Jean Shi-Chi Hong

Jean was born in Shanghai, China in 1939. Though it was just 1 1/2 years before the Pearl Harbor attack and Shanghai had been occupied by Japan for 2 years, Jean was well protected by her loving family. She did not experience much of the cruelty of the war.

In the spring of 1945, the family fled to Jean's father's hometown of Huei-an, a southern village of Fukien, because of the American air-raid bombardment to Shanghai. It was a two -week walk with two additional younger brothers. Two months later, Japan surrendered and the family returned to Shanghai. Though brief, this event impacted the family so strongly that even years later it was still often discussed.

From 1945 to 1948 in Shanghai, Jean enjoyed a splendid childhood. She lived in a 3 -story house with a beautiful garden. Her father, a successful surgeon, used the downstairs as a private hospital. Together with servants and nurses, her mother, a former art teacher, cared for the four children. In late 1948, the family moved to Taiwan, right before the Communist takeover.

Jean studied at the First Girl's Middle School in Taipei. She then enrolled in the chemistry department at National Taiwan University as an honored student with special exemption from the college entrance examination. (Jean would be upset that we included this detail.) All the schools she was studying at were the most prestigious schools in Taiwan (this one too). During these years, Jean and her siblings Shirley, Karl, and Robert faithfully attended Sunday services, served in the youth fellowship, and sang in the choirs at Ren-Ai Tong, a Southern Baptist Church. Jean was the most devoted of the four, and many times reminded her brothers to behave properly and to lead a good Christian life.

In 1961, Jean graduated from university with highest honors and won a scholarship for graduate study in the United States. One day in late summer, the whole family gathered at the airport to see her off. Her retired father, with happy tears in his eyes, put a flower wreath over her neck as a token of blessing and watched his beloved daughter board the airplane, heading to a new world and to a new life. That would turn out to be the last time Jean would see her father alive, as he passed away from a heart attack shortly thereafter.

Jean spent two years at the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology and another year at Penn State before beginning her career as an organic chemist. While she was working at Parke-Davis in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she met a graduate student named Don Hong in 1967 and married him in 1968 (his graduation gift). They moved to Washington D.C. where Cindy (her favorite daughter) was born, then to Albany, New York, where Matthew was born.

During these years, Jean sacrificed her career to be a full-time wife and mom. She learned to stretch the budget, cook delicious meals, and sew many articles of clothing for the family. She resumed her career when the kids were in middle and high schools, working as an analytical chemist for 7-Up in St. Louis, and later as an organic chemist at Union Carbide/ Rhone-Poulenc, Burroughs Wellcome, and Scynexis in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

Jean is known to her family and friends for her sense of humor (she loved to tell jokes), her cooking (beef & broccoli, chicken lo-mein, and shrimp lobster sauce, and her love for the Lord. God always came first for Jean, followed by her family, which expanded to include daughter-in-law Soogi in 2001, grandson Landon in 2003, and granddaughter Livy in 2005. She read her Bible faithfully, first in regular print, then large print, often keeping a copy open on the kitchen table for her daily dose of Psalms and Proverbs. She was a breast cancer survivor (diagnosed in 1993) and lived the last 21 years as a gift from God.