Vai is a very dear friend and old college buddy of my husband’s, consequently he is a very dear friend of mine. He agreed to do this interview, I am certain, out of friendship. From NBC10’s website we catch up with what Vai has been doing since leaving college, professionally:
“Vai Sikahema, sports director/anchor for NBC 10 News at 4, 5, 6 and 11pm, joined WCAU in April 1994. Sikahema is also the host of “Wednesday’s Child,” a segment sponsored by the National Adoption Center, Freddie Mac Foundation, and NBC 10 to promote the adoption of children. Previously, he was the station’s sports reporter and weekend sports anchor. His accomplished career in the NFL, as well as his strong and solid background in television, made him an easy choice to be part of NBC 10’s sports department.
“Sikahema retired from the Philadelphia Eagles in 1994. He joined the team in 1992 after completing the ’91 season with the Green Bay Packers. Ranked first among the NFL’s all-time career leaders in number of punt returns and second in punt return yardage, Sikahema is also a two-time All-Pro.” http://www.nbc10.com/station/1225719/detail.html
As I conducted this interview I was impressed, one more time, of the humility, depth, spirituality and righteousness of this incredibly humble man. My husband and I feel very privileged to call him friend and brother. Enjoy the interview:
1. As a native of Nuku’Alofa, Tonga will you share us your impressions when you first came to America?
I came to America at age six, but not with my parents. Our immigration to the States was done in stages because of lack of finances. My parents left us (I’m the oldest of three – one sister who was four at the time; one brother who was two) with my maternal grandparents (Sione and Salote Wolfgramm) with no timetable for our reunion.
My parents came to Hawaii on student visas in 1969, as they were both enrolled at Church College of Hawaii, which later became BYU-Hawaii. My mother was the serious student and my father had a few classes, but was mostly there to work and financially support my mother. They both worked at the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC).
After a year, they managed to save enough for one plane ticket, a one-way ticket, so I accompanied my paternal grandmother (Toa’ila Sikahema) to Hawaii to join them.
At six, a year is a long time to be away from your parents and so when I first arrived in Hawaii, I spent the first two weeks crying and asking for my grandparents. Only a parent, specifically a mother, would understand the heartache that would cause. And my mother had two other children in Tonga besides!
I have memories of seeing rows of the small Gerber Baby food jars in our little apartment that my mother had saved and filled with coins that would use for lunch money.
Life in Tonga is so primitive that I had only worn shoes on special occasions, so having and wearing shoes every day in Hawaii was a new experience. Seven year olds in Hawaii typically wear flip-flops and often left those to go bear foot, so I was perfectly at home doing that as well.
In Tonga, my grandparents had a milk cow, so I was accustomed to drinking milk, but it was fresh, raw and unpasteurized. My uncles and I would milk the cow, then bring the bucket for Grandma Wolfgramm to boil in a pot, then we’d watch the cream rise to the top, which my grandma would spoon into another container, from which she made butter. After the milk cooled, we’d take turns sipping it out of a large tumbler. Milk, to us, was like manna to the Israelites.
I remember that my paternal grandmother, with whom I traveled to Hawaii with – it was also her first time in America – just the two of us walked one morning to a corner convenience store to buy milk. Because she spoke only limited English, she didn’t quite understand why the clerk kept pointing to the carton behind the glass doors of the refrigerator when she asked for “Hu’a Kau” – the Tongan word for milk, which, literally translated is “Cow Juice.”
Not trusting the clerk and not being able to see what was in the paper carton, Grandma Sikahema bought a huge bottle of Mayonnaise – she could clearly see that what was in the glass container was white and looked more like the milk than what was possibly in the enclosed paper carton.
My parents laughed when they returned home to find my grandmother frustrated that the “milk” she bought was bad and had obviously curdled.
2. You’ve chosen to make America your permanent home. Why?
While I have memories of Tonga and life there, for which I’m eternally grateful (only my sister has memories of Tonga and naturally, not as vivid as mine), for all intents and purposes, America is all I know and where I grew up.
Understandably, my mother dropped out of college because it became too difficult to concentrate on school given two of her children were still in Tonga. Together, my parents opted to move to the mainland, settling in Arizona. My father’s younger brother, Lui, who had immigrated in the early 60’s lived in Tempe. We moved to Mesa because that’s where the temple is located.
My father had another reason in moving us permanently to the mainland. He had a theory that raising us among other Polynesians, would be counter-productive. While in Hawaii, he watched Tongans and Samoans immigrating to Hawaii, only to form “Tongan” and “Samoan” Wards where he felt it wasn’t much different than the branches and wards they left back home. He saw greater value spiritually, educationally and socially in raising us among American families. Ironically, in a place as diverse as Hawaii is, in his mind, Hawaii was only diverse for “Haoles” and “Palangis” or white people. For a Tongan family like his, he didn’t see much diversity – especially since families were divided into wards based on culture and not based on geography.
In Mesa, my parents applied for and received permanent residence cards (also called green cards or resident alien cards) since they were here on student visas. They got jobs and worked to bring my two younger siblings from Tonga. They soon learned that being immigrants, speaking limited English and without a college education, they were relegated to working menial jobs that paid little and found saving for two one-way passages from Tonga more difficult than they imagined. They turned to priesthood leaders, who organized ward luaus and various fund-raisers for my siblings tickets. For the luaus, my Uncle Lui joined us along with the only other Tongan family in Mesa, and we performed our native dances and sang native music. It took two and a half years of saving and fund raising before they finally had enough to pay for two plane tickets!
In total, it took my parents 3½ years to be reunited with all three of their children. Can you imagine?
My parents also had the wisdom to insist that we speak only Tongan in our home, figuring we’d lose it otherwise. To this day, we all read Tongan and speak it fluently. Of course, it helped that both my parents and younger siblings all returned to Tonga on missions. As the black sheep of the family, I was sent to South Dakota.
I married a beautiful Hawaiian girl, Keala, whom I met at BYU. We have four wonderful children. Our oldest, Landon, has been out almost a year on his mission. In Hawaii. He left after his freshman year at BYU in Provo. Our second child, Leland, or LJ, will be a freshman at BYU in the fall. Our third, Leonard Trey is a sophomore in high school and our youngest, daugther Lana, is 12 and in 6th grade.
Not only is my family very “American” in every way, but my work as a sportscaster, isn’t something that I could do in Tonga. Tongan TV doesn’t pay quite as well as NBC.
We actually plan to visit Tonga as a family next summer when Landon returns from his mission and before LJ leaves for his.
To Be Continued —