In the Name

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1

The regular second baseman for the Cardinals now is a young man named Kolten Wong.  He is of Chinese cultural heritage and was born and raised in Hawaii.  This reminds me of a friend I had 40 years ago in a little village in Michigan.

In the village is a small college, which highlights among its features the fact that despite its small size, it fields a full football team every year, competing in a league with some powerhouse teams.  Shortly after the Korean War, in fact, this small-college football team somehow became known to a southern Korean family whose 20-year-old son wanted to go to college in America and play football.  They sent him, alone, to Michigan.

2

This young man's first name was W-O-N-G.  When I arrived in town 20 years later, he was still there.  He had made a little place for himself in that community while staying a fifth year of college to finish his degree.  By the time I knew him, he was responsible for the upkeep of three or four small apartment blocks.  Everyone called him "Mister Kim."  He was very private, a loner.  But for some reason he told me his story.

Wong Kim was his Korean name, and even though he wasn't particularly athletic, the college was glad to have him on the football team.  He told me, though, he had been very embarrassed in the locker-room and the showers.  Maybe he was a little more mature than his team-mates.  Or maybe they were just looking for a way to tease him in order to make him one of them.  But anyway, he indicated to me that they had talked about Wong and his w---.  Well, you understand.  It was a kind of locker-room pun.

3

It seems a small thing, or even flattering, I guess.  But that was not the case in this instance for this shy, quiet Korean lad.  It bothered him enough that one spring, he saved up enough money to hire an attorney in the County Seat 12 miles or so up the road.  He filed papers to change his name.

Mr. Kim did not evince much emotion about anything.  If I thought he was quietly satisfied, looking back on his legal action as he told me about it, I would be making it up.

But evidently he did succeed in changing his name.  It was W-O-N-G no longer.  It was "Dick."

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