An Example of a Highly Educated Immigrant

In 1952, Bill Paul came from Scotland to accept a Post-Doc from Harvard University. His experience was similar to mine, in that I came from Taiwan to accept a Research Fellowship at the University of Illinois, and both of us stayed to make a life in this country. The programs which encouraged American Universities to seek out well-educated individuals from abroad to enhance graduate programs in this country, in the 1950's and 1960's, were responsible for much of the advancement - particularly in the sciences - in this country.

Having left his wife in Scotland, Bill was befriended by Janice's mother, who was working at Harvard at the time and who invited him to join her family for holidays and such. Fortunately, his wife Babs was able to join him a year or two later. The two of them became close family friends with the Fernalds - a relationship which has lasted for many years. The family picture below was taken when Janice was about 12 with Babs and Bill in the middle. 

The second picture was taken on June27th, in the summer of 2008, when we were having a family reunion on Cape Cod. Bill and Babs and their children and grandchildren, all participated that summer, as did Janice and I and our children and grandchildren.

 

Marian Anderson was in Taiwan once!

 Last night, I was watching a local PBS TV program. It was a special on Marian Anderson, used to raise funds for the station. There were some sections which impressed me very much. The most special event pictured took place in 1939, when she gave a concert at the Lincoln Center in front of 75,000 people. The first two pictures below were taken at that concert.

The third picture, which I found on the web, is also interesting. It has been said that the picture was possibly taken in 1965, on a visit to Taiwan. The other two people shown are the wives of the President and Vice-President of Taiwan during that time.

This program last night reminded me that I attended Marian Anderson's concert at Taiwan Normal University Music Hall to hear her sing in 1958, which was my freshmen year.  Since there was standing room only, I stood in the first row of the very crowded Hall to hear "Ave Maria". At the time there was only one University which had a Music Department. It was an open concert. I am pretty sure that what I remember is correct!

Some Old Pictures of Janice

 Shari was preparing to move out of her old house. She went through a lot of old pictures which her father had taken, and she sent some of them to Janice. I found three of them very interesting to include in this blog. The first two were taken in 1942, the year Janice was born. 

This was taken in July by Janice's father who was a very good amateur photographer

 The second one was taken at Christmas time at a professional shop, which reflects the trend at that time. It shows what they do during the Christmas season.

 

The final picture, of Janice's parents, was taken during the time when the young couple was becoming a family. This is a very typical family!!!

My parents are buried in Johnson City, Tennessee

When my father came to live with us in Johnson City, Tennessee, after my mother died in Taiwan in 1984, I decided to bring my mother's ashes to the United States. We buried the them in Tennessee, not far from our home. My father enjoyed living with us for ten years. He certainly shared many joyful moments with his many grandkids. He passed away in 1994 and is also buried in Johnson City. 

Recently my brother Ed drove a long way from Washington State to visit his children and relatives on the east coast. On his way back home, he drove south to visit my parents' burial grounds and took the following two pictures:

It is nice to see these lovely flowers on their graves. Janice and I would very much like to thank Ed for his thoughtful gesture and I want to share these pictures with all of you who know us.

The third reunion of some of our group which visited the SHU-Road in 2017

In 2017, a group of us under the leadership of Hope Justman went to hike on the Shu-Road. Please see "http://jat.esmartweb.com/nature-photos/Shu-path/Shu_Road.htm" for details. We had such a good time that we have now gathered together three times to renew the Happy Experience. The picture below was taken by Hope at the lunch we had together in Philadelphia this week. (Janice is in the picture but she did not travel to the Shu Road with us.) We shared a lot of good memories and felt especially lucky to be able to meet during this Pandemic!

Persimmon trees

Persimmon Trees

I have never been a farmer in my life, even though  I tried many times to plant some tomatoes or cucumbers. We often enjoyed the results, but I never paid much attention to whether the harvest was great or small. I planted some Chinese Jotsi too, but really did not pay much attention to it. 

