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A Fiscal Lesson for the Ages
Stephen Choi, 46, and wife Leena, 44, in their Potomac home. Stephen lost a lucrative business, and had to begin again.
(By N.c. Aizenman -- The Washington Post)
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They piled a couch, clothing and books into a truck and drove to a friend's house in Columbia.
"All six of us walked into this one bedroom," Choi said. "There wasn't even furniture in it."
The friend offered to let the Chois run a carryout he owned in Baltimore. But something inside Choi's parents had broken. "They were in shock. . . . It was like they just couldn't do it anymore."
Until then, Choi had been something of a party boy, and was more focused on his musical ambitions than his family. Now he felt called on to step into the breach. His older brother was in college, studying to become a doctor. His two younger brothers were still children.
"There was no choice. It was clear that I was the one who had to carry the household," he said.
Choi quit high school and started working at the carryout. It was the hardest year of his life.
"There was a lot of bitterness. It was difficult to see my friends going to school and graduating while I was stuck in that carryout from 10 o'clock in the morning to 10 o'clock at night," he said.
But it was also a time of spiritual awakening. Practically every Sunday of his life, Choi had sat in some pew, listening to some sermon. For the first time, the words had meaning.
"I began to understand that life is not only about what you see. Because if that was the case, then I would have no hope," he said. He sought out services at Bethel Korean church in Ellicott City like a drowning man reaching for a life raft. "I had no other place to go. That was my source of strength, and I had to cling to it."
By year's end, Choi's parents had recovered their verve. The next two decades were challenging, but marked by steady progress: Choi went back to high school, then put himself through college by taking loans and waiting tables. He helped his parents expand into the frozen yogurt business, then a cafeteria. They began to enjoy a measure of prosperity.
On a trip to South Korea in 1989, Choi fell in love with a poised woman with delicate features named Leena. They married a year later, had two daughters and settled in South Korea.
By fall 1997, he was the proud owner of a travel agency employing 30 people. "I had my own office. I had my own secretary. I could take my family out to dinner anywhere we wanted," he recalled. "I just thought life was going to keep getting better and better."
