Richard Ng

For a guy you all know has no trouble expounding at length about almost any subject at the drop of a hat, whether or not I know as much about the topic as I believe I do, I find myself in the unusual position of finding it atypically difficult to extemporize about a subject I've known my entire life... my father.

I’ve spent the past week since Dad passed trying to first get as much as I can off my plate, both the imperatives and the distractions, just trying to clear the mechanism, reflecting, and trying to formulate what I want to share about him. Even from a purely factual standpoint, where does one begin to condense the vital stats and successes of a life spanning 95 years; let alone build a picture of who he was as so many different things to so many different people from son, to brother, cousin, nephew, uncle, husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, Army officer, business executive, friend, colleague, and neighbor. Even if you stop short of the last almost three years since Mom passed, by which time the dementia had significantly changed him; mightily challenging us all to remember him as he was before, that still leaves 92 years of success to recount.

Then, bang caught up to flash, and I realized that those of you who knew him had no need for me to tell who, or what, or how he was because you’d already long since formed your own conclusions, and those of you who didn’t know him well, or at all, had no great need, now that he’s gone, to know him at all except perhaps out of simple respect for me and our family, or sheer curiosity about how I saw him. But, that still leaves my need as his son to acknowledge a life well led, well spent, and a job well done regardless if anyone else is listening or cares. So, here goes.

Richard Ng, NMNI (Armyese for No Middle Name/Initial) 06/29/1928 – 09/10/2023, was the second of five children of George and Constance Ng. George, a butcher and grocer by trade, immigrated through Angel Island as a young boy in 1903. Constance, nee Chan, a seamstress and eventually very astute real estate investor, property owner, and businesswoman, was born here in the USA, in San Francisco’s Chinatown. For most of their working lives, they owned a succession of small neighborhood grocery stores in Oakland, CA, their store atypically having its own meat counter, manned by George, where they raised their family in a city that was far nicer and less troubled than it is today. As they grew, the kids, in turn, helped in the family store, from the oldest, Chuck, to Dad, to younger siblings, Bennie, Betty, and Esther. All the boys served to varying degrees in the Army and Esther married an Army doctor. The kids all led fairly typical Chinese-American childhoods. They attended public school during the day, helped in the store and did homework in the afternoons, then attended several more hours of Chinese school after dinner in the evenings where they kept in touch with their language, history, and culture. Hard work and noses to the grindstone was the standard.

Graduating from Oakland High in 1947, Dad entered the University of California, Berkeley to major in Business. As second oldest in a fairly-traditional Chinese-American family where older brother, Chuck, would eventually have first crack at taking over the family business, Dad had to keep his options open to make his own way in the world rather than count on his older brother to either make room for him in the family grocery business or decide to go in a different direction and cede the store to him. Fortunately, for Dad, Cal and the US Army provided a ready-made alternative. Being one of the eight original university systems created by federal grant largely to be the foundation of a nationwide Reserve Officer Training Corp to supplement and diversify the relatively small supply of officers coming annually out of the service academies (West Point, et al), enrollment in one of the then two ROTC programs (Army and Navy, soon to be followed by Air Force as it split off from being the Army Air Corps), was compulsory at Cal for ALL able-bodied incoming male freshmen, who had to continue to participate through the end of one’s sophomore year. After that, each student/cadet could go or stay as they chose. When it came time for Dad to make that choice, he had little desire to place his future fortunes in the hands of his decidedly less industrious and less business savvy older brother, Chuck, and opted to stay with the ROTC program. In 1951, with his bachelor’s degree in Business in hand, Dad accepted a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Transportation Corps; a branch he felt would enhance his marketability and chances for success in civilian business if an Army career didn’t pan out.

Following graduation from TCOBC (Transportation Corps Officers’ Basic Course) at Ft. Eustis, VA, Dad’s first assignment was to a transportation office attached to the North Atlantic Division, US Army Corps of Engineers, then headquartered in downtown Manhattan; where he met and ultimately married Mary Ann Caffaro, of Brooklyn, NY, who was just starting in that same office as a brand new GS-1 DAC (Department of the Army Civilian). They were married on December 19, 1954 at St. Mark’s in Brooklyn, with Mom’s six older sisters and their husbands attending. Notably absent were her father, Joseph, who everyone just called Papa, and her mother, Mary, who everyone called Honey. Joseph Caffaro, owner and operator of the neighborhood ice business serving the many restaurants, markets, and fishing boats of Sheepshead Bay, was still getting over his 6th daughter, Domenica (Minnie), having married a Jewish boy (and then only upon his conversion to Catholicism). Having his 7th and youngest bring home a Chinese boy from the opposite coast was just too much. He refused to bless the union and forbade Honey from attending the wedding. He eventually came around the following year when a bouncing bambino appeared on the scene, and he also realized that Dad, as a college-educated Army officer, and probably the most intensely serious young man, albeit Chinaman, that Papa had ever met, would likely provide as well as any of the five gainfully employed, hardworking, good Italian boys, and one equally hardworking converted Jewish boy, that Mom’s six older sisters had married. Mom and Dad were married for 66+ years until Mom’s passing on 10/29/2020. I was born to them in 1955 and Lisa came along in 1960.