Three years ago, our friend helped me buy two persimmon trees and plant them in our backyard, as shown in the picture below:

            

We had some fruit last year and they tasted very good! We enjoyed eating them! But this year, by comparison, we had quite a large crop come out! The shape of the tree was distorted  because of the weight:

           

 A close shot of the fruit is shown below. Can you believe this picture? We are very happy and pleased to enjoy this kind of harvest!

                      

Forgetting!

Accidently, we came across a copy of a photo album which looked brand new. The front cover can be seen in the picture below:

When you open it up, the first picture is as follows:

I do remember this picture, but we do not remember that it was given to us in this album. There are many other photos, showing  some of the activities during a workshop we gave together in Quizhou, China, in August, 1998.

 The workshop was sponsored by the Texas Instruments company. On the back of the picture is a list of all the Chinese names of the people who participated in the workshop.

It was very nice of the organizers of the workshop to create this album for us.  The entire workshop was extremely well planned.  

The album included a page written to remind us about the details of the workshop. We are both amazed  that we do not remember this at all! Are we really getting old NOW!

Requiems on YouTube

I have heard several "Requiems" by different composers on YouTube. They were very good and reminded me of the time when I was singing with The Civic Chorale. We did quite a number of  Requiems during those years. I looked for some of the sample programs sheets which I had saved in my file. Unfortunately, I do not have all of them, but I am going to put the ones I found here below: 

 

 

Clearly, I do not have many of our programs, as I remember we did both Verdi's and Mozart's in addition to the Brahms Requiems shown above. I did not save most of the programs as I took for granted that  singing was just part of my life, and it was not important enough to consider it special. I did save a couple of newspaper clippings, as they were more important to me at the time:

During this year of the Pandemic, one of the nice things I have enjoyed is the huge variety of musical productions available on YouTube. I would probably never have found the time to explore what was offered. Perhaps the Pandemic has also encouraged many groups - both international and local - to put their productions on YouTube for all to enjoy!

Henry Grant Fernald

This is the full name of my Father-in-law. He was a man of few words, which turned out to be very typical for a "Chinese"  like me. Not that I have others to compare him with, but it was very comfortable for me to be with him during the years I have been married with his daughter, Janice, in all occasions of our lives. Before he was ill with Alzheimer disease, he was requested to write some words about his life. Janice and I recently got a copy and I thought it was well-worth putting in this blog. I am now presenting it here with his picture, taken when he was a young man:

    Just before the 2nd World War, I tutored a large number of students at Harvard. They were taking the Navy V5 courses for prospective officers. Their professors couldn't seem to get their subjects across and expected them all to flunk their exams. I knew as little as the students about such things as internal combustion engines, but we studied together and they all passed and became naval officers.

    During the was I was in civil engineering down south. I was always elated at how surprised my boss was that I could look up trigonometric functions so easily.

    After the war, I came to A.O. (American Optical) During my first week I showed Miss Clancey a formula from civil engineering which greatly simplified her lens computations. I was pleased when I was given credit for it in a magazine article she had published.

    I am always pleased when people comment on my ability to write Fortran programs which don't need to be de-bugged. Also, it did something for my ego when people came to me as the expert on Fortran problems.

    Some of the programs I have written lately produce fancy plotting, which various people wanted to hang up as samples of what can be done.

    I am always pleased to get my name on patents and magazine articles, even though it is usually in second position. 

    I even amaze myself with the facility with which I can juggle algebraic and trigonometric equations. Figures have always been my pride and joy, and I am not happy unless I am dabbling with them.

    I am very good at deriving mathematical equations for solving nasty problems, and finding new methods for presenting data.

    I enjoy being praised for being a home handy-man, including electricity and plumbing.

    But my crowning achievement was the house my wife and I built on Cape Cod, doing all the work ourselves!

