Pageant’s Miss Congeniality
was a friend to many

Yun Tau Chee / First Miss Hawaii

SEE ALSO: OBITUARIES

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By Pat Gee
pgee@starbulletin.com

Yun Tau Chee, crowned the first Miss Hawaii in 1948, was known for her warm, gregarious personality. It led to her winning the Miss Congeniality award while competing in the Miss America pageant.

Chee, whose maiden name was "Zane," continued her award-winning ways throughout her 73 years, says her sister, Yun Moi Okamoto of Uplands, Calif.

Chee, a retired kindergarten teacher, died Thursday of cancer.

She was born in Kohala on the Big Island.

Okamoto, who took care of her sister during her illness, said: "She was a people person; she loved people. She was comfortable going up to strangers or the person sitting next to her, and starting conversations very easily. That's probably why she was Miss Congeniality ... "

Her husband, retired Kailua pharmacist Hun Ting Chee, said he met his wife after she returned from the Miss America pageant at a poker party. He was attracted, not by her beauty, but her "willingness to help" serve the card-playing men "Cokes and peanuts."

"She was a giving person" and remained that way throughout their 50 years of marriage, he said.

Chee talked her into attending the University of Wisconsin, his alma mater, to complete her fifth-year teaching certificate following her graduation from the University of Hawaii, where she majored in home economics.

She used the $1,000 scholarship money she won as Miss Congeniality to finance her year in Wisconsin. But instead of teaching home economics, she went into teaching kindergarten for 33 years, 20 of them at Maemae School, he said.

Chee loved traveling all over the world with a group of teacher friends, Okamoto said. She was most impressed with China, which stirred within her pride of her Chinese ancestry.

She was also active in the teachers' union and would visit Okamoto whenever she attended teachers' conventions on the mainland.

Both of them would frequently travel to the Big Island to visit a favorite uncle, Kin Kong Farm, known as the Taro King of Waipio. Okamoto said he would regale them with "the most fantastic stories of old Hawaii and teach us how to make okolehao (liquor) and kulolo (pudding)."

The Chees raised four sons, two of whom died within two months of each other in 1985. The twins, Wendell and Kendell, died of cancer before they reached their 30th birthday, Chee said.

In an interview last year with the Star-Bulletin, Yun Tau Chee said, "I've always said I have known the highest peak in life (becoming Miss Hawaii) and the lowest."

She is also survived by sons Darrick and Brandon Chee; brothers, Ah Chong, Warren and Y.S. Zane; sisters Y.C. Tenn and Betty Henrickson of Waimea.

Visitation is at 9:30 a.m. and service is at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow at Hawaiian Memorial Park Mortuary.

Burial will take place at the park cemetery Friday at 9 a.m.