Amy Chi-Wen Wang

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal...
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance...
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
ecclesiastes 3:1-8
In Honor and Memory of Amy C.L. Wang (July 11, 1928 – March 18, 2023)
Amy Chi-Wen Liang Wang was born in Hangchow (Hangzhou), China on July 11, 1928, to a civil servant and teacher. At the age of 6 she lost her father to consumption and was raised by a widowed mother with two older brothers Chi-Yun and Chi-Yung. In 1931 Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria and began more than a decade long aggression infamous for its unspeakable horrors, war crimes and holocaust level genocide; a full decade prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the formal induction of the U.S. into the devastation of WWII. By 1937 Japan occupied Peking (Beijing), Shanghai, the Chinese capital of Nanking (eponymously associated with the holocaust) and many large cities with supply lines deep into the interior, thus compelling the Chinese central government to retreat to the wartime capital of Chungking (Chongqing).
Her siblings' having joined the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) war effort against the Japanese meant that her family moved with the central government and her adolescence was subjected to constant moves and disruption, making for a challenging academic experience but enabling her to master many of China's varied dialects. Nonetheless, homeschooled by her mother and intellectually curious about the world beyond war ravaged China, Amy was able to matriculate to Ginling (Jinling) College after the surrender of Japan and the Allied Victory in 1945. Sadly, the return to normalcy was anything but peaceful with the resumption of the Chinese Civil War which had begun in 1927 and was only fleetingly at a standstill during the Japanese invasion.
Vanquished by the Chinese Communists (CCP) in 1949, the Chinese Nationalists retreated to the island of Taiwan and Amy's family was among them. Now a journalist in Taipei with the China Central News Agency (Taiwan), Amy rose to the coveted assignment for the Presidential Palace beat and became a favorite of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek (Soong May-Ling). The journey to what became her lifelong career had not been easy, but she had earned the respect and admiration of peers including Anna Chenault and Betty Wang, both of whom became prominent in their own right. Her next phase of professional development teased with an admission letter from the University of Missouri Journalism School.
Life happens and intervenes when one is making other plans. In 1950 she met Chih Wong Wang, who twelve years her senior swept her off her feet with his ballroom dancing technique. He was an engineer with Civil Air Transport who had been with the Chinese Nationalist Air Force after earning a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Chiao-Tung University and followed by graduate studies at Columbia University in NYC. After a brief courtship they married and in succession gave birth to a daughter, Lucille (1952) and son, Sherman (1953). The young family was content in Taiwan but yearning for something greater and the American Dream beckoned.
In 1958 the Wangs arrived in Boston, MA on an exception visa and accelerated path to citizenship given Chih's professional background and expertise in transistor electronics. No U of Missouri, but Amy by now was deeply ensconced in raising her young family with two preschoolers and soon to arrive another son, Edwin (1962). Chih advanced in engineering roles with increasing responsibility from United Carr to Clevite Transistor to Honeywell and then to a division of what was later to become Duracell where he would have general management responsibility in 1970. Suddenly and tragically later that same year Amy lost her husband to a previously undiagnosed benign tumor while traveling through Pittsburgh as a family on summer vacation.
Widowed at 42, Amy grieved and mourned but was now a single mother to three children; two teenagers would matriculate to MIT and Tufts the following year and the youngest to Columbia a decade later. Home in these years was in Lexington, MA and she sought to do everything in her power to be the super single parent, shouldering maternal and paternal responsibilities simultaneously. She returned to her trade craft with the Lexington Minuteman newspaper as a freelance contributor, taught adult education at Lexington High School and held Chinese cooking classes at home weekday nights. Life's ambition had brought her to the land of the free and the home of the brave, but life's vicissitudes held a poignant reminder that freedom was not free, and opportunity did not come easily.
During the latter part of the 1970s she went to live for several years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with her older son, who was employed there by the U.S. government mission. There she was reinvigorated as a broadcast journalist with Radio Riyadh and Voice of America and enjoyed interacting with the wives of the diplomatic corps in the International Women's Group of Riyadh. Upon returning to Lexington in the early 1980s she found solace in developing her aquatic skills in the swimming pool at the Hayden Recreation Center.
By 1987, with both sons employed on Wall Street, Amy moved her domicile to Greenwich, CT and began to spend winters in Boca Raton, FL. Now retired, she was to return to her love of the literary and became very active in the National League of American Pen Women both in CT and FL. She much enjoyed the social life and her social membership at the Belle Haven Club in Greenwich as well as her athletic club membership at the Doral Arrowwood Club in Rye Brook, NY. During these golden years, she was highly engaged and prolific in civic, social and philanthropic organizations. Among the highlights was a surprise retirement party on her 65th birthday given by her younger son at The Homestead Inn in Greenwich and attended by family and close friends. Later that same year (1993), she accompanied him on a business trip to Beijing, the People's Republic of China; setting foot on the Chinese mainland again for the first time 44 years after the hurried evacuation to Taiwan in 1949. It was both historic and historical for her to absorb, embrace and experience an entirely different China than the one her family had left under such exigent circumstances: landmark visits to the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heavenly Peace, the Great Wall; the opulence and modernity of the Palace Hotel in Wangfujing where she stayed, the incredible tastes, smells and culinary highlights of food (Beijing Duck) which she had not tasted in more than a half-century, if ever; and of course, the camaraderie and joy of visiting with old friends, including her middle school teacher. It was altogether transformative and magical; she returned to the States and immediately penned a short story entitled "The Gloves".
In 1997 Amy relocated from Greenwich to Palm Beach, FL where she would live out the remainder of her life. In South Florida she remained active with the Pen Women, the U.S.-China People's Friendship Association Southeast Florida Chapter and the Perlman Music Program. She also was copiously generous in her philanthropy to charities benefiting children, medical research and public health. She continued her aquatic exercises well into her 70s, always appreciating the glorious sun, sea and sand of the Palm Beach lifestyle. In the early morning hours of Saturday, March 18, 2023, she finally succumbed to cardiac arrest, having prevailed with a cardiac pacemaker for nearly two decades. She lived a full and active life of faith, family and friendship as she was to the extreme of gregarious, always caring about others even to the detriment of self. May Amy rest in peace eternally and be remembered forever for the infinite love of her five children (daughters-in-law inclusive) and four grandchildren. May God bless her soul with life everlasting.