Donald Tai Loy Ho, who entertained tourists for decades, has died of heart failure on April 14. He was 76.
Ho was Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and German, born Aug. 13, 1930, in Honolulu and grew up in the then-rural countryside of Kaneohe.
In high school, he was a star football player and worked for a brief time in a pineapple cannery. After graduating in 1949, he attended Springfield College in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship. He grew homesick, returned to the islands and ended up graduating from the University of Hawaii in 1953 with a degree in sociology.
Ho joined the Air Force during World War II. As the Korean War wound down, he piloted transport planes between Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu and Tokyo.
When he returned home and took over his parents' bar, Honey's, he put together a band and started performing at his father's request.
Ho entertained Hollywood's biggest stars and thousands of tourists for four decades. Stars such as Lucille Ball, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra were known to be in the audience for Ho's shows. Ho also became a television star, and hosted the "The Don Ho Show" on ABC 1976-77. One of Ho's most memorable TV appearances was a 1972 cameo on an episode of "The Brady Bunch." (Source: Jaymes Song, AP, Apr 14, 2007).