I know Dickie Wong. Dickie Wong has been a friend of mine. So I know that the person ducking out of meetings, mishandling the crisis at Kamehameha Schools and letting the troubles be driven by the courts and mediators is no Dickie Wong. Bishop Estate’s Dickie
Wong is a strangerFirst some history about the former state Senate president, former liberal insurgent reformer in the state House, who marched for civil rights in Selma and who stared down some of the nastiest wildcat strikes while working for the United Public Workers.
Wong learned the system from the bottom, working as a probation officer. When he got into politics, he bucked the system, backing liberals against entrenched Democratic power brokers.
But like the missionaries, Wong was part of Hawaii's long list of reformers who came to do good and wound up doing very well.
By the time he was Senate president and had tired of his wars with past governors, Wong learned to make peace with former Gov. John Waihee. They became allies, pushing through housing projects and making the Legislature work.
Although he had become Mr. Inside, Wong still understood communications and the retail level of politics. Almost by instinct Wong could work an issue, line up support, get the votes, make the play and win. Along the way, he was sure-footed enough to explain what he was doing. Dickie Wong's back room was filled with reporters, plotters, dissidents and supporters.
So what are we to make of this new version? Perhaps he learned from his buddy Henry Peters, who like Wong left the Legislature for the Bishop Estate.
Peters, the stone-faced former speaker of the House, got his start in politics as the community advocate for the city's Waianae Model Cities program. One of his jobs was to open up the process to the poor and disenfranchised.
By the time he became leader of the House, however, Peters had no use for dissidents. His vision of the House was not of a debating society. He expected people to do what he said and for the most part he got the House he wanted.
In contrast, Wong seemed to almost relish the attacks on his power. Sometimes it was almost hand-to-hand combat on the Senate floor.
Today, however, the entire Board of Trustees, save for the outspoken Oswald Stender, appears paralyzed when faced with controversy.
The first indications came when Bishop Estate canceled its off-campus school programs, to be replaced with Kamehameha Schools-run services.
Debra Mahi, a teacher who protested the changes, said Hawaiians had a right to know what the trustees planned.
"Our input should be sought and considered before any decisions are made. I believe that it is an insult to leave us out...and it undermines the whole purpose of the schools," she wrote in 1995.
NOW such respected leaders -- not only of Hawaiians but of the community at large -- as Gladys Brandt and Winona Rubin are forced to march just to get an audience with Wong and the others on the Bishop Estate board.
The Bishop Estate pays its trustees enough to hire some of the most talented public relations experts in town. They appear to be the only ones who will comment about the problems at Kamehameha Schools.
I don't know what they did with him, but the fellow listed as Richard S.H. Wong, chairman of the Board of Trustees at Bishop Estate, isn't the Dickie Wong I knew.