JARED JOSSEM / 1942-2003

Former state GOP
chairman dies at 60

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By Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.com

Former state Republican Party Chairman Jared Jossem, 60, died Monday afternoon of a rare form of kidney cancer.

"Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you really just have to admire his inte-grity and his persistence because he was really the lone wolf that reorganized and led the Republican Party ... until it bore some fruit," said his law firm partner, Jack Dwyer. "Unless it would be Linda Lingle herself, there was no one happier than Jared this past November."

One of his predecessors as leader of the party, former U.S. Rep. Patricia Saiki, said: "Jerry Jossem was a stalwart Republican who could always be counted on for his loyalty."

Jossem headed the Hawaii GOP from 1991 to 1994, when Saiki ran for governor.

Jossem was born in Rochester, N.Y., on Sept. 17, 1942. He graduated from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in 1964 and received his law degree from Syracuse University in 1968.

He began as a trial lawyer with the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago. He moved to Hawaii in 1970. He served as a special duty attorney general from 1979 to 1982.

Dwyer called Jossem the "guru in Hawaii for hard labor law."

He became chairman of the labor and employment law department at the law firm of Torkildson Katz Jossem Fonseca Jaffe Moore & Hetherington, where he worked from 1991 to 1996.

In 1996, he joined Verner Liipfert Bernhard McPherson Hand, one of the nation's most influential law firms, but left after two years to start Jossem & Toyofuku with Lynne Toyofuku.

Jossem said he wanted to "grow a local law firm," and Verner Liipfert was headquartered in Washington, D.C.

In 2001, the firm was merged into Dwyer Schraff Myer Jossem & Bushnell.

Although none of his children followed in his footsteps either in law or politics, his eldest, Leah Jossem, 29, whose wedding he will miss Sunday, said: "He gave us a sense of family as a center of everyone's life and gave us morals and the same level of integrity that he himself held so dear."

He is survived by wife Mary Frances (Northway) Jossem, daughters Leah Jossem, Elizabeth Brock; sons Joseph and Adam Jossem and Michael Brock; and sisters Toby Silverman and Susan Mitloff.

Services will be at 3 p.m. Friday at Temple Emanu-El in Nuuanu.