Michael Chu, right, coaching youth basketball. (Courtesy photo)
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Retired Catholic school educator Michael “Mike” Chu, 77, was a longtime youth basketball referee and president of a community basketball league. He was also a former Marianist brother.
Chu died Nov. 6 after a stabbing attack while on duty as a security guard at Windward City Shopping Center. The position was his post-retirement job after many years in education.
Chu graduated from St. Louis High School. A photo from the Hawaii Catholic Herald’s archives showed him as a young man posing with fellow Junior Chinese Catholic Club teammates after winning the 1963 CYO Junior Softball circuit championship.
He was also a Marianist brother from 1966 until 1983. After leaving the religious order, he married his wife, Donna “Kalei,” and they had two, now-grown children, son Kamakana and daughter Ke‘alohilani.
Chu was a teacher at St. Ann School in Kaneohe, the principal of St. John Vianney School in Kailua, a physical education teacher at Cathedral School in Nuuanu, the behavior coordinator at St. Louis School in Kaimuki, and a religion teacher and sports department coordinator at St. Francis School in Manoa.
He also served as a basketball referee for the Interscholastic League of Honolulu and was a founding member and president of the Kailua Community Basketball League.
In a written message to the Herald sent via the KCBL, his wife Kalei described him as “Mr. Aloha,” a great husband, a positive role model for their kids, and a warm-hearted person who would on occasion feed the homeless at Windward City Shopping Center where he worked.
Chu and his wife were parishioners at St. John Vianney Parish in Kailua and became first-time grandparents on Dec. 10.
The Kailua Community Basketball League has started a Go Fund Me for the Chu family: gofundme.com/f/mike-chu.
Remembering Mike
He always made you feel a little better about the world
By Deacon Michael Weaver
Special to the Herald
Mike Chu and I first met in the late 1970s when we were both junior high teachers here in Hawaii Catholic schools. Whenever we got together, we would commiserate with each other and share our stories about the “angst” of middle school. Over the years, as our careers progressed, we often crossed paths, first as teachers and then as school administrators.
Mike always made me smile. I can’t remember a time when I walked away from a conversation with him that I didn’t feel a little better about the world. I loved watching him referee Catholic School League basketball or volleyball games, always in control of the action but never overbearing in dealing with coaches or parents. The same was true in how he related to his teachers and co-workers. He was supportive but firmly demanded the same professionalism from them that he consistently displayed. Working with him as a fellow school administrator, I frequently witnessed his little comments or questions at meetings that made people sit up and say, “Hmmmm; never thought of it that way.” And always, he had that wry smile that said, “No worries, brah. We get ‘em.”
In the last few years, on my visits to Ross Dress for Less or McDonalds at Windward City Shopping Center, I chuckled seeing him scoot around the parking lot in his golf cart, waving and smiling when he saw me on the curb. Sometimes we would pause from our lives and reminisce about kids we had taught or teachers we had worked with. And like I said, he always left me smiling.
But of all the memories I will have of Mike, the one that will always remain strongest is that Mike cared. He cared about the young people he worked with and coached and mentored. He cared about Catholic schools and would quietly lament the struggles they face. He cared deeply for his family and always spoke of them with pride and affection. Whoever you were, whenever you came across Mike, that caring was a beacon. He wasn’t shy about letting you know what he thought about things but it was always expressed with a sense of sincere care and a hope that things would get better.
One final note: I was dismayed at some of the comments left on online news reports about his death, how we need to bring back the death penalty, all the “eye for an eye” stuff that so often surfaces with the grief and shock of such a senseless passing. That is so far away from the kind, caring, forgiving man that I knew Mike to be. His memory deserves better.
Aloha, Mike! Mahalo for all the smiles you brought our way, my friend.
Deacon Weaver is a hospice chaplain and a lecturer at Chaminade University of Honolulu.
