It's a honor for anybody to serve at the pleasure of the president, but it's a more unusual honor for two brothers from New Haven to be called to serve the White House.
The dean of the Yale Law School, Dr. Harold Koh, and his brother, Harvard associate dean Dr. Howard Koh, have both been nominated for the Obama administration.
Harold Koh was chosen Monday as legal adviser to the U.S. State Department. Two days later, his brother Howard Koh, was nominated as an assistant secretary in the Health and Human Services Department.
Not bad bragging rights for Mom.
"It was how we raised our children with a drive not just to excel, but also to serve," Hesung Chun Koh, 79, told the New Haven Register. "The greatness of a person is measured not by how much we help ourselves, but of how much we help others."
Hesung Chun Koh, who lives in a Hamden retirement home, turns 80 in July, has reason to be proud of all six of her children, all of whom are university professors.
She said the nominations are an early birthday present.
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Service runs in the Koh family as well.
The late Kwang Lim Koh, the patriarch of the family, was a Korean government diplomat in the U.S., until a coup overturned the government. After speaking out against the coup, Koh was blacklisted and couldn't return to his native country.
