Pilgrimage to Oklahoma

My Father, OK State, circa 1956

Stillwater, Oklahoma was the first place my father lived after arriving from Taiwan by cargo ship in 1956. He came to study for his Master’s Degree in agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University.  It was amazing that he had made it here after surviving the Japanese invasion of China and being the sole member of his family to flee the Communist takeover of his homeland in 1949.  This quaint town and university was my father’s introduction to the U.S. and the beginning of his American dream.  I had only seen old photos of my father as a young man posing in front of the campus landmarks and with fellow students and professors.

On Easter Day in April of 2011 I made my pilgrimage to Oklahoma.  I drove directly from the airport to meet with Jin & Linda Chen and Jordan & Kuen Tang.  Jin and Linda knew my father well almost 60 years ago.   They had referred me to Jordan and Kuen who were also Chinese student at OK State at the time.  Although Jordan had no specific recollection of my father, they all attended the same social events and appeared in group photographs together.  Jin is a retired mathematics professor and Jordan is an accomplished Alzheimer researcher.  We dined at a Chinese restaurant in Oklahoma City and gathered at Jordan’s home afterwards.  I enjoyed our conversation immensely and listening to them reminiscing about OK State and my father those many years ago.

 

Jordan & Kuen Tang, 1957

Jordan & Kuen Tang, 2011

Jordan & Kuen Tang, Me, Linda & Jin Chen

 

 

 

 

 

Linda Chen, 1957

Jin Chen, 1957

Jin & Linda Chen, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent the next day at Oklahoma State University Library digging through old catalogs, yearbooks, photographs, and student directories.  I am grateful to the University Archives for their generous help.  I wanted to understand what life was like as a student on campus back then and looked up the places where my father had lived and worked.  It was also exciting to be at the very spot where my father stood more than 50 years ago:

My Father in front of the Library, 1956

Me in front of the Library, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Father, front of the Student Union, 1956

Me, front of the Student Union, 2011

My Father, 4th Ave, 1957

Same House, 4th Ave, 2011

 

 

 

A month before my visit I had discovered that the people pictured with my father in a few old photos were the Wood family who rented out a room to my father while he was studying at OK State (See my post “Uncovering Clues the Oklahoma Years). I was anxious to see what their residence on Hester Street and the neighborhood looked like after all of these years:

Hester St, 1957

Hester St., 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Side Entrance, 1957

Side Entrance, 2011

 

 

 

 

 
I recall my father telling me that he also lived and worked in a Dry Cleaning Shop in Stillwater. Jin confirmed this and recalled visiting the Dry Cleaners after hours and enjoying dinner that my father had prepared on a hot pot. I found a few old letters addressed to my father on Washington Street and learned that it was a Dry Cleaning business until the 1960s. It is now a pub called Willies Salon:

Dry Cleaners at Washington & 4th Ave, 1958

Corner of Washington & 4th Ave, 2011

Willies Salon, 2011

 

 

 

 

 
On my last day I finally met my father’s professor, Dr. Plaxico, who kindly treated me to lunch. Dr. Plaxico remembered my father fondly and even gave me his complete file, including academic transcripts, recommendation letters, and personal essays.

Me and Dr. Plaxico

Finally, my father had a good friend and college roommate, Anthony Ma, who he thought was left behind in China when they went their separate ways to escape the Communist Revolution in 1949. While at OK State my father was surprised to receive a letter from Anthony saying he had made it to Hong Kong. My father remembered that Anthony was a devote Catholic and sought help from Father Bernard Loftus, a minister at Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Stillwater. Through official channels of the church, Father Bernard was able to expedite Anthony’s immigration to the United States. Anthony Ma settled in Southern California, married, and raised a family. His youngest son Bernard is named after the minister in Oklahoma who helped him. I was able to see Francis Xavier Catholic Church and took the picture below!

Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Stillwater, OK

Uncovering Clues to the Oklahoma Years

As a kid I remember seeing my father’s old photographs from when he first arrived in the U.S. to study at Oklahoma State University in 1956.  Many were of him posing in front of the library, student union, and other stately landmarks of the campus in Stillwater, OK.  Some were of my father with American families with kids.  In one of them, my father and a little bright-eyed girl are standing in front of a piano.  Who were these people?  I recall my father mentioning something about him living with an elderly couple and keeping the man company in the evenings while he relayed stories of his life.  Were these pictures of my father’s landlord and his family?

 

 

 

 

 

I began with my search with one of my father’s old addresses from when he was a student at OK State:  506 South Hester Street.  The son of Dr. Larson, my father’s professor, helped me to identify some local landmarks in the photographs.  The street view of Google Maps showed houses which were remarkably similar to those in the photos taken over 50 years ago.   I made a call to the Payne County, Oklahoma, Clerk’s Office and asked if they had record of the owner of this house.  They could only give me the most recent years and one of the names they gave me was Dorothy Wood.  I did an online search of the name and came across a genealogy website.  There was a picture of Mrs. Wood with her husband from 1942 which looked familiar to me.  I glanced over my father’s old photos again.  One of them was of an old man sitting by himself in an arm chair and behind him were framed pictures sitting on top of an upright piano.  One of them was exactly this same photo from the website!  I began clicking around this online family tree and found a picture of the old man in my father’s photos.  His name was Rolla Wood and he was the father of Mrs. Wood!

Mr. Vernon & Mrs. Dorothy Wood from Genealogy website

My father’s picture of Mr. Rolla Wood (portrait to the left is same as one sitting on the piano behind him!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The contact information with an email address listed on the genealogy website was Linda Curtis.  I immediately email Ms. Curtis and attached my father’s old photos.  She kindly replied and said that she does remember my father!  Mrs. Dorothy Wood was her mother and Mr. Rolla Wood was her grandfather.  Rolla Wood and his wife Daisy rented rooms out to foreign students and my father was one of them.  She remembered him as being quite and respectful.  In fact, Ms. Curtis is the bright-eyed little girl standing with my father in the picture!  She was able to give me additional information about her grandparents and fill in some details about my father’s time living in their home.

I had established a few contacts in Oklahoma, including Dr. Plaxico, my father’s former professor from almost 60 years ago, as well as a Chinese schoolmate, Dr. Chen, who still lives in the area.  It would be a great learning experience for me to make a pilgrimage to Stillwater to meet these people and see the first town in the U.S. where my father called home!  I began making plans to visit Stillwater in the spring of 2011.

 

Meeting My Father’s Professor, Dr. Plaxico!

One of the most pleasant surprises of this project is finding that my father’s professor from Oklahoma State University, Dr. James Plaxico, was well and still going strong in Stillwater, OK! Ever since I was a kid my father would talk about how important Dr. Plaxico was to his life and career. At nearly 90 years old, Dr. Plaxico had been a distinguished professor and scholar at OK State for over 30 years until his retirement in the late 1980s and he is still an active member of the local community in Stillwater.  He remembered my father fondly and was happy to hear from me.  Through email and phone conversations he relayed his recollections about my father and the Agricultural Economics program at Oklahoma State University during the 1950s.  He was also able to identify Dr. Larson, my father’s thesis adviser, in the old photos and put me in touch with his family.

In the Spring of 2011 I made a pilgrimage to Stillwater, OK to see first hand the town and campus where my father lived when he first arrived in this country.  The highlight of the trip was meeting Dr. Plaxico.  He graciously invited me to lunch and we talked about his career at OK State, Stillwater in the old days, and my father.  He also gave me with a copy of my father’s complete academic file, including transcripts, immigration forms. letters of recommendation and personal correspondences which will prove invaluable to my project.  I will always remember Dr. Plaxico’s help and kindness and thank him for his continued interest in this book.

Me and Dr. Plaxico, April, 2011

My Father’s Story and Star Wars. Seriously?

