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TI: Okay, so let's go on. So let's talk about after you graduated from high school. At that time, what were you thinking in terms of what you wanted to do after graduating from high school?

EW: I had no idea what I wanted to do. A really good friend of mine and I were talking about joining the military. He eventually joined, I had taken the ASVAB and I was thinking about which service to join, and a friend of mine said, "Hey, I'm going to go up to Whitworth College over in Eastern Washington." And I said, "Whitworth? Where's that?" And he's like, "Oh, Eastern Washington," and I was thinking, "Oh, Washington, there are a lot of Hawaii people up there, so it might not be that bad." And I remember the recruiter came down, he was really nice, and a lot of the kids from my high school came out to hear his pitch on Whitworth. I asked my friend, "Do they have football over there?" because I was a football player in high school. He said, "Yeah," so I said, oh, maybe I can extend my football playing time for another few years or so, so I thought I'd give it a try, even though I'd never even seen the campus or heard about the curriculum or anything like that. So off I went after I graduated from high school. And I didn't end up playing football over there. I tried for a little while, and I said, "This isn't for me." And I eventually spent two years over there at Whitworth College, a small Presbyterian school, and it was definitely a different experience. It's cold, snowy.

TI: Oh, the winters are brutal. It's in Spokane, right? Spokane, Washington.

EW: Yeah. The culture is nothing like Hawaii, even though there's a pretty big Hawaii contingent over there. I think there's some specific schools that the recruiters target in Hawaii. And, but it was a good time, it was a good time over there. And I left after two years 'cause I just wanted to experience a school that was bigger, something that had a little more to offer in terms of various studies and extracurricular activities. And so the next year after that, I went down to University of Colorado at Boulder, where my father graduated from, and where my brother had just recently graduated from. And I spent a year over there trying to get residency, and I got it after a year, and I only spent a semester there over at Colorado. And after that, I eventually decided, "You know what? I think it's time for me to go home." [Laughs]

TI: What made you make that, so when you said, why was it time for you to go home? What do you think was the reason?

EW: I just think by that point I had been away from Hawaii too long, and there was things that I missed. I think my brother had, he had moved back to Hawaii, and I don't know, I think, I just felt like I needed to reconnect back to my family and friends.

TI: So when you got back to Hawaii, what did you do?

EW: Well, I started working, and I went back to school part-time for a little while at the local community college. Then I eventually enrolled at Hawaii Pacific University, where I eventually graduated from.

TI: And what, what field of study did you graduate in at Hawaii Pacific?

EW: Business. I was, I was always in business in form or another since I, even when I was at Whitworth, and I graduated in, a Bachelor of Science in business administration.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.