Museum executive an insider to history

By Florangela Davila
Seattle Times staff reporter

JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES Ron Chew, center, executive director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, tells a group of museum administrators about the history of a building across the street. Chew grew up in Seattle's Chinatown International District.

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He is 51 years old. Blessed with an age-defying face, however, Chew was carded not too long ago when he was with a group of young people. He is also the mirror image of his father. "Fourth Brother," some locals have remarked upon seeing him, using the elder Chew's nickname. "Fourth Brother's son," Chew corrects them.

He is not a monk, regardless of the eyeglasses, the shaved head, the slim frame and Chew's penchant for calm. Chew's pate is a bow to his two young boys' liking of certain NBA players. And while quiet, Chew can be quite chatty. Ask him about Don Knotts movies, which he adores, or cheese, which he can't stand.

In his 13th year as director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, Chew is well-known in Seattle's most ethnic neighborhood and beyond. Accolade after accolade has been bestowed upon him — and they keep coming. Last week, the Western Museums Association gave him its Director's Chair Award and the University of Washington's Department of Communication inaugurated him into its new Hall of Fame.

The Ford Foundation today salutes him as a "Leadership for a Changing World" winner, honoring him with $115,000, which Chew will contribute to the museum's $25 million capital campaign.

	JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES By nature an unassuming man, Ron Chew is halfheartedly accepting accolades because of the boost they may provide to fund raising for expansion of the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

In interviews last week, Chew delighted at the prospect that he'd be in New York today in case news accounts of his awards trigger extra public attention. He thrives on being behind the scenes, veiled by his office cubicle and the children's drawings that cover his window. His constant work companion: a Diet Coke.

Museum-director schmoozing requires a certain out-and-aboutness, however, and Chew halfheartedly accepts the fact that the greater the spotlight shining upon him, the better it is for fund raising.

So in a pair of work shoes and with a flashlight, Chew leads tours of a boarded-up, single-resident-occupancy hotel: the East Kong Yick building, the museum's future brick-and-timber headquarters.

If all goes as planned, the Wing Luke will move into its new home in 2007, securing its future by stepping back into the past. That journey is Chew's as well: Everything that is him wends its way back to the Chinatown International District, and everything he envisions floats there, too.

"Gary Locke talks about how he moved a mile, from the place where his grandfather worked as a houseboy to the governor's mansion," Chew says. "I've got him beat. I've moved one block."

In 1911, grandfather Guay Fong Chew was one of hundreds of Chinese immigrant workers who passed through the two Kong Yick buildings on King Street, peasants from China's Toisan district who worked in Alaska's canneries or helped build this state's railroads. His son Gregory Chew eventually joined his father in Seattle, waiting tables at the old Hong Kong Restaurant on Maynard Avenue.

Grandson Ron bussed tables at the restaurant from the age of 13 to 22. When he was a boy, he helped catch pigeons from the hotel upstairs. On those rare afternoons when Mom, a seamstress, didn't work, Chew remembers weepy Chinese-lang-

uage movies at the Kokusai Theater up the street.

Chew's parents envisioned one of two career paths for their four children: Boeing or the U.S. Post Office. After graduating from Franklin High, Chew chose journalism at the University of Washington. He didn't graduate then, however, because of what school officials now acknowledge was a case of narrow-mindedness.

While in college, Chew began writing for The International Examiner, a newly born pan-Asian neighborhood publication. He needed reporting credits to complete his degree, which could be obtained through newspaper work. But university officials didn't recognize The Examiner as part of legitimate journalism, which was clearly a mistake, professor Gerald Baldasty, chair of the communication department, says now.

Chew quit the UW. Only recently did the university agree he deserved a degree and graduated him as a member of the UW Class of 2002.

"I have the diploma somewhere," Chew says.

In the neighborhood, Gregory Chew, the waiter, garnered the respect of many first-generation Chinese Americans because his English language skills were strong. Son Ron, who juggled the restaurant job with school studies for more than a decade, earned their respect as well.

Chew says the "uncles" gave him a lot, whether it was a percentage of their nightly tips or stories about a time when laws barred them from bringing their Chinese wives to the U.S.

"You wonder why certain stories are recorded in history books and others are not," Chew says.

The Examiner, though, chronicled the immigrant experience, of the Chinese, Filipinos and Japanese. Chew found his niche, serving as the paper's editor for most of the 1980s.

Then, with neither experience nor training in museum work, Chew was asked to direct the Wing Luke Asian Museum. He took the helm of an organization with a $120,000 budget and helped revolutionize how museums work.

"Museums invariably go to 'experts,' to doctors who have studied a community but who aren't necessarily of the community," says Sally Yamasaki, who has known Chew for 20 years and worked with him at the museum.

Chew's approach was more street-level: He recruited neighborhood folk for their input.

"It was difficult to get funding at first," Yamasaki recalls. But the exhibits — "Executive Order 9066," "Twenty Years After the Fall of Saigon," "If Tired Hands Could Talk" — were applauded. The museum, located in a converted garage, now has a $1 million budget as well as the support of many Asian Pacific American groups, a coup in a neighborhood where ethnicity sometimes polarizes residents.

The Wing Luke is what's known as an "immersion" museum, its exhibits trying to create what life was like. Visitors can, for example, walk the squeaky planks of a World War II internment barrack that housed Japanese Americans, while listening to a crackling radio report that Pearl Harbor has been attacked.

The museum last summer purchased the Kong Yick buildings, grimy pearls that Chew hopes will help revive the neighborhood. "We'll keep this staircase," he says, walking a warren of rooms in the building. "Our plan is to restore the hotel check-in, maybe this gaming room."

Outside, Chew walks his past: the old restaurant, long abandoned; the shop where Filipino barbers buzzed his hair; the movie theater; the monument to Chinese-American veterans of World War II. Etched in the pink granite is his uncle's name, Lee Hong Chew.

"Outsiders may think the neighborhood is scary, dirty. They remember the Wah Mee murders," Chew says. "Every time I walk through here, I'm comforted."

Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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