Rewarding Scholars for Restaurant Values

There has been enough focus on war, disease, lies and failures in 2006. Let’s end the year focusing on a touching and inspirational story: the creation of the Shui Kuen and Allen Chin (SKAC) Foundation, and its first scholarship to help Asian Pacific American restaurant workers and their children.

The SKAC Foundation was created to honor the values of restaurant owners Shui Kuen and Allen Chin, co-owners and operators of Chung’s, a well-known Chinese restaurant in the greater Detroit area. You may remember Chung’s as the place where parts of the film Who Killed Vincent Chin were shot. Or, if you are from the Detroit area, you will remember eating at this anchor of Detroit’s Chinatown at Cass and Peterboro before it closed after 52 years and relocated to the suburb of Waterford.

Like so many other restaurant and small business owners across the country, Shui Kuen and Allen worked selflessly for many years so that their six children could successfully complete post-secondary education and pursue a diverse range of career paths. Allen’s grandfather Joseph Chin had started the restaurant, with a sister who married into the Chung family, and Allen’s father Tom and many other relatives had worked there over five decades.

On October 11, 2005, Allen Chin tragically lost his life when a truck struck his car as he was headed to the family restaurant. He was 65. Shui Kuen Chin survived the car accident and, as the family rallied around her and discussed ways to channel their grief, the idea of the family foundation took shape.

Go to the website of the SKAC Foundation at http://blog.skacfoundation.org and you will be touched by the spirit of Allen and Shui Kuen Chin that lives on through their children. In the eulogies and memorials to Allen, you will get a glimpse of a family member whose life would be familiar to many of us: the father who works hard, day in and day out, to keep the family going and keep bread on the table. You also will read about a unique man whose sense of humor, genuine compassion and love for his family were the stuff of legends.

For example, son Calvin’s eulogy mentioned how one day a stranger from China wandered into the family restaurant. He’d just immigrated and didn’t have any money or a place to stay. With Shui Kuen’s help, Allen took care of him, let him rest at the restaurant, and then bought him a bus ticket to New York where he could find a job and friends in Chinatown.

In the online guestbook marking Allen’s passing, friends describe how he would babysit their kids on his infrequent time off so that they could go out as a couple on their anniversary, or make special fortune cookies for regular customers, or spend time listening to their problems and successes even when the restaurant was busy. He even kept his pockets full of coins so that he could help you buy a newspaper or pay for a phone call in the days before the cell phone.

The SKAC Foundation just closed the application process on December 15 for its first annual scholarship, which will be given to an undergraduate or graduate student who either has worked in an APA restaurant or who is the child of a parent who has worked in a restaurant. Aside from the usual focus on academic accomplishment, extracurricular activities and community service, each applicant submitted a 500-word essay focusing on these two questions:

1. What does it mean to you to have worked in an Asian restaurant or to be a child of an Asian or Asian American restaurant worker? How does it impact your role as an effective future leader?

2. How has growing up as a worker in an Asian restaurant or a child of an Asian or Asian American restaurant worker impacted your outlook on society?

Allen Chin’s son Curtis, who maintains the SKAC family website, noted on the day the scholarship was first announced, “There is a place in my heart that will always be empty, that can never ever be filled, but today the rest of my heart is filled with solace and no small amount of joy that we can announce our first scholarship.”

The winner of the first $1,000 scholarship will be announced in early 2007, and I am sure that in these days of rising tuition costs, the money will be helpful to a student trying to make ends meet. In a broader sense, however, we are all winners of this Chin family initiative.

By taking the love they received from their parents and spreading it to others, especially others who shared their working-class roots, the Chins have shown us that, while no feast under heaven lasts forever, the memory of those moments of feasting can motivate a lifetime of good works.