Nancy Nai-Sien Fong

1928 - 2025

Nancy Nai-Sien Fong
05/07/1928 - 06/25/2025
Nancy Nai Sien Fong (maiden name Wong) was born in Shanghai, China, in the Spring of 1928. Her exact Lunar New Year birthday (she was a Dragon) was unknown, but her Western birthday was May 7, 1928. She passed away peacefully on June 25, 2025, at the age of 97.
Her father was the patriarch of the family. He was a wealthy businessman who worked for the railroad. Her mother was educated and beautiful. She was the only girl in a family of 3. She graduated from the prestigious McTyeire School in Shanghai in 1946. In China, she taught music and piano and learned how to arrange flowers, becoming quite proficient, something she enjoyed doing until her vascular dementia diagnosis in her 90s. She enjoyed singing lyric opera and Chinese folk songs.
Amidst war and chaos, she immigrated first to Hong Kong, then to the US in 1951 at the age of 23. One of her first American jobs was as an English translator for Radio Free Asia in San Francisco. She could speak 3 dialects, Mandarin, Cantonese, & Shanghainese.
She met Dr. David Fong (the first Asian-American psychoanalyst in Berkeley, CA) through friends and married and had two daughters, Heather & Celia. Together, David & Nancy built a beautiful, custom-designed, mid-century modern home in the Berkeley Hills, where she loved to garden, sing, and play her beloved Steinway baby grand. She enjoyed traveling with family and went on multiple trips to China, including the Silk Road, Shanghai, and Beijing, as well as excursions to Hong Kong, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Las Vegas, an Alaskan cruise, Disneyland, and Disney World (Celia's favorite place).
With her roots firmly planted in the Berkeley community, she continued her education at UC Berkeley. Berkeley in the late 1950s and 1960s was a haven for Chinese Americans, particularly within professional and academic fields, and growing activism. EDUCATION: B.A. in Music from UC Berkeley. B.S. in Social Welfare1968 from UC Berkeley M.S.W. from UC Berkeley in 1974.
From there, she became a fervent anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and worked tirelessly as a community organizer and proponent of Asian/Asian-American issues, both cultural and social, and was employed as a Counselor for Youth Employment Services for the City of Berkeley for many years.
When David passed away in 1995 due to cancer, caring for her youngest daughter, Celia, who was developmentally disabled, became her life's purpose until Celia's death at the age of 62 in May of 2021. She was preceded in death by her father, her mother, Molly Wong, and her brothers, Martin and Steven Wong. She is survived by her daughter, Heather, and her grandson, Jacob, along with many loving nieces, nephews, and grandnieces & grandnephews.