This may sound like an odd topic for a post about my father’s memoirs.  After all, what does the life story of a man from rural China during the Second World War who escaped the Chinese Communist Revolution have anything to do with Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and R2-D2, characters from one of the most popular and iconic science fiction movies of the twentieth century?  When I was eight years old, my father, like every other parent at the time, took my brother and me to see Star Wars and its squeals multiple times.  Of course, he didn’t really buy into the phenomena of the whole series (beyond the battle between good and evil and that Vader was Luke’s father) and thought of the movies as “kids stuff.”  Still he humored us and spent his hard earned money supporting my vast collection of Star Wars toys and action figures, hoping they would be an incentive to study hard and get good grades in school.

As much the Star Wars universe brings back fond memories of my childhood, the connection between the movie and my father’s memoirs is much more serendipitous.  I was seated next to an older woman on a flight returning from Taiwan to the US in the summer of 2010.  Ms. Amy had also been visiting relatives in Taiwan and was on her way back to Indiana.  As we talked, I mentioned writing my father’s memoirs and briefly described his background.  She said my father’s path to America sounded very similar to her friend’s in Indiana, Professor Chang.  She also mentioned that Professor Chang’s daughter was a Grammy award winning musician.  We exchanged contact information and she later forwarded me his email.

I wrote Professor Chang and mentioned my conversation with Ms. Amy, briefly described the project of writing my father’s memoirs, and attached my father’s short autobiography written in Chinese.  In his reply, Professor Chang said he too came to the US in the summer of 1956 on a cargo ship which crossed the Pacific with stops in the Philippines and Japan.  He even mentioned the name of the ship, Haifei.  It sounded familiar so I immediately searched my father’s old photos and found one of him standing on a deck of a ship with “Haifei” written on a banner hanging from the rails.  My research revealed that the ship belonged to the China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company and traveled between Taiwan and the US West Coast in the 1950s.  So it was the same ship and it was possible that Professor Chang and my father were passengers on the Haifei at the same time!  Although my father may have taken the ship’s next trans-pacific voyage, Dr. Chang described the voyage to me in great detail and provided me much information for the book.   This coincidence by itself would have made a great story…

Oh, but back to Star Wars … A few months later we were able to meet Professor Chang’s talented daughter, Angelin, a classical pianist who had won the Grammy Award for best instrumental solo performance, when she came to Washington D.C. as a member of the orchestra performing “Star Wars in Concert.”  She was very gracious to give my brother and me backstage passes and a tour of the facilities.  The highlight was being introduced to the show’s narrator, Anthony Daniels, the actor who portrayed C-3PO in all of the Star Wars movies!

Meeting Anthony Daniels, C3-PO from Star Wars!

The Great Escape – Part 2

In the spring of last year I started to put pieces of the puzzle together.  In my father’s auto-biographical sketch he wrote that he was admitted to three colleges.  One of them was, of course, National Chengchi University (NCCU).  Another was something called the “School of Land Measurement.”  I then recalled that Mr. Liu, my father’s old friend and colleague from Taiwan, mentioned something about him running away from a “land survey school” and jumping into the Jialing River.  The part about the river was certainly consistent with what my father told me.  The Chinese words they used for “survey” and “measurement” were the same!  So I asked a friend to search through Chinese websites for any information about such a school or college.  We found out there was indeed such a college located close to were my father was living in Chongqing, Sichuan Province, and the website mentioned that it was military in nature.  Furthermore, the campus was right next to the Jialing River, the one that Mr. Liu said my father had used to escape!  I was convinced that this College of Land Survey was the the “military school” mentioned in my father’s story.

When I finished a very rough first draft of the book I sent various chapters to the many people whom I interviewed for the project for their feedback and to check for accuracy.  Among them was my father’s friend,  Uncle Ike, who lives not far from me in Pennsylvania.  He and my father went to the same college, NCCU, at the same time but did not know each other until they came to America.  He was very skeptical about the escape from Land Survey College since my father made no mention of the episode in his brief autobiography.  He wondered if my father had imagined the whole thing.  He was correct to challenge me to do better in documenting this event.  I was distressed.  This was a story my father had told me many times and I am convinced that it happened.  But why did it happen and what were the circumstances?  I inquired about the story to my father’s old friend’s in the Delaware Chinese community.  The ones closest to him also recalled the story and believe that it was true.

