Part I
Once, we were out at lunch and Uncle Paul was sitting down. A couple walked in and they stood at the host’s stand, waiting to be seated. I watched him get up, shuffle over to them, grab menus, and show them to an open table.
Paul Lai was someone who helped. If he couldn’t help, he found someone who could.
Without fail, without question.`
He was fearless. He didn’t care if he got it 100% right.
He cared about doing the right thing.
Part II
Paul was 19 when he arrived in America, from Hong Kong. It was 1954. He worked at Hoi Sang, a Chinese restaurant at 766 Broadway in Williamsburg. His future father-in-law ran it.
In 1960, he opened the first of 3 restaurants, Joy Teang, in the Flatlands Shopping Center in Brooklyn. By ’65, he opened a second store in the Seaview Plaza Shopping Center, and a third in Queens.
In ’69, Paul borrowed to buy Jack’s Motel and Restaurant on Central Avenue.
Jack’s did a good trade. They had a $5.95 lunch buffet. On weekends, they tracked the wait list in one-subject spiral notebooks. Customers filled the bar as they waited. They drank. They smoked indoors.
Eventually, he moved his family to Albany. First in a one-story home on Lanci Lane, and later they bought two lots on Sunset Blvd.
Slowly others followed. Immigrants and first- and second-generation families made the move. Scores of Lai’s, Lee’s, Liu’s, Yip’s, Ho’s, Eng’s, Fung’s, Chan’s, and more made Albany their home.
They scrimped and saved. They got their driver’s licenses, they bought homes. They sent their kids to proms, then college. One by one, they built their American dream.
And Paul was the scaffolding.
Part III
15 months ago, Uncle Paul’s wife, Aunt Mary passed away. It’s a tragedy to lose two parents, two loved ones, two friends, in such a short period of time.
But of all the flavors of tragedy, this is the sweetest one.
It’s a flavor we spend a lifetime chasing. It’s what Coca-cola ads and Hollywood rom-coms and Hallmark spend millions of dollars a day trying to bottle up, yet still fall short.
Paul and Mary found it through. They caught that lighting.
Paul and Mary loved hard.
So hard, that when Mary was gone, Paul lost a part of himself too. A part he could not live without: a limb, a lung, a heart.
They had a lifetime together.
We would be so lucky.
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