Tallahassee celebrates restaurateur and costume designer Lucy Ho on 91st birthday

She was wearing red. Red, a Chinese symbol of luck, joy, happiness — and celebration. For indeed, on a balmy Thursday evening, Oct. 27, at Masa, the elegant Asian restaurant she founded, Lucy Ho turned 91.

For anyone who has lived a few years in Tallahassee that name will ring numerous bells. Ho and her late husband, John Ho, participated in cultural events, philanthropic projects, and academia since they arrived in Tallahassee in the mid '60s.

More extraordinarily, Lucy Ho, on her own, became the doyenne of Asian restaurants — opening the very first in Tallahassee, and at one time owning and operating 10 establishments in the Florida, Georgia area.

Oh, and in addition, Ho was a foundational costume designer and creator at the Florida State University Theater and Opera Departments.

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Surrounded by 20 members of her family — some traveling from Taiwan and points east— and nearly 150 friends, Ho, is charming, witty, and as focused on providing hospitality at her own birthday party as she might have been when she presided over restaurants, Azu Lucy Ho’s, Dao, Bamboo Garden, Oriental Garden, Masa, and others.

For this evening, Masa is closed to the public while party-goers feast from a long buffet of Asian specialties and come to Ho’s table to bow, smile “Ni hao,” and wish her many more years of happiness.

As she smiles contentedly at her guests, it seems Lucy Ho has indeed found the key to joy. And it appears it may revolve around hard work.

From dressmaking to FSU Opera's costumes

Ho said that she was 24 when she came to the U.S. with her husband who was just finishing his studies at Indiana University in Bloomington.

She had trained at a dressmaking school in Taiwan before marriage, but she discovered that pursuing a career making elegant clothes for rich ladies in the U.S. wasn’t feasible since Americans preferred “ready-to-wear.”

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Instead, she says she enrolled in costume design courses at the university and began to fall in love with the fabrics and fashions of other cultures, from the “Romans and Greeks to the Renaissance.”

In 1968, when her husband accepted a position as Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University, it seemed Ho’s reputation as an expert couturier had preceded her. She was invited to become part of the FSU Opera’s costume department, a role that continued for 45 years, and saw Ho’s dramatic and gorgeous costumes worn in hundreds of productions.

“My favorites, if I can say, were Madame Butterfly and the Mikado,” says Ho. “But I also loved the Renaissance costumes too!”

Indeed, “renaissance” may pertain to Ho’s own life.

Citizen of the world: Japan, Taiwan and America

She recounts how she was born a Japanese citizen in 1932 when the Japanese controlled Taiwan. Later, when the Chinese took over, she says she learned Chinese and was called a Chinese citizen. Ho became an American citizen in 1976. Reborn three times and learning all she could from each “incarnation” along the way.

There were home duties too. As a loving wife, Lucy Ho made a home for her children in the U.S. and each morning created a delicious lunch box for her husband to take to work—including little love notes for each day. When he died many years later, she found he had saved every one.

But others were observing that in addition to being able to create beautiful costumes for the opera, Mrs. Ho was also an amazing cook. Soon friends encouraged her to expand her culinary skills… “teach cooking classes…maybe open a restaurant,” they suggested.

And she did both. By 1970, Ho was working half a day at FSU sewing brocades into 16th-century bodices, and the other half of the day tending to the first several of what would become nearly a dozen restaurants featuring Japanese, Chinese, and Asian fusion cuisine.

Coming home to Lucy Ho Day

Having received dozens of awards of recognition over her 45 years as a restaurateur and costumer, none are more beloved to Ho than the Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters presented by President John Thrasher upon her retirement in 2014.

At least until tonight. Mayor John Dailey, one of many prominent guests, presented the diminutive entrepreneur and designer with a proclamation announcing that October 27, 2022, shall henceforth be known in Tallahassee as LUCY HO DAY in recognition of her ability to “bridge cultures and build friendships.”

Saying she has enjoyed it all, Lucy Ho nevertheless is one who lives in the now.

She says she revels in retirement and the freedom she has to divide her time “three months in Japan, three months in Taiwan,” and six months at her home in Tallahassee.

Although that, she admits, is often interrupted by frequent jaunts to Florence to see the FSU Opera Department in action and to London and Lucca, Italy, two of her other favorites.

As she looks over her family, her admirers, her dear friends of nearly a half-century, and the flower-covered birthday cakes and scattered red “Chinese envelopes” filled with good luck, Lucy Ho stands as a reminder that the world is large, but the human spirit and its capacity to create is greater still.

Happy birthday, Lucy Ho! Shengri Kuaile!

Marina Brown can be contacted at mcdb100@comcast.net.  

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee celebrates chef and designer Lucy Ho on 91st birthday