Rebecca Wong

1918 - 2016

Rebecca Wong

August 11, 1918 - September 24, 2016

Mother, sister, wife, and staunch political activist. She was the second of four daughters born to the missionaries Wilford and Mayme Scott in Madhya Pradesh, India. After the untimely death of her father when Rebecca was eight, her mother moved with the children to Columbia, Missouri.
Rebecca earned a Master's degree in English literature from University of Missouri with a thesis on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. During WWII, she worked as a machinist refurbishing aircraft gyroscopes.
After the war, in 1946, she married the artist/adventurer Robert Fuller and bore him two sons, Joseph and Robert. In 1954, she remarried to the gifted craftsman Willis Wong and had a daughter Emily and a third son Henry.
She was a Party member who stuck to her guns through the McCarthy period and beyond. As a clerical worker at UC Medical Center in the 1970s, she organized, formed a union, became its first president, and led a months-long successful strike.
Her love of Baroque music and her orchids, her excellent preparations of Indian food, her grit, intelligence, kindness and strength will not be forgotten.
She closed her eyes for the last time one month after her ninety-eighth birthday.
She was predeceased by two of her sisters, Lovina and Elinor, and by Willis, her husband of forty-nine years. She is survived by her sister Hilda, four children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.