JANICE'S CAPE MEMORIES

   JANICE'S CAPE MEMORIES

     Not long after he returned from serving in the Navy during the Second World War (he was in the Pacific), our Uncle Fran Mardulier and our Aunt Dot bought several acres of land from a farmer in North Truro and sold a few of those acres to our Mom and Dad (Rita and Henry Fernald).  (It was probably around 1948.) They then bought (salvaged?) two army barracks from a base that was being closed down in Welfleet. Fran and Dot put up their "new" house first, including, of course, the outhouse we called Peony. Then the Fernald house was raised. I remember our Mom painting over the graffiti as the walls went up. There were no ceilings on any of the rooms and no paneling at first. (This made for a lot of peeking into other's rooms!) Shari, Greg, and I then became the first generation of kids to enjoy the Cape. At that time, the land in back of our house, which has since been sold, was a pasture where the farmer had kept his cows. I remember making "horses" out of pieces of discarded lumber. We painted them, attached a tail and reins, and rode them all over the place. I had several favorites - including a pinto and a black "stallion"! Another favorite memory from that time was our construction of a two-story(!) structure - deep in the woods where our parents wouldn't find it - which we called Hernando's Hideaway,  named from a popular song. We had help from our friends the Armstrongs (Paul, Sheila, and Bill).  Aunt Dot and Uncle Fran had a son (now known as Captain Jim) in 1952 and he joined in most of our activities as he grew older.  Sometimes we were also joined by cousins Donna and Marc Belisle, whose parents built a house on Hart Road. And, of course, there were those square dances down in Truro and Welfleet which we all attended faithfully (with the Armstrongs and the MacLauchlan's, who had a small cottage down on Great Hollow Road).

July 1948

     The next generation to fall in love with the Cape, included Doug and Laura, Margaret and Steven, Erin and Shelley, and David and Fiona Paul.  Babs and Bill Paul, the parents of David and Fiona,  had become "honorary members of the family" soon after they came to the States in 1952. Among other good memories from those days were the Plays which were performed regularly - complete with costumes and dialog.  Most of you may not have found it particularly memorable but, for my family, bringing Tom's Father to visit our families on the Cape in 1972 was a special time! Everything was new to him! And I don't think any of the parents can forget the evening that David Paul (newly licensed) drove Fiona, Doug and Laura, and Margaret and Steven to "dinner" at the Howard Johnson's in P'town.  Fortunately, all went well but we certainly heard a lot of complaints about David as he had insisted that they use a fork while eating french fries!

     The third generation to enjoy being together on the Cape includes Michaela and Cam, Meghan and Alex, Matthew and David, Jimmy and Annie, Kingsly and Cammie, and - last but definitely not least - Max. Many of them enjoyed the swing set that the Pauls provided in 2003. Starting in 1999, there has been a "Fernald Family Reunion" on the Cape every two years - except that occasionally there was a gap due to a wedding or some such thing! We all owe a debt to Laura for inaugurating these wonderful get-togethers! She has been the guiding light! I do remember that Judy once called attention to the fact that she was often the ONLY Fernald at many Fernald Family Reunions! Gatherings usually include wild games of croquet, loud and rambunctious games of Bonanza, lots of good food, and, of course, the beach! 

     I feel certain that there will be more generations coming to the Cape in the years ahead! We hope they hear our laughter and feel our love when they come!  Jan

Hart Island reminded me about Another sad Story

I talked about two of my siblings who passed away as very young children in this blog on Oct.10, 2019. Today, I will talk about one of them. This morning we heard a story on the CBS Sunday Morning Program which made me think of her. The story describes Hart Island, which is the burial ground for all the people who have died nameless in New York City hospitals, when the doctors could not save them.   The story focused on a lady who lost her daughter as an infant during a major snow storm. The child died of a heart problem and the lady could not get to the hospital because of the storm. The hospital sent the child to Hart Island but only told her mother she was sent to a NYC burial ground. It was only recently, after 25 years, that her mother learned the name of Hart Island. Unfortunately, there are no grave markers there.

