Benjamin Jerome Cayetano :: Essays Papers

Benjamin Jerome Cayetano No matter what kind of origin you have, you can succeed and rise to unprecedented. The American dream is still alive, but it definitely takes hard work and a lot of great deal. This is a statement of Benjamin Cayetano when he was asked to give supporting(a) words to other Philippine American politicians. A lot of luck and fortune and hard work played a role in the life of Benjamin Cayetano, who is the first governor in the United States who is of Filipino ancestry. Governor Cayetano is todays highest-ranking Filipino American in government office. Born on November 14, 1939 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Benjamin Jerome Cayetano was the male child of Bonifacio Marcos Cayetano, who migrated from Urdaneta, Pangasinan to Hawaii in 1928 as a part of the first wave of Philippine laborers to work at the lollipop cane plantations. At the age of 6, his father and his mother Eleanor divorced, leaving him and his 4 year old brother to take care of themselv es on a latchkey existence, while his father went to work as a waiter. As a child, Cayetano grew up in the Kalihi District of Honolulu, a working class community dominated by a diverse group of immigrant families, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos. The Kalihi District is an environment where manliness and superiority were measured by ones force to settle disputes by the use of violence rather than intellectual dialogues. premature childhood experiences in the Kalihi district were major influences to Cayetanos adulthood as he later became a feisty but effective lawyer. Benjamin Cayetano have from Farrington High School in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1968. After gradation at the age of 18, Cayetano married his high school sweetheart, Lorraine Gueco, who according to him was a major influence in his rise from a life of hope to a life of means and power. A year later, when his first son Brandon was born, he was forced to worked a series of blue-collar jobs. In this uttermost of hardship, Cayetano worked as a metal packer in a junkyard, followed by other jobs as a truck driver, gas station attendant, rodman, scholar electrician, and finally as a draftsman with Hawaiis Department of Transportation.