Greetings in the name of our Lord.
Our good friend, Don Fong lived a beautiful life.
A beautiful life is not having accumulated great wealth and ending up living in ease. A beautiful life
is not having one’s name on the top of a building. A beautiful life is not fame and fortune nor power
and reputation. Rather, a beautiful life is having lived faithfully in the Lord and trusting God to see
him through. That’s the kind of beautiful life Don Fong lived.
Some of us have had the opportunity of working in one company for one’s entire working years. For
myself, I have only worked in two places. But for Don Fong, he has worked in many companies and
have sought employment at many others. But the beauty of Don Fong’s life is that he never quit,
never gave up, always tried harder. It’s beautiful that Don provided for Sharon and their children in
his entire life. Even after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Don was still working.
Don Fong worked in high tech for many years of his life. He was in tech support, trouble-shooting
computers, and software problems that we have all faced in this technological world today. But if I
had a technical problem, I would hope to have Don on the end of the customer service line to help
me. He wouldn’t give up on me but patiently helping me to believe that I can do this. This is the
same reason why he was an effective high school math tutor. He saw solving a math problem was a
beautiful thing and he encouraged students to see it too.
In 1997, the three-time Academy Award winning movie, Life Is Beautiful reminds me of Don. The
Italian actor Roberto Benigni plays Guido, a father during World War II. He, his wife, and son were
imprisoned in a concentration camp. Guido knew what could happen. But he created a game for his
son and the other children in the camp that even in the face of unspeakable human horror, Guido
gave his son hope. Don always gave hope to his family and in so doing spread the message of hope
to many others.
Don regularly volunteered at Martin de Porres House of Hospitality soup kitchen. One time, Don
invited me to join him and I bussed the soup bowls to the guests and washed many dishes. I had the
chance to see Don, a valued member of that community, give of his time in order to give hope to
the homeless even if it’s a hot lunch for that day. He was able to communicate hope to those who
desperately needed to hear a hopeful word is because Don was always hopeful. This was a beautiful sight.
The Chinese have said that a picture is worth a thousand words. As a photographer, Don took
beautiful pictures. At weddings, he captured the beautiful couple. At Family Camp, he arranged each
family in a redwood forest background to focus on how beautiful family life is. At Yosemite, he
framed in pictures God’s majestic beauty of creation. At church gatherings, he snapped away,
chronicling the beauty of Christian fellowship. One time, Don did our family portrait in front of
Sausalito’s City Hall. We still have those beautiful pictures.
Don Fong was gifted to make music. He played many instruments and enthusiastically sang from his heart. The Men’s Chorus was the stage where he and the other men harmonized and proclaimed beautiful songs. While the music was wonderful to hear, the message that the chorus shared was that life in Christ was of beauty.
There’s an incident when Jesus healed 10 lepers (Luke 17:11-12). Jesus sent them to show
themselves to the priests to be cleansed. When the 10 men were healed, only one man came back to thank Jesus. I suspect that if you had leprosy, you would look awful, abandoned, put out of sight and out of mind. You become an untouchable. Aren’t we all like the 10 lepers—perhaps not necessarily oozing with smelly flesh but a bit imperfect, not just right, with sin? Don Fong like all of us are lepers. And Don is like that one leper who came back to thank Jesus because he was grateful to have his life restored to begin living again. That’s a beautiful life.
We know that Don along with his family loved Disneyland. It’s not only the happiest place on earth,
it’s also beautiful. We like to visit Disneyland because of what it represents. The place gives us hope
for a new earth as we already know it is in heaven. This place encourages us to always do better,
strive more, aim higher, and to imagine a whole new world. Don sacrificed for his family so that
they would have everything that he can provide, engendering in them a positive and optimistic
outlook for life. He blessed his children with a can-do attitude to not only be successful but to be
hopeful and what it’s like to have lived a beautiful life.
Sharon told me that Don didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to leave his family. No one here would
wish that for ourselves either. For Don, he still had a lot of living to do. But because he was a man
of great faith and trust in the Lord, he knew that it was not for him to decide. Don said, God wants
him to come home. For all of us who are still living, that is a beautiful affirmation of faith that Don
has blessed us with today.
On December 30, 2020, Don Fong having lived a beautiful life, had a beautiful death. Hospice said
Don was the classic example of dying well. Like the movie, Life Is Beautiful, Don as husband, father
and grandfather created a beautiful life for his family and in turn for all of us, for his coworkers, for
his church family, for his students, for the people at Martin de Porres and in turn for the world.
In celebration of Don Fong’s life and in memory of his contributions to us, let us live our lives
faithfully because in the end it is indeed beautiful.
Amen.