Following the assignment in NYC, came assignments to Yokohama, Japan, back to Ft. Eustis where Lisa was born, then Ingrandes/Poitiers, France, then to Buffalo, NY, where Dad served as an Assistant Professor of Military Science in the Army ROTC program at Canisius College. While there, he earned his Masters in Education and completed non-resident Command and General Staff College via correspondence. Those added pursuits of self-improvement didn’t leave him much time for coming to my Little League games or taking me to Cub Scout meetings. But, it was the best use of his time for furthering his career and bettering the family’s future; even if I didn’t understand or appreciate it at the time. After that, the family stayed with his parents in Oakland while he did his first tour in Viet Nam. Then cane a short tour at a joint transportation headquarters at Oakland Army Base which had him shuttling back and forth every few weeks between there and Viet Nam as a liaison officer for another year. Then, we were off to Kaiserslautern, Germany for two years, back to Oakland for another year while he did his second tour in Viet Nam, and then back to Germany for three years, this time to Frankfurt am Main. I came back to the Bay Area in 1973, a year ahead of the rest of the family following my graduation from Frankfurt American HS to start at Cal and join the same ROTC program of which Dad had been a part; long since no longer compulsory as it was when he entered in 1947 and much, much smaller than the thousands of cadets it boasted back in 1947. Then, in 1974, Dad, Mom, and Lisa returned to the Bay Area since the Army allowed Dad to choice the location for what would be his final assignment before retirement. So, he spent his last 3 years as the active duty advisor to a US Army Reserve Transportation Group based out of Oakland Army Base before buying a house in San Francisco, pinning his original Second Lieutenant’s bars on me in June 1977, and retiring from active duty as a Lieutenant Colonel. While Mom finished out here civil service career working variously as the Executive Secretary for the Regional Director of the National Archives in San Bruno, then same same for the Deputy Commanding General of Sixth Army at the Presidio, then as the same again for a series of Commanding Generals of the Southwest Pacific Division, US Army Corps of Engineers based in San Francisco, Dad started a second career as Director of U.S. Distribution for Kikkoman, USA, the Japanese sauces giant, where he remained for 20 years before he and Mom both retired from their respective careers, sold the house in San Francisco, and moved to Antioch, just miles away from us, to be closer to their two grandsons. There, they were both active in various seniors-oriented and community service organizations including their parish church, St. Ignatius and spent a lot of their time travelling all over the planet on elder hostel tours.

In 2016, with oldest grandson, Brad already well into his career as a Deputy DA in the Sacramento area, and married, and with Mom and Dad’s first great grandchild, Alex, already on the scene, and younger grandson, Andrew, also married, and serving on active duty with the Army after graduating from West Point in 2010, Mom and Dad decided it was time to move for what would prove to be the last time, from Antioch to Carmichael, not just to be closer to Brad and his family; but to buy and share a house with my sister, Lisa, who after 30 years of living and working away from the family and on her own in the DC area, decided to leave her job with the USCG to take a similar position with the Sacramento Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; mainly to be closer to Mom and Dad in their advancing years. Sadly, it proved to be wise timing. After just 4 years in Carmichael, Mom passed away in that home on 10/29/2020 to a combination of kidney and heart disease. By that time, Dad had already entered the noticeably advancing stages of vascular dementia to which he peacefully succumbed last Sunday, in the same bedroom in which Mom had passed nearly three years before.

