Mayor Francis M. F. Ching Born in Honolulu in 1912, the eldest son and fourth of seven children, Francis M. F. Ching was 11 when his father died. They were poor, as Ching’s son, Francis, recently recalled. “I remember my
Mayor Francis M. F. Ching
Born in Honolulu in 1912, the eldest son and fourth of seven children, Francis M. F. Ching was 11 when his father died.
They were poor, as Ching’s son, Francis, recently recalled.
“I remember my aunty Daisy telling me that after her dad died, that one day after eating dinner she saw her mother with a piece of bread cleaning up the grease from the cooking pan and that was her dinner. She was shocked to see that because she did not know that before. The children were always given food first.”
Yet Ching excelled academically and athletically, and was the president of his class at McKinley High School and the University of Hawai’i.
After graduating from UH in 1936, he married Ruth Alberta Aki, daughter of Kaua‘i legislator Henry Kaiwi Aki. They moved to Kaua‘i in 1937 to fill a management position at Kaua‘i Terminal Co., later renamed Kaua‘i Commercial Co.
During WWII, Ching, an Army captain, saw action as an infantry company commander during the invasion of Okinawa.
Earlier, at Kwajalein, while in transit to Okinawa, he and another officer convinced the captain of an LST to lend them a landing craft to go trolling with poles and reels they’d carried from Hawai‘i in their duffel bags.
While they fished, soldiers and sailors aboard troopships anchored in Kwajalein’s vast lagoon watched and cheered.
Ching entered politics after the war and was subsequently elected to the Kaua‘i Board of Supervisors and the territorial and state Senate before being elected Kaua‘i’s second mayor for one term (1972-1973).
Well liked, admired and a natural leader, he would almost always do favors, but rarely collected on them.
Francis and Ruth Ching had six children. Dolly Ching was his second wife. He passed away in 1975.
