Helen Wong

Helen Wong was born in southern China in 1928 and raised in Hong Kong. Opportunities to go the school were limited for her, but she was determined to be educated and taught herself to read and write Chinese. She described, rather casually, growing up in Hong Kong during World War II. Her family dressed her up as a boy whenever she ventured out so she wouldn’t attract the attention of soldiers. While walking along the waterfront on one of these trips, a bomb fell out of the sky and blew up a nearby boat in the harbor. That she went out at all was amazing. These early stories revealed two characteristics of her that would show up repeatedly in her life: she was an extremely intelligent person, and she possessed hidden courage and strength. After the war, she married Chun Ming Wong and immigrated to the United States in 1948. They settled in San Francisco, where she raised their three children. During that time, she learned her second language, English, while she taught her children to speak Cantonese Chinese. She taught them the importance of fair play and honesty along with the “critical� skills of gin rummy and mah-jongg. Helen also took her children bowling. Why she thought this was important remains a mystery because neither she nor her children knew how to bowl. In the 1950’s she worked on and off at the family laundry. In 1958, the laundry was sold, and Helen and her husband started a new business, Ming’s Grocery in San Francisco’s Mission District. During her years at the grocery, she learned her third language, Spanish. Although not fluent, she could converse with customers and later in retirement could bargain in Spanish during shopping trips to Tijuana which made her quite popular with her friends. She became familiar with all the neighborhood children who came to shop at the store and was known simply as Helen. Helen had a playful sense of humor and loved practical jokes. Her favorite trick at the store was her Joy bottle. Using an empty plastic bottle of Joy dishwashing liquid, she threaded a long white string into the nozzle hole. When the bottle was squeezed, the string would squirt out like a stream of dishwashing liquid, and then disappear back into the bottle. With this trick bottle she loved to “spray� all the kids that came into the store. One night an incident occurred at the store that would demonstrate her hidden courage mentioned earlier. While the rest of the family was in the backroom of the store finishing dinner, she was alone sweeping up the front preparing to close for the evening. A robber with a gun came into the store demanding money. Helen pretended she did not speak English and continued sweeping, effectively sweeping the robber out of the store. In 1970 she and her husband retired and sold the grocery business, but the store continued to operate as Ming’s Grocery for another 40 years. During her retirement, she enjoyed sewing, cooking and gardening. She had a green thumb and loved flowers. Everyone who visited her remarked on her beautiful flower garden. When she moved to the Richmond district in 1983, she insisted on moving the garden dirt she had nurtured at her old Mission district house to her new home. In 1986, when her husband passed away, Helen was greatly saddened. But her sadness was softened upon the arrival of her first grandchild, Jennifer, in 1988. Two more grandchildren, Christine and Samantha, followed in 1992 and 1994, respectively. Helen loved being a grandmother. Later she found new activities at the local YMCA: flower arranging, mah-jongg and aerobics. There, she met many new friends and traveled all over the world with them. Helen Wong was a courageous person, a breast cancer survivor who lived for decades with a brain tumor. A modern and independent woman, she lived a full life and will be missed by all who knew her.