Families and Memories

As regular readers know, Sarj Bloom was a photographer at USTDC during the early 1960s and has provided many great photographs and memories to this blog during the past two or three years.

He recently sent me these photos and comments and agreed to let me share them with you:

This is photo of my wife and me on the day we left Taiwan during late September or early October, 1963. We were standing outside the Omega Hotel that was located on the circle that lead to downtown. We were to leave right after this photo to catch our Ship the "General Mann" in Keelung to travel back to the States.

My wife and I are on the right and my mother-in-law, who just passed at the age of 101 last week, is on the left with her husband who passed in 1972.  In the back is her aunt and uncle and a nephew that I also knew very well. 

Maybe someone will remember the Omega Hotel. It was built around a garden and was Japanese style with tatamis, paper doors, etc.  I really like that style.

Last week Apo (Chinese for grandma) passed away at the age of 101. She was the mother of my first wife, whom I married in Taiwan in November, 1962.  She was also the grandmother of my 12 grandchildren and attended every family gathering graduation and other events.

She was born September 30, 1909. She lived in mainland China and during the Communist takeover, she and her family fled to Taiwan.  She eventually came to the States where she lived with her daughters in Maryland. She got lost so many times in the malls that we made her carry a note telling who to call.  She was generous and sometimes gave things to the kids that didn't belong to her.  We all loved her and her servant's heart. She lived as we are all called to live, thinking of others instead of ourselves.

This is a wonderful family photo of her taken with her brothers and sisters when she was a young lady.  She is in the back row on the right.  Most likely, this photo was taken in Canton Provence. 

 

I took this photo of her at my grandson's high school graduation in Maryland around eight years ago.

I  feel so blessed, as do my children and grandchildren, to have such a wonderful family made up of two cultures.  I don't think of it as two races. We have overcome language barriers and the younger generations now all speak English.  Even now we have one of the grandsons that can understand Hakka, an almost forgotten language of Southeast Asia.  Grandma and her children spoke this most of the time, though they could still speak Mandarin.