This reminded me of a sad story in my own life. I had a sister who died in ZuoYing (Taiwan) in late 1949 or early 1950. She had an infection and we could not get any medicine for her. I was ten at the time and we had recently arrived in Taiwan after fleeing from the Communists in mainland China. I remember the scene vividly. Our family, including myself and my eight-year-old brother, Dean, went to her burial "get-together". The hole for her casket had already been dug. My mother was crying loudly and my dead sister had been placed on some kind of board near the hole. My father asked us to bow and say good bye to her, which we did. Then we were asked to run away. Later I found out that my parents were waiting for a burial casket, as the first one purchased was too small.  My uncle (my mother's brother) went to have another one made by some of his soldiers at the station. Later, I found her burial place covered with a small pile of dirt. When we went back to Zuo-Ying in 1969, I remember that we went there to look for her grave. But, I could no long find that pile of dirt - the whole area had been built up with new roads and everything was changed. The picture that I had in my mind was no long there!!

The only pictures I have of this sister were cut from some of my group pictures!

   

My Connection with UI (University of Illinois)

My connections with the University of Illinois really defined my life, although it is certainly late to mention it at this stage of my blog! Primarily it is because I took this fact for granted and I did not feel it's importance until I was recently thinking about it!
I went to the University of Illinois, specifically the Chemistry Department, mainly because the President of National Taiwan University, Chiang S-Ning, received his Doctoral Degree from that University. He was frequently involved with the Chemistry Department in Taiwan personally. The picture below was taken in 1961 when we graduated. We had a dinner to thank our teachers and he was there, sitting in the front row,  fourth from the right:

 

 And most inmportantly, he wrote a recommendation letter for me! Later, when I went to ETSU, it turned out that the chair of the Chemistry Department,  Dr. D G Nicolson, was also a graduate from Illinois. He was the one who later offered me a position at ETSU at the time when I was teaching at the University of Kentucky. He not only taught me but he also hired me back to the University, to which he had dedicated his whole life! The following picture was taken in 1978.

Finally, and most importantly, I met Janice, my wife there. You all know that part of my story, you just do not realize how important a simple folk dance could start the life story of two people from the other ends of the world!

More about my high school teachers

I finally found a few pictures of my "ChengGu" High School teachers who were very important for my education. They were all female teachers. The top four teachers all taught me mathematics, chemistry and physics. The fifth teacher was one I did not have in class. I do not know who wrote on my school books (the banners in yellow). He was trying to identify who taught what. Below are some pictures from my yearbook, some of which include students in their classes!

They were our favorite teachers, including one who even brought her daughter to take a picture with the best students in her classes! All the teachers names are printed in the book! You certainly could see that taking pictures were a very serious business matter, we were ALL in our uniforms with our hats on! 

"Bridge" is more than just a game!

During our first year in East Tennessee a group of eight women, mostly wives of new faculty members at the University, decided to form a "bridge" group to meet one night a week, so that they could share their experiences. Who could imagine that this group would continue for nearly fifty years, as of today! (Two of the original members left in the early years, as their husbands accepted positions at other schools.) The women certainly shared a lot of stories about raising their children, about the the frustrations of not having family living near-by, and, of course, about their husbands!  "Bridge" may have been their starting point, but everything in their lives was shared, one way or another. From new born babies, boys and girls, their children's marriages, and their grandchildren, to the death of beloved family members, every part of life was included in many different ways. Sadly, one passed away recently because of illness. And, two members have lost their husbands, which has affected all of them greatly. I have chosen four pictures to give you a glimpses of this amazing group!

This is one of the first pictures of the group:

Yes, they were very young!

The second picture was taken slightly later, showing the eight members who belonged to the group for the last 40-some years:

This is a more recent picture, taken a long time after 1971! The husbands frequently joined the group to celebrate the holidays!

This most recent picture was taken in January 2020. A new member was added for the first time since Janice and I moved out of the East Tennessee area.

