Kim sisters had fun entertaining the troops

Singing, dancing musician Sue Kim Bonafazio has come a long way in her 59 plus years.

The oldest of the three Kim Sisters, Bonafazio began entertaining soldiers as a child in her native Korea. From there her trio was a hit on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and the stages of Las Vegas, Chicago, New York and Europe.

Now Bonafazio is concentrating on her real estate career while she plans her own move from her 30-year-old Las Vegas home to a new home in Sun City Anthem.

Bonafazio's mother, Ran Young Lee, was a legend in Korea. The singer's children still gather to perform at an annual Korean festival held in her honor.

"My father (Harsong Kim) was captured by North Koreans and they assassinated him. That's how this whole thing started," she said. "My mother had no way to make a living and take care of seven kids. So she had us perform for GI troops.

"Of course we loved it. Since we were infants we had watched my parents performing on stage. My father, he was the brilliant one, and my mother was the great singer. My father trained us, he really wanted us to be in show business. As little as we were he was teaching us how to sing, how to harmonize. He gave us a foundation and then we were always on stage."

Harsong Kim was active in the Korean music world, he produced a "Romeo & Juliet" opera and he did "Carmen" and "Cleopatra" -- all in Korean.

"He trained us like the army. We had politicians and celebrities in the house and he would line us up and say, 'I don't have money but this is my worth.' He told me to learn piano and to sing. He knew that we had something in us, a talent that he could see."

At 6, 7 and 8 years old, Sue Kim (then called Sookja) and her little sisters Minja and Aija began performing to support the family. The troops would give them chocolates and cases of beer.

"We exchanged it on the black market and that's how we survived. As a little girl I would sit and look at the stars in the sky and wonder, where is America? I had no clue. Now I drive around Las Vegas at night and look at all the light and I am totally overwhelmed. It is the most beautiful thing."

The sisters arrived at the Thunderbird hotel in 1959 .

"When we arrived here the airport was a little shack. We stood there and said, 'This cannot be America.' You see the movies with the tall buildings of New York and we stood there and said, 'Where are we? This is not America.' Our manager said, 'Well, wait until night.' "

At night they saw the lights blinking on the signs.

"We were shocked that from daytime to nighttime it was so different," she said. "We came to this country with a four-week contract with the option that if we didn't make it we had to go back, and we never went back."

After four weeks the girls were picked up by the Stardust where Ed Sullivan caught the act.

"He actually adopted us. He put us on his show a total of 22 times. Every time we'd come to New York the cab drivers would say, 'Oh you've come to see papa.' He made the Kim Sisters.," she said.

"At that time we didn't even have a record. He's the one who gave us our first break and from then on -- history. We didn't know how big this Ed Sullivan was. We had no clue. When we watched TV at a GI show they talked about Ed Sullivan's sponsor and it was a car, the Edsel I think. So we thought Ed Sullivan was that car.

When we came here we met him, but of course we could only speak very little English. But we did sing about 29 different songs from rock 'n' roll to country western, all memorized so people automatically thought we spoke English."

After about 15 years, Bonafazio was watching television when one of her first songs, "Old Buttermilk Sky," came on and she said "Oh my gosh, that's what that meant, we had no clue what we were singing."

When the media took notice of the talented young beauties, the Kim Sisters found themselves in and on the covers of magazines from Parade and Newsweek to Life.

"We were performing in Texas and a journalist, Maxine Messanger, saw our show and she was totally overwhelmed and she said 'I've got to have an interview with these girls.' We hated interviews. We were so nervous, but she said she had to."

Messanger rattled off questions for 20 minutes before she realized the sisters had no idea what she was saying. Eventually the sisters watched TV, studied and tried to learn English.

"We used to watch a lot of Lawrence Welk. I guess that's where we learned," Bonafazio said. "Those days we worked six shows a night. We slept, we ate, we performed, we rehearsed."

Which left little time for romance.

"Before we left, my mother said 'if you girls want to be successful, do not date until 23.' Guess what? I kept my promise," she said.

"When we came to Vegas and some man said, 'I'd like to take you for coffee' or whatever, I'd say, 'Three go or no go.' Some men took all three of us and some backed down. And that's how we kept our goal. My mother knew when the men came into our lives we would not stay together."

Sue Kim's husband, John Bonafazio, wasn't just any man though. He first came to the Kim Sisters show in New York at the Americana Hotel.

"He was sitting ringside with his friend and he seemed to like our show. The next day I prayed to God, 'Oh, please let him come back,' and he did. Eight days he came, so I knew he liked one of us, but I didn't know which one. He asked us to go to dinner with him. My two sisters had boyfriends so they were not interested. So I went with John and his friend Nicky."

The next night they had dinner alone. They met for five dinners in New York then Sue Kim had to go on tour to Europe.

"He thought that was it, that he would never see me. Then I called him from Milano. It took me three days to get through. I talked to him and he started sending me roses and telegrams wherever I went in Europe. I called him and said 'I'm coming to New York for one day then I have to go to New Orleans.' I stopped for one day, we had dinner and then I went to New Orleans.

"That year there was a big hurricane in New Orleans. The show was canceled and I was sitting with my girlfriend and I said, 'boy, I sure miss John.' She pointed to the entry way and said 'just turn around and look.' And there he was. He took the last flight to get to me in a hurricane. From that day on wherever I was, every weekend he was there. We went out for one year, then we were engaged for two years. In 1968, April 14, Easter Sunday we got married."

Bonafazio continued to perform until the 1980s when she and her sisters were in the lounge while Elvis was in the showroom at the Hilton.


<<--[back]