LEONORA WANG

1947 - 2023

WANG--Leonora Fen-An. Leonora Fen-An Wang, 75, of Almaden passed away peacefully in Stanford, California, on January 19, 2023. She was surrounded by friends and family under a blue sky with sunlight warming her face. Leonora was born on May 21, 1947, in Shanxi, China, the eighth of nine children of Wang Ying Zun and Zhang Xiang Ying. In 1949, her family moved to Taichung, Taiwan, where she helped care for her younger brother and sang during her school's morning announcements (for which she was selected for her mellifluous soprano voice). Although her family would be separated from her father with the move, 30 years later she would reunite her family and be the first to contact and visit her father. In 1973, she moved to the United States, where she was the first in her family to enroll in a PhD program. She was awarded a PhD in Education by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1983 for her dissertation titled "Data Base Methods in Educational Measurement Research." Following the completion of her degree, she joined IBM at their Almaden Research Lab, where she worked as a software engineer for 27 years, traveling across the globe to share her expertise in storage architecture. After retiring in 2016, she immersed herself in her continued love of universities and learning. She was delighted to volunteer at the Almaden Library and work at the Stanford University Bookstore. She continued to sing with her weekly singing group and took pride in her vegetable garden and citrus trees, which produced frequent gifts for her loving community of neighbors. Leonora was a devoted wife who cherished her husband, Michael Victor Levine. She was thankful to him for introducing her to public radio, the opera, and applied statistics (the topic of their first coffee date). In return, she introduced him to Chinese cuisine, social etiquette, and horticulture. She is survived by her son, Adam, who is grateful for their time together, especially their walks after dinner, NewsHour viewings, annual trips abroad (most recently Morocco, Sicily, and Kenya), as well as lessons and quizzes on the Chinese language, cinema, and culture. She is also survived by her brothers and sisters, Jane, Louise, Hua-An, Andy, Julie, and Stephen. Family and friends are invited to attend her viewing at 7:00pm on Saturday, February 11, 2023 and memorial services at 8:30am on Sunday, February 12, 2023 at Darling & Fischer in Los Gatos.