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Bill Kwon

Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Saturday, May 15, 1999



Sad month jolts us
back to reality

CHAUCER was wrong. May, not April, is the cruelest month. The tragic deaths in the news recently haven't made May a very merry month.

Somehow, sports seems so trivial a pursuit because of so much grief.

The NBA playoffs are going full bore -- no pun intended -- and the baseball 'Bows are fighting for their WAC lives. But when you come right down to it, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the greater scheme of things.

So what if your favorite NBA team got eliminated. So what if the Rainbows don't make it to the WAC playoffs . . . again.

There's always next year. Although, there's no next year for the 16-team Western Athletic Conference as we and the University of Hawaii know it.

As former Dallas Cowboys running back Duane Thomas once observed when told that the Super Bowl is the ultimate, "If it's the ultimate, how come they're playing it again next year?"

But to the families and friends of those struck by untimely and seemingly capricious tragedy, there's no tomorrow, no next year, with their loved ones.

All that are left are memories, remembrances of the good times and deeds that the departed ones left us to cherish and remember them by.

Thankfully, those remembrances of things past can sustain us in at least some small way.

IN the case of Mark Tuinei, I will not dwell on the circumstances of his shocking death. He apparently made one horrific mistake and it cost him his life.

Instead, I want to remember him as someone who played football for the Rainbows, someone who overcame long odds to play 15 years in the National Football League for the Dallas Cowboys, and someone who played on three Super Bowl championship teams.

And especially I want to remember Tuinei as someone who turned his life around to become a contributing member to our community.

He was on the verge of taking an active role to become a tremendous positive influence on Hawaii's youth.

"I sincerely believe he was here to touch the lives of many people, and he did," said Billy Olds, a former UH ROTC instructor who helped Tuinei turn his life around.

It was a two-way street, according to Olds, who felt Tuinei gave more than he did in their relationship.

TUINEI could have contributed, oh, so much more. But if we -- especially young people -- can learn that the use of drugs can ruin your life and even kill you, his death will not have been in vain.

If others can learn from the mistake of Tuinei, a good person who made a wrong decision, then his death was not a waste.

"I really believe he was sent by God for a purpose," said his widow, Pono.

Tuinei's Samoan middle name, Pulemau, has become prophetic even in death. Literally, Pulemau means "steady authority," or as he was to especially his own family, a "sustaining force."

Pono has in her possession, she says, something that's as precious to her as any of Mark's other tangible mementos. It's just some plain tissue paper that she used to wipe Mark's eyes after a long, agonizing plane ride back to Texas upon learning of his death.

The tissue had dampened at her touch.

"From Mark's tears," she said.

Gary Allen, one of Mark's many former UH teammates attending the funeral services at Central Union Church, doesn't doubt it a bit.

"I saw him wink at me," Allen said.



Bill Kwon has been writing
about sports for the Star-Bulletin since 1959.



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