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LB: Before we go there, can you tell me a little bit about your mother?

EY: My mom was the -- is, she's eighty-six now -- is the wonderful stabilizing force in our family. I think she was very much like her mother, very compassionate but strong. Always telling us not only the right thing to do, but also telling us about people and what people feel and why. And so I remember when I was in third and fourth grade, I was very bad at school. I was the second worst speller in my class, 'cause I didn't read, I didn't like it. I liked to play. Also, I was a very good athlete. So when it was recess or P.E., I'd be running around and organizing people, I'd come back in the classroom, I was very unsure. But I would get these report cards, no grades, but they would say, my mom would sit down and says, "Eric is gonna, he's okay, but he's kind of struggling in spelling, these other things. And in sports he's really good, but he's so quiet in class that outside, he's always yelling at people. And he's telling them what to do and he's..." and so my mom would say, "Eric, you know, when you do that outside the class, you make people feel bad when you yell at them because they're not as good as you." Said, "You know how inside the class you feel like you don't do as well, you don't feel so good? That's how you make people feel." So I remember her telling me, "You have to be more tolerant of people. You have to know how you affect people just as you should know when people affect you a certain way." And I remember her telling me those things in third and fourth grade, it really stuck with me, and really helped shape my approach to relating with people. To really try to listen, to truly kind of see how I'm affecting people.

And then I could see it in her work. She rose to the level of Head Graduate Admissions Officer for the whole University of Hawaii. And when she retired, she just had this undergraduate degree, but all these professors, the chairs of departments, the deans, former deans, they came out of the woodwork just to praise my mom about what a wonderful, compassionate, thoughtful, hardworking person she is. And so she really set the tone for all of us, I think, in the family. And we all have benefitted from that, it continues to this day. She's struggling with her health but doing okay. And I go there two nights a week and help her out with chores and talk with her. But I flew up yesterday, I had to get up at four a.m. in the morning to catch a very early flight. And she said, "Well, you're going to be hungry." I said, "Well, yeah." So anyway, she gets up at four o'clock in the morning with me and makes a turkey sandwich so I'll have two sandwiches, and then she goes back to bed. And it's a very classic thing for my mom, the little tiny thing where she makes her kids feel very loved in that very small way. And I know mothers all over the place do that, but that's my mom. And so she is very proud of her three kids. And my sister Jodie's a professor at the community college, Kapiolani community college teaching English as a second language. And my other sister Lori is a social work counselor at the University of California at Berkeley. So, and we all kind of draw a lot from my mom still.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.