Uncle Ike was well connected to the NCCU Alumni network and provided me with the contact information of my father’s college classmate, Mr. Wang, who still lives in Taiwan.  My father had reconnected with Mr. Wang on his last trip to Taiwan in 1996.  I wrote him a letter and he graciously replied.  Not only did Mr. Wang know of my father’s escape, he was one of the other two students who were with my father when it happened!  He confirmed my suspicion that it was the College of Land Survey.  So thanks to Uncle Ike and Mr. Wang, I was able to collect invaluable information about what actually happened.  I just finished adding it to the book last week!

My father and Mr. Wang, Taiwan, 1996

The Great Escape – Part 1

Since I was a child my father told my brother and me numerous times about how he escaped from a “military school.”  “There were three of us and one guard,” my father would begin, “so I told the others that if we run in three different directions, at least one of us can get away…” What followed was an adventurous tale of being chased by soldiers, jumping into a river to get away, and loosing precious family heirlooms in the pursuit. In the end, my father was the only one to escape.  From what I jotted down, it occurred just after he finished high school.  My understanding was that he somehow agreed to join this school before discovering he was admitted to another college and decided to leave without permission.

Was this story true?  If so, where did it happen?  What was the name of this “military school” my father mentioned, and who were the other two classmates with him?  After all, this happened more than sixty years ago.  This was yet another puzzle which required a bit of detective work to uncover…

More to Come!

My Father’s Old Girlfriends?

Could these be pictures of my father’s “old girlfriends”?

China (most likely Nanjing), 1940s

Likely taken in Taiwan, 1950s

Taiwan, mid-1950s

Did my father have any girlfriends or serious relationships prior to meeting my mom in the US?  He once told me there was a girl he liked while in high school in Chongqing around the time he almost died from an infection.  He also talked about a woman he knew during his college years in Nanjing who worked at a telephone/telegraph company (hence her nickname “Miss Dian Bao“). When my father lived in Taiwan, Mr. Chao encouraged him to settle down and introduced him to many prospective candidates.  These women even continued to write and send pictures of themselves to my father even after he came to the US.  One of them is the woman pictured in the bathing suit.  Dr. Chang also shared with me stories of how he tried to play matchmaker but said my dad was very shy.

This past January (2013) I took a trip to Taiwan and was very happy to meet with another of my father’s college classmates, Mr. Lei.  Although already nearing 90 years old he was in remarkable health and excited to talk about my father.  Mr. Lei is also a native of Gansu Province.  He was able to see my father once more in Taiwan in 1996.  He remembered dining with Miss Dian Bao  and my father on several occasions and shared more information.  He also conveyed a detailed story I’ve never heard before about another girl who pursued my father from Nanjing to Guangzhou to Taiwan and even came to America!  He said my father did not reciprocate her affections and she was a scorned woman.  What wonderful material for the book!

Windows to the Past

Happy New Year 2013! This is the year that I hope to finish revising my draft and find a publisher for the book …

One of the most important clues to piecing together my father’s past  was the many old pictures that he left behind.  My father always told me that this collection of black-and-white photos spanning 25 years of his life will be left for me to pass along to future generations.  I could not have written this book without them.

When I was thirteen years old I discovered a tattered box of old photographs stored in my father’s office.  It was the beginning of my journey of discovering who my father was.  I relay this story in the book’s Prologue.  The hundreds of pictures in the box spanned a quarter of a century, from the time my father was in middle school in rural China to the years just after receiving his Ph.D. from Texas A&M. There was even one of my father with Chiang Kai-Shek, the President of Nationalist China during World War II.

