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DECEMBER 30, 1996/JANUARY 6, 1997 VOL. 148 NO. 29
The equanimity deepened as Ho carved out time for his family. Even at school, he acted as a second father to his brother Sidney, writing constantly with advice and encouragement. Says Sidney, who now works for David as operations manager at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center: "He would take a late flight and get in past midnight, but he would always come to my room and wake me up for a brotherly chat." Ho became a father himself. He and his wife Susan Kuo, an artist, have three children: Kathryn, 18, Jonathan, 15, and Jaclyn, 10. Now and then, Ho sneaks away from his busy schedule to surprise his kids at school. This fall, after his picture appeared in TIME, he was invited to explain AIDS to Jaclyn's fourth-grade class. As a child, Ho had his math tables drilled into him in Mandarin, and to this day he does his calculations in Chinese. "But," he says, "I wouldn't even have the vocabulary to give a scientific talk in Chinese." He plays down the importance of being Chinese to his success--but that is a very Chinese thing to do. Instead, he cites immigrant drive: "People get to this new world, and they want to carve out their place in it. The result is dedication and a higher level of work ethic." He adds, "You always retain a bit of an underdog mentality." And if they work assiduously and lie low long enough, even underdogs will have their day. --Reported by Dan Cray/Los Angeles, Alice Park/New York and Donald Shapiro/Taichung
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