LAST October, on hearing that Tommy Trask had just undergone surgery for cancer, I wrestled with a dilemma. For more than 40 years, Tommy had given his all to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and its members. Although retired since 1994, he was still regarded as one of Hawaii's best-known and most-respected labor leaders. And I had always wanted to meet him. May the great
Tommy Trask
rest in peaceBut would it be a "bother" to ask for an interview as he lay recuperating in Straub? Only one way to find out.
Tommy's wife, Jo Anne, answered the phone in his room. She explained that he was being transferred to the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific later that morning (a promising sign, I thought) and she agreed we could chat.
I sped to the Nuuanu facility with a reporter's notebook and a floral arrangement. But on entering Tommy's room, I almost dropped the flowers.
The frail, bony 68-year-old lying there didn't look anything like the once photogenic community leader in newspaper clippings. In fact, he looked terrible and his voice cracked from weariness.
Tommy seemed to glean some comfort from talking about his family, his work and his many accomplishments.
He recounted how he had been packing for an ILWU golf tournament on Kauai in August when pain permeated the left side of his body. Thinking that he had merely pulled a muscle, he went to the Straub Clinic in Mililani for X-rays. It was cancer.
The main tumor was in Tommy's spine and was removed immediately. Then, as he recovered from the back surgery, with his legs paralyzed, smaller tumors started popping out like bumps on his abdomen and chest. They were painful to the touch.
Radiation and chemotherapy had made his existence more bearable, so he was optimistic during our interview. He explained that, in the next few weeks, he would attend two physical therapy sessions and two occupational therapy classes daily.
"I have to go in with the feeling that I will walk again," he said. "I will take it as far as I can. If I have to use a wheelchair, so be it. If I have to walk with braces, that's OK. I'm not going to give up until the Lord says it's my time to go."
After we were through, Jo Anne escorted me out but pulled me aside just short of the elevators. In a low voice, she whispered that Tommy was in deep denial. The doctors had told him that he only had a year to live and that he would probably never walk again.
Yet here he was bringing up wheelchairs and braces as if they were viable options. She said that, in my article, I should go ahead and acknowledge his slim chances of recovery from advanced lung cancer.
WHAT a roller coast of emotions that day: The anticipation of meeting Tommy. The shock at seeing him. His feisty fighting spirit. And now yet another dilemma with which to wrestle -- his reaction to such a starkly bleak prognosis being printed in the paper. Could Tommy handle it? Only one way to find out.
As delicately as possible, I conveyed the grim tidings and ended my Oct. 10 column with this request: "If there is room in your prayers tonight, say one for Tommy Trask, the champion of Hawaii's working people. He is going to need it."
I heard through the grapevine that Tommy was very happy with the story. That's the least I could do.
Changing Hawaii, Oct. 10, 1997
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
DianeChang@aol.com, or by fax at 523-7863.