 

Achievements by My Siblings

As a result of the deaths of my two siblings, my family was divided into two groups which were about a decade apart. Dean and I were in the first group, while Edmund and Kai formed the second.  Our move to Taiwan after the communists occupied mainland China in 1948, affected the older group quite a bit. For one thing, we were very poor for a few years after the move. Dean and I shared those experiences and hardships. However, the family conditions, both financial and environmental, improved quite a bit by the time our 2 younger siblings were old enough to notice them. So my parents raised two groups of siblings, with very different conditions, a decade apart. But, amazingly, in the long run, there were some common results which nobody could have predicted. Let me tell you the story.

It was very difficult to enter National Taiwan University during that time, especially as it was considered the best university on the island. An applicant for college was required to take an Entrance Exam which covered 6 different subjects and lasted for 2 days. Only the people with the highest total grades could be admitted to the department of their choice in the university of their choice. It was very fair; even the grandson of Chiang Kai-Shek could not get into any university.  When I graduated from Cheng-Gong-high school in 1957, I was given the chance to go to another University without having to take the Entrance Exam. However, I decided to take the exam and believe it or not I was admitted to the Chemistry Department of National Taiwan University(NTU). Two years later, Dean passed the Exam to be admitted to the Chemical Engineering Department at NTU.  Ed graduated from high school in 1966 and he was admitted to the Chemical Engineering Department of NTU. There was then plenty of pressure for Kai in 1968 when she took the college Entrance Exam. She did pass the Exam and was admitted to the NTU Biochemistry Department. All four of us Huang Siblings got into NTU Chemistry-related Departments. You could say this was "lucky" or that it represented major accomplishments!

Another Chapter of our accomplishments is summarized below:
       Thomas Huang, PhD, University of Illinois
       Dean Huang,      PhD, University of Illinois
       Edmund Huang  PhD, Iowa State University
       Christina Huang PhD, University of Kentucky

So we all four got PhDs from Four Universities in the USA in Chemistry-related fields!

Our pictures are collected below:

  most recent

  a decade ago

   1960

1950

Extra Ordinary Events

There are always very extra ordinary events which occur for an ordinary Chinese! For me, there were quite a number of them and it is time now for me to describe some of them in more detail, so that they will not be forgotten. In my last blog, I mentioned that I had two siblings who both passed away during the year and a half period when we were trying to escape from the communist invasion. I am now going to add, in this blog, some details about them and about our lives during that time -  especially since I found another, better picture which was taken during that time and which has inspired me to tell more about ALL that I remember. This picture is below:

          A family picture taken in Nanking in 1947 at a famous resort area near Jiming Temple

Pictured, in addition to my parents, are myself, my second brother, Dean, our two younger siblings, and my older cousin Fusan Je. I was able to extract a better version of this picture which shows these two siblings  more clearly:

My mother was holding the boy and Fusan Je was holding the sister. This is the only picture I have with their faces exposed!

At the end of the year 1948, our family took a boat to Taiwan. Our plan was to return "home" to Hubei after we visited my mother's brother, who had been assigned to Taiwan as part of the force that took over the island afer the Japanese had been defeated. (We assumed that the communist movement would diminish and peace would return to China.) However, shortly before we left, my younger brother died as a result of a re-occuring disease of the stomach called "intussusception", which was recognized too late for the doctors to operate. Before he became sick, he had been a very active baby!

Fusan Je was in Medical School at that time so she did not go to Taiwan with us. My father went back to Nanking to work, after we had arrived and been settled at the home of my uncle in TzoIn, Taiwan. Less than a year later, my sister also died. She was less than 6 years old. She had what started as a lung infection, which then spread to her brain and other places. She could have been cured by antibiotics, but there was no medicine available. When I went to her "funeral", she was lying on the ground beside the hole which had been dug for her, because the coffin which had been bought was too small. I remembered the funny feeling I had. I was not sad, not happy, but it affected me a great deal - now more than ever before!

I did not see Fusan Je again until I was a visiting professor in Wuhan University in 1985, which was
close to twenty eight years later. She was then a physician in Shangtong, China. and she remembered the boy's death vividly when I talked with her about him!

I once had two more siblings!

