opened up his own office. He flourished as a personal injury lawyer and was never an "ambulance chaser." Anyway, even as our lives and careers evolved, for the most part, our group never lost contact with each other. We may not have been able to see each as often but we all knew where each of us were and always got together when we could.
In 2008 or so a classmate (...Russell Chong...) in Oregon was diagnosed with lesions in his brain and we started planning a Las Vegas trip with "The Gang" and others who wanted to join us. Kevin was instrumental in helping us organize the trip despite some martial problems he was going through. The trip was a great success and Russell wanted to do it on an annual basis. Unfortunately Russell's lesions came back, his condition worsened and after a couple of strokes, could not travel. A much smaller group of us still ended up going to Vegas in 2011 and it was then that I was introduced to Casa Fuente and the big wide world of premium cigars. However, I didn't immediately jump into it until we started planning our 40th h.s. reunion and going back to CF was high on the "To Do" list. However, by now Russell's condition had worsened so 4 of us, including Kevin, went up to see him one last time. Russell eventually passed in early 2013. It was around this time that I wanted to learn more about cigars and was advised to check out some online places. Eventually found out about CBid, caught the normal bid-on-everything-in-sight "bug" that n00bs usually get and found my way to the forum. The bidding "disease" and my, by now, obession with everything leaf, had my close friends and even family calling it an addiction. My response, "NFW! I can quit *anytime* - uh, well, anytime after my next shipment comes in...." I'm sure many of you have experienced this, right?
So the running addiction joke led to Kevin hosting "intervention" meetings at his old family home whenever he came back to Oahu. We herfed and used those almost monthly meetings to formalize our reunion trip. Kevin eventually caught the CBid bug and so the addiction disease had spread to him too. The reunion and side trip to Oregon for crabbing was a great success and we were planning another Vegas-OR or WA trip again this year. Anyway, as his interest in trying new cigars increased, he and I often split splits or, when the deal presented itself, we split boxes. We had a great laugh last year when he came over to my house to pick up one of his splits and I showed him two of my 3 coolers. He later had to start his own cooler to store his growing collection. I was so proud of him.
Kevin was a regular at attending local cigar events with myself and other classmates and his presence was greatly missed last night. We know he would have enjoyed the Paniolo Especiale as well as the food, drink and company. I'm not normally a Scotch drinker but had a couple of shots in his honor since he enjoyed a good one. He left beind 3 children, all of them currently off-island either working, attending school or participating in an exchange program.
I'm sorry for using up so much bandwidth and for being so boring but this has helped me remember some of the good times I've had with him and lessens my pent up angst. Thanks for listening (reading).
