Eulogy for Mr. Pao Wan–Lung Delivered by Mr
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Eulogy for Mr. Pao Wan–lung Delivered by Mr. Raymond R. Wong Family members, friends, broadcasters, journalists, ladies and gentlemen: We are gathered here today to remember a filial son of the elderly Mrs. Pao, a caring brother of Jenny and Tammy, and a loving confidant of Tiffany. We’re also here to honor a truly kind, gentle man and a highly principled journalist whom we all love and respect. But this is not just a memorial service for Pao Wan–lung. It is also a service to celebrate the way my brother had lived his earthly life. Last but certainly not least, it is a worship service to give thanks to our God of merciful kindness and grace for having given us such a brother and how the Holy Spirit had led our brother to God’s own heavenly home once his journey here was over. What and how does one say what’s in one’s heart about a 30–year relationship with a person who began as the worthiest of competitors, progressing to being the closest of friends and finally continuing to become the dearest of brothers–in–Christ? It might seem like only yesterday, but it was in fact either 1973 or ’74, when I first laid eyes on a tall, handsome man at his desk in the TVB newsroom. The then news director, Mr. C.P. Ho, and I were walking toward the studio where we were about to tape the weekly Meet the Press show on Pearl. C.P. didn’t bother to introduce me to anybody, probably because as usual, I had just made it to Broadcast Drive in time. Pao’s and my paths didn’t cross again until several years later. By that time I had left the then Baptist College to become news director of TVB and Pao had climbed the RTV/ATV News ladder rapidly, becoming its head in the early 1980s. The one thing that set Pao apart from all his contemporaries and which had never failed to impress me was his quiet demeanor, even in the heat of approaching deadlines and fierce competition. He was always calm, cool and collected—hardly befitting the Hollywood image of a temperamental television news boss. Despite this appearance of being lay back and unruffled, I soon found out the hard way, that behind his seeming nonchalance, hid a steely determination to get a job done regardless of the hurdles he and his staff had to overcome. While our news divisions fought tooth and nail to get the best news 1 programs on air the fastest, we both fought by the rules of fair competition. I never had to worry that Pao would pull a fast one on us, and neither would he about me. It was a well–known fact on Broadcast Drive that despite the vastly superior resources TVB News had during those halcyon days of the ’80s, ATV News gave TVB News a very good run for its money. I spent many a sleepless nights, wondering just when once again ATV News, with Pao at the helm, would beat us while spending half the resources we did. From fierce competitors to fast friends just seemed to have come naturally. As founding members of the Hong Kong News Executives’ Association, Pao and I, along with RTHK’s Ng Ming–lam and Commercial Radio’s Leung Tin–wai, we spent a lot of time in mid–1980s hashing over the nuts–and–bolts of setting up a professional organization. It was comforting for me to discover that my fiercest competitor in fact saw eye–to–eye with me on many issues of importance, especially those concerning professional ethics. Shortly thereafter began an ongoing fortnightly or monthly lunches at our usual hangouts, either pasta at Café Too of the Island Shang or sauté salted fish at Number One Harbor Road at the Grand Hyatt. Later, others joined us, such as then GIS director Mrs. Irene Yau and the then Asia manager of the Associated Press, Bob Liu, who has since retired to the idyllic islands of Hawaii. Regardless where or with whom we lunched, there was always one constant: Pao would be so absorbed with his work at ATV, he inevitably arrived late. It’d gotten so bad that Bob and I finally decided to ask Betty, Pao’s long–suffering secretary at ATV, to tell her boss that the lunches would be at least half an hour earlier than they really were. You guessed it, Pao showed up on time; that is, half an hour later than what Betty had told him. For all his habitual tardiness, Pao was always of such good humor, that how ever much Bob, Irene or I teased him, he would simply look at us with that famous silly grin of his. And then he would be late again the next time. After some 17 years, Pao finally left ATV News in the early 1990s. However, within several years, he returned to his old job only to walk out in 1999 when the new owner/management decided to use “artistic talents” instead of newspeople to anchor ATV’s main evening newscasts. His principles were more important than his paychecks. Before and after his several stints at ATV, he took on new ventures— some would later say misadventures—in print and broadcast. While fate would 2 have most of these ending up as financial basket cases, Pao didn’t budge an inch from his long–held philosophy of looking after his staff’s welfare before worrying about his own. His last job as a newspaper editor and publisher which began in 2003, was the best example of the ultimate sacrifice Pao gave not only to the craft of journalism, but more importantly, to the hundreds who had been blessed by having worked under his supervision. From day one on that last gig, money was tight. So tight that the staff seldom, if ever, got paid on time. It was more than once that my brother would have to dig into his own savings to pay the junior staff while he and other senior staff would not get paid until a month later, if paid at all. In July 2004, my brother discovered during a regular checkup there was a tiny cancerous spot on his liver. He checked into Queen Mary Hospital and was operated upon by the noted oncologist Professor Fan and his team. Typical of Pao, he didn’t tell anybody of his plight. I left him dozens of voicemails on his cell phone and waited for two weeks until he finally called back and told me casually that he had had a tenth of his liver taken out and that the prognosis was good. This was about the time that I had just retired from TVB, so I became his periodic chauffeur, picking him up at his Tai Hang Road home, taking him to either QM or Hong Kong Sanatorium, depending on what kind of treatment, chemotherapy or radiotherapy, he was undertaking at the time. He told me that he had resigned from the newspaper shortly after he found out he had cancer. Once while driving him to QM for a routine checkup, his cell phone rang. He answered and mumbled something unintelligible to me. I asked him what happened. He said that a former colleague called to ask him what to do about the flooding of the proof–reading room. After I heard this incongruous exchange, I couldn’t help but remind my brother that he was sick with a very serious illness, he had resigned and whatever that was happening at the paper was no longer any of his business. Typical of Pao, his answer was: “They didn’t know what to do, so they called me. I had to tell them something.” That short exchange pretty much summed up what a kind and selfless person my dear brother was: Everybody else’s problem came first; his own didn’t matter at all. While he was in remission in the latter part of last year, he was in and out of Queen Mary Hospital where I would visit him several times a week. At least twice, I saw stacks of hundreds of unsigned checks on the windowsill of his hospital room. I asked him why he was still signing the checks when he was no 3 longer in the newspaper’s employ. His answer was that since the directors had not bothered to authorize a change of signatories, he had to sign the payroll checks or the staff won’t get paid. I reminded him that his signature might not be legal since he’s no longer an employee. He just shrugged, apparently not overly concerned with his own personal liability as long as his former staff were taken care of. His health situation did not become critical until the summer of this year. From early this year to late June, he attended every single meeting of the Committee on Review of Public Service Broadcasting. His very presence was an awesome inspiration to the Committee members and the Secretariat. He even took part in the International Conference on PSB in mid–June, hobbling around with the help of a walking stick. As I touched on earlier, I had known throughout the years how folks at ATV News had held Pao in truly high esteem and endearment. But I really couldn’t possibly appreciate how deep their affection had run until recently when Pao’s illness took a turn for the worse. Eventually, he became so weak that he could no longer read.