Up to this point, I have not mentioned anywhere that I had two additional siblings. They both died before I was ten, and I really do not remember them very well. Just a couple of days ago I found a picture which I took at my cousin's Taiwan home at 2011. It is a copy of one in their family album. I realized that both of those siblings were present in this family picture taken in Nanking, most likely in 1947! And this may be the only picture ever taken of the boy, born in 1946, who died before we left Nanking and moved to Taiwan in 1948. His image is not clear in the picture, but I could recognize him. He is in front of my father. I was the oldest boy in the front row of children, first from the right side. The sister who died in 1949 was next to me and in front of my mother. The boy next to her is my brother (now called Dean). The four adult men standing were my four cousins with the oldest in the center of picture. The center one of the three adult women standing is Xiaoji, sister of the four brothers. The other two were wives of the male cousins. And I am not at all sure about the identity of the two young girls in front on the left side.

 The picture below was taken in Nanking with two of mother's relatives. Hwei Ge (on the left) was the daughter of one of my mother's sisters, and Fu San Je (on the right) was the daughter of another sister. My mother was helping to raise both girls. The child is my younger sister who died in Kaoshung shortly after we arrived in Taiwan, because of the lack of medicine to cure her infection, My mother felt that girls needed to stay together for one reason and the others, so they took this picture before they separated. (Hwei Ge moved to Taiwan with my parents and Fu San Je chose to stay in the mainland.)  :

Good bye, old Friend !!!

It was very difficult to say good bye to an old friend from Banqiao Junior High School this past summer. 孫乃競 Naiching Sun died on July 2nd in New York at 80 years of age. The funeral was held on the following Sunday, which turned out to have very bad weather. Our class leader, Chen, and another classmate, Lee, who were supposed to represent our class at the funeral, could not make the trip as their flights were canceled. At the last minute, another classmate, Warren Gao, drove there from Philadelphia to represent us. Sun was the first person to die in our class after we started to have class reunions in the USA. In 2016, he invited all of us to New York to have a class reunion and we had a group picture taken:

This 19 "boys" in the class took a picture together in 2016:

 
Sun was famous in the class for his skill in investment and his know-how about the stock market. He gave many lectures and wrote many pamphlets for  the class. Most inportantly, he donated quite a big amount of money to National Taiwan University, to be used for scholarships for those who needed the support! A major achievement of his early life was that he did not take the senior high school entrance exam, preferring to study at home on his own for three years. He then passed the college entrance exam and went on to National Taiwan University to get his degree in Economics. This was an extremely unusual accomplishment! Sun will always be remembered by us for his generosity and kindness. He kept a low profile but shared his knowledge and experience freely. We bid you farewell, old friend!

Family Trees

Over the years, Janice and I have often talked about many of the relatives in both our families. They certainly played a role in all our lifetime events. We often marvel that I, an "Ordinary Chinese" person, born during the Japanese War, survived without a scratch and miraculously married into a very old American family (dating to the late1600's) which gave birth to Janice. And, often, what seemed at the time to be ordinary events changed, in retrospect, into very unusual and quite rare happenings. As both Janice and I grow older, the family structures become more difficult to remember and even more difficult for the younger generations to sort out. Janice decided to tackle a plan to plot out the family trees that both she and I are familiar with and, hopefully, get at least some clarification of the relationships within our two families. It took quite a bit time for her to work this task out and she finally plotted two family trees showing what we know about each group. These are printed below. She had, as her main goal, the identification of many of the individuals who are directly linked to our children and grandchildren, so that they will have some knowledge of their ancestors. We realize that there are many "branches" of the trees which are not developed due to the space allowed. Perhaps we will try to create much larger trees in the future,
 using tabletop-sized paper! But that is for another day.

Chinese Family:

     
American Family:

We know that these diagrams are not very clear if you look at the blog-size. However, we hope that you can download the pictures of the family trees and see them on the computer screen in the larger, original sizes. The Chinese names are spelled out as clearly as we could, with apologies to Chinese scholars!  Hopefully, these two trees can be used by whoever is interested and we hope that they will provide some accurate information.