Benjamin Jerome Cayetano

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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 luck." This is a statement of Benjamin Cayetano when he was asked to give encouraging words to other Filipino 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 today's highest-ranking Filipino American in government office.

Born on November 14, 1939 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Benjamin Jerome Cayetano was the son 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 sugar 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 themselves 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 one's ability to settle disputes by the use of violence rather than intellectual dialogues. Early childhood experiences in the Kalihi district were major influences to Cayetano's adulthood as he later became a feisty but effective lawyer.

Benjamin Cayetano graduated from Farrington High School in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1968. After graduation 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 want 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 period of hardship, Cayetano worked as a metal packer in a junkyard, followed by other jobs as a truck driver, gas station attendant, rodman, apprentice electrician, and finally as a draftsman with Hawaii's Department of Transportation.

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