Mom was born in Ilan in Taiwan in 1938. Ilan is a county in the mountains in the Northeast part of the island. During world war 2, she and her family went through hardship because the island was occupied by the Japanese at the time, so the Americans also bombed their village. She told me how they fled to the mountains and lived in the woods for a while for safety from the fighting, and had little to eat.

As a young woman, mom did well in school. She was able to attend a nursing college and worked as a nurse in Taipei. While she was a nurse, she met my father, a handsome young man from Luodung, which was the town in Ilan county. They married while he was performing his military service, and shortly afterwards my sister Sylvia was born.

In 1967, my father started graduate school at McMaster’s University in Hamilton Ontario. Mom stayed behind in Taiwan with me and Sylvia because it took a while for the government documents to be approved for our family to join dad. Gery was born in Hamilton, and in those early years, mom was learning English while running our household on the modest graduate student stipend McMaster’s provided to Dad while he studied for his Ph.D.

In 1971, we moved to Calgary when dad started his life-long career with Amoco. Mom was a stay at home parent for those years.

In 1974, we moved to Tulsa after Amoco transferred Dad. Mom started to work in Tulsa. She did so many jobs and businesses, she had no doubt. She worked as a salesperson at Sears, which I think was her only job before she started her own businesses. She started a Chinese grocery store, “Far East Foods”, she got her realtor license, and she opened a 7-eleven convenience store.

In 1981, we moved to Houston with another Amoco job transfer for Dad, where my mother would live the rest of her life. Almost from the start, she started “Beauty Window Company” making custom draperies. She would work at this business for the next 37 years into from age 43 until her late 70’s.

She was immensely proud of her business.  She had great technical skill in making draperies. She could see a picture in a magazine and she would know how to replicate that drapery in her workshop. She expanded into wood blinds, comforters, and sun screens.

Mom would give anyone a job. People would show up, with no experience, and she would hire them and train them and put them to work. Over the years, people came and went, and she told me that she had employed hundreds of people over 30+ years and made draperies for over 10,000 houses.

Mom worked non-stop at her business. It was a 7-day a week job for her. She did everything. She did sales, purchasing, and accounting, only hiring people to do the sewing and installation.

The great tragedy of her life happened in 1993 when she was 55. Dad suffered a massive heart attack that left him brain damaged and bed-ridden. Mom brought dad home and hired caretakers for him. He lived for the next 13 years before he passed in 2006. 

She let up a little on her work, and in her later years, she spent some time with her grandchildren visiting Tulsa, attending their graduations, and even went to Hawaii with us on a vacation. She also had her own group of friends, and traveled with them (Here they are at the Bill Clinton Library in Little Rock) and went to a Chinese theater production.

In 2018 at age 80, she suffered a serious stroke. Between the hospital and rehabilitation, she was hospitalized for 6 weeks.  She worked hard to make an almost full recovery, though she lost some peripheral vision.

After her stroke, she didn’t work again. She was able to live a quiet peaceful life for the next four years , enjoying her cats, and visits from family.

In 2022, she fell and broke her hip. After the surgery, she attempted rehabilitation for four months. She tried her hardest, but the complications from her congestive heart failure and the residual pain she felt in her hip prevented her from making a recovery.

In the last year of her life, we were lucky to find Plantation Assisted Living. The ladies at the facility not only cared for her physical needs, but they became her family, truly caring for her. Mom celebrated her last Christmas and birthday and lived in a caring environment until her last day. 

It’s hard to sum up her 86 years in just a few minutes, but I hope you can remember the complex person that my mother was. She was confident, had a strong personality, and a fearless entrepreneur. But she also suffered tremendous hardship and tragedy. I hope that she has gone to a better place and is finally resting in peace.

Mom was laid to rest at Memorial Oaks Cemetery next to our father.

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