As I undertook the time consuming task of scanning these photos into digital form in the fall of 2008, I was pleasantly reminded that my father had archived so many photos.  They provided me with a window into the events and people of his past.  Some of the wrinkled and faded ones revealed little information of the location or people on the photos.  Fortunately, others had names and dates.  There were tiny portraits of classmates, group photos with printed captions, and pictures of my father from important moments in his life.  After scanning in the images, I tentatively sorted them by dates and location to the best of my ability using any information available, such as writing on the back of the photo, my father’s appearance, the background location (China, Taiwan, the US), and familiar faces (which were few and far in between). For example, if my father appears as a man in his late twenties and is surrounded by tropical vegetation, I concluded that the photo must have been taken in Taiwan.  These pictures were also essential to identifying and contacting my father’s old mentors, classmates and friends (Did You Know My Father?).  I sent them to persons I found in my father’s old address book who remembered him and, in many instances, they were able to tell me the location and identify some of the others in the pictures.  Here are some of the photos:

Ma Yu-Jin, Middle School Classmate, 1941

The backside of Ma Yu-Jin Photo

Taiwan, Early 1950s (my father in 2nd row, far left, Mr. Liu in 1st row, center)

My father with his advisor, Dr. Larson, and his family. Oklahoma State U, 1957.

Kinship and the Kindness of Strangers

The Chao Family

In 1949 my father arrived in Taiwan alone and homeless. A stranger in a strange land.  Although there were so few in Taiwan from Gansu Province, there happen to be someone living in Taipei who came from my father’s hometown of Huating.  The Chao family had come to Taiwan a couple of years before the mass exodus of Chinese to the tiny island following the civil war on the mainland.  Although my father had never met him before, Mr. Chao’s father had rented land to his family when he was a child.  Unfortunately, like millions of others, Mr. Chao’s parents was not able to leave China before the Communists took over and their family also endured the pain of separation.  The Chao family opened their hearts and home to my father and he stayed with them until he could support himself once again.  The home cooked meals prepared by Mr. Chao’s wife reminded them all of the hometown they had left behind.  Mrs. Chao also stitched up the only clothes and socks my father had brought from China.  My father loved kids and was happy to help Mr. Chao’s children with their studies.  Mr. Chao was like a big brother to him; he encouraged my father to settle down and even tried to be a matchmaker.  They kept in touch over the years after my father came to America.

My father was able to see Mr. Chao one more time during his visit to Taiwan in December 1996.  Mr. Chao had suffered a debilitating stroke and was being cared for by his son.  Mrs. Chao had passed away a year earlier.  Although he could not speak, I think Mr. Chao understood the expressions of gratitude from my father for their kindness all those many years ago.  I was happy to reconnect with Mr. Chao’s third daughter, who’s family is living in Canada.  Through her, I was also able to contact her other siblings in Canada and Taiwan.  They were able to tell me more about their family history and their memories of my father.  Many of these stories have been incorporated into Chapters 8 and 9 of the book draft.

My Father (center) with the Chao Family, 1956

My Father with Mr. Chao, 1996

 

A Dear Colleague

Mr. Liu was my father’s former colleague at Taiwan Provincial College of Administration from 1949-1956.  When I found this old picture taken in Taiwan around 1957,  I immediately recognized Mr. Liu!

The Liu Family, Taiwan, 1957

 

 

 

 

 

I first met the Liu family in 1992 when I was finishing up my Ph.D. at Northwestern University.  Mr. Liu was my father’s friend and colleague from his years teaching in Taiwan (1949-1956).  He had retired and was living with his wife and son’s family in the Chicago area and my father came to visit his old friend.  They had not seen each other in 36 years.  They were able to see each other once again when they were both visiting Taiwan in 1996.  When my father passed away in 2003 one of the first people I notified was Mr. Liu.  Over the next several years I lost contact with their family…

In the summer of 2007 I was web-surfing and decided to search for the Liu family.  To my surprise, I found their names and email address listed on their church website.  So I sent them an email.  Mr. Liu’s son was delighted to hear from me.  His parents was getting older but well and still living with him.  While attending a conference in Chicago that fall, I took the opportunity to visit with Mr. Liu and talk about my father.  He had vivid memories of my father as a young man in Taiwan.  His wife conveyed a fascinating story, which I recount in the book, of her co-incidental meeting with my father before either of them knew the other knew Mr. Liu.  With the help of his son, Mr. Liu emailed me more of his recollections of my father.  We saw him one more time while visiting Taiwan in the summer of 2008.  I was sorry to hear when Mr. Liu passed away in 2009.

My Father with the Liu Family, 1992

Me with Mr. and Mrs. Liu, 2007