Volunteer’s experience unbeatable

Hoopfest court monitors may take a lot of grief, but if they hang in there through Sunday, they’ll at least get their T-shirt. There to hand it to them for the past six years has been Han-Chung “Harry” Meng, Hoopfest’s most senior volunteer at 91 years of age.

“It just isn’t Hoopfest unless Mr. Meng is there,” said Hoopfest operations manager Chad Smith, who started working for Spokane’s annual 3-on-3 basketball tournament the same year Meng did. “He’s a tremendous inspiration to us.”

Meng volunteered to be a monitor, having had some experience making the tough calls on the court while he was in the navy – the Chinese navy.

Meng, who was born in Nanjing, China, in 1916, is a veteran of the Sino-Japanese War. In fact, he was aboard the Chinese light cruiser Ninhai, guarding the entrance to the Yangtze River, when the Japanese unleashed hell on Sept. 12, 1937. The ship was so badly damaged from the bombing, the Ninhai had to be run aground to keep it from sinking, Meng recalls.

“The Japanese airplanes came to bomb the Nanjing airfield and passing by, they left something for us,” he said.

Meng survived, but his brother was killed by shrapnel aboard the light cruiser Pinhai, which also was scuttled that day.

In 1943, Meng was accepted into the Navy College Training Program at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He studied in the United States until 1946 when he returned to China. By 1949, he retired with the rank of captain to teach English in Taiwan.

Meng said he returned to the United States in 1990 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen about eight years ago. He and his wife, Yu-Yin, moved to Spokane from California to be close to one of their four children, a daughter who received her master’s degree at Washington State University.

Not one to remain idle, Meng worked for three years as a courtesy clerk for Safeway on 29th Avenue. Working part-time and volunteering for Hoopfest, he said, was his way of contributing to Spokane, which has treated him very well.

“This is a way of paying back to the community a little of what I have received,” Meng said.

A former soccer player, Meng likes to keep in shape. But although he has finished Bloomsday three times, his knees are not what they used to be. Meng said a very nice Spokane doctor told him Medicare would cover the cost of new knee joints, but he’d rather not waste the government’s money.