The ravages and the changes from the dementia being the notable exception, Dad lived both a very long and very successful life by any measure. As an Army officer, he was a consummate professional who ALWAYS placed his mission, his duty, and his people first. While that often impinged upon his time and attention as a spouse, and as a parent, I admired him greatly for his dedication, and his professionalism, and always understood that ultimately made him a more successful officer and a better provider for his family. It was an example that I tried to emulate in my own time on active duty. He was the same way in his civilian business career; always keeping his eye on the ball and the bottom line. In everything he did, in both his professional and his personal life, Dad would be best described as a serious person; never frivolous or casual, or nonchalant. He was focused, dedicated, deliberate, meticulous, methodical, thorough, precise, driven, and fiercely competitive. There was nothing that was worth doing unless it was done well to the utmost of his ability, and there was nothing that was done without some value or purpose. Even in our family’s recreational pursuits, the Ngs did NOTHING just for “shits and giggles”. There was always a method to the madness; so to speak, not that there was ever much you could call madness. There was always some purpose to be served; some value to be gained. So, when he did have free time to do things with the family, we didn’t often do purely entertaining or fun things like going to amusement parks, or sporting events, or other purely recreational “fun” activities. Picnics, for example, were never done just as a stand alone family picnic. Picnics were an opportunity to kill at least two birds with one stone because they were typically tied to an organization event such as a unit picnic during the Army years or a company picnic during the Kikkoman years. We travelled often. But, travel typically wasn’t to purely recreation destinations like Disneyland or Six Flags. Instead, we traveled to a city or an area to see all its historical or cultural attractions. We toured museums, and cathedrals, and castles, and such. We didn’t go to Garmisch just to ski. That was just one day of the week we spent in the area. The rest was spent going to the top of the Zugspitze, or driving around the area visiting sites like the monastery at Ettal, or Ludwig II’s castles at Linderhof and Neuschwanstein, or his parents’ castle, at Hohenschwangau, and exploring Oberammergau and the Weisskirche. When we lived in France, we visited EVERY chateau in the Loire Valley, every major cathedral, visited every major battlefield of both World Wars including the Normandy beaches and cemeteries. Over the years, we’ve done London, Edinburgh, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, the Hague, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Berlin, Heidelberg, Munich, Salzburg (yes, we’ve ridden the huge wooden slides, in traditional costume, in the salt mine tour), Vienna, Geneva, Basel, Bern, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Bari (where Mom’s family originates), Monte Carlo, Nice, Cannes, Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Granada, not to mention most of the United States AND the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, just to hit the highlights. Thanks to Dad, I’ve seen a huge chunk of the major cultural or historical site across the width and breadth of Europe and North America. We’ve never been to an MLB or NFL game together, and he never managed to get off work in time to see any my Little League games although he did manage to see one of my high school wrestling matches and attend one football game. But, far to the plus side, we’ve been to the Louvre, the Prado, the every museum in London, the Deutches Museum, the Smithsonian, and the list goes on and on and on.

Dad was a frugal man determined to get the most bang for his buck even when it came to family time. Everything had to have some educational or cultural value. Rarely was money, time, or effort expended for just fun. For example, he and Mom came to visit Deb and I at Benning not long after we PCS’d back from Germany. They took us down to Florida to include a stop at Disney World when EPCOT Center was just opening and still not fully completed. True to form, we went during the off season when it was cheaper and we didn’t even go into the Disneyland side of the park to ride the rides. We spent our time over in EPCOT because the pavilions there were all technology, or national culture-based; more like a World’s Fair than an amusement park. It also allowed him to kill two birds with one stone since his employer, Kikkoman USA, was primary sponsor of the Japan pavilion which allowed Dad to get in an unannounced inspection of the place for his bosses. So, Dad was pretty much NEVER the loosest, most spontaneous, most fun guy you’d ever choose to hang out with. But, he was always one of the deliberate, prepared, shrewdest, wisest and most educational, and I am far better off for it and the places he took me that led to lifelong lessons rather than fleeting moments of gratification soon forgotten.

At the end of the day, he was a demanding parent but a good man who did pretty much everything well or he simply didn’t waste time, effort, or money doing it, and he provided lasting worth in everything he gave us. I can’t think of anyone who knew him who would say they didn’t gain something by knowing him. He was a dutiful son, a protective sibling, a loyal colleague and friend, and a good neighbor. He was often too sparing with his affection and praise. But, his hard work to provide for us and his actions did his talking for him.

To sum it all up, along the lines of a picture being worth a thousand words, here are two of the too few we have of him (because he was usually the guy behind the camera) that speak volumes, at least to me; because the first personifies who he was in one shot, and the other because it is the only pic I know of him being even remotely goofy while I am mugging for the camera and so simultaneously personifies what he was usually not and I too frequently am. The first pic is taken from the 1949 Blue and Gold Cal yearbook. It is a picture of Cal’s Junior Varsity football team, aka The Ramblers. Seated third from the left, in the second row, in a sea of decidedly not diverse and mostly impassive or smiling “Jack Armstrong All American” faces, is one lone scowling Asian; looking like he wants to run someone over and cleat them to death on the way. That’s my Dad! No Quarter Asked and None Given! In those days, the Ramblers were much less a developmental squad hoping and preparing to someday move up to varsity than they were a “meat squad”; a group of guys most of whom would never be quite big enough, strong enough, or fast enough, or talented enough to make varsity, but who were good enough to be the practice squad which, like in the movie “Rudy”, gave themselves up with fearless, reckless abandon every day to prepare the then mighty varsity Bears (undefeated in 1949) for their next opponent. Dad’s role was as one of their all-purpose backs, a “meat squad” guy who fearlessly went right at the Bear defense as hard and as fierce as he possibly could, giving it up for the team so they would be better prepared. It fit who he was to a T. Then, there’s the pic of the two of us taken on my wedding day. I think he was in such an atypically jovial mood because although a goodly portion of the double wedding was on his nickel, he managed to marry off both me and my sister in one wedding. If he knew then that hers, the expensive part, wouldn’t take (Deb and I being the bonus twofer part who’ve lasted 43+ years of solid ROI with two grandsons, and four great grandkids), and he spent all that money for nothing, he probably wouldn’t have been smiling so much.