David Kheng Gwan Chan

David K.G. Chan beloved father, grandfather, brother, uncle and friend passed away on March 3, 2012 at his home in Austin, Texas. David was born on February 7, 1927 in Rangoon, Burma, the son of a successful Chinese rice miller. When his father became ill, his family went back to their ancestral home city in Xiamen, China. Shortly thereafter, when David was 7 years old, his father passed away, and his family returned to Burma. In 1941, with the Japanese invasion of Burma looming, they drove over the Hengduan mountains to Kunming, China in a caravan of cars and managed to take some of their wealth with them by converting it into silver hangers to conceal it. However, the Japanese were soon making their way westward. So in 1943, they flew to India over the Himalayas in an unpressurized C-46 Flying Tiger transport plane at 24,000 feet over the aluminum trail, named as such for all the wrecked planes on the harrowing journey. They stayed in Calcutta until the war ended in 1945 and then returned to Burma. After speaking with a professor who had recently returned to Burma from the US, David decided to go study in the US and obtained the third visa out of Burma to do so in 1946.

He arrived in San Francisco after a 16 day ship passage on September 19, 1946. One week later he was enrolled at Chaffey College. After two years there, he went onto Stanford University graduating with a degree in political science in 1951. Some of the highlights of his college years included being President of Stanford’s Institute of International Relations and of numerous other organizations, representing Stanford in a variety of trips across the US and Europe, directing campus movies and speaking at many events on life in Burma all the while excelling academically. One of the particularly fond memories he had was meeting and befriending Eleanor Roosevelt while spending a summer in 1950 at the Roosevelt Estate at Val-Kill Cottage in Hyde Park, New York.

Following his graduation from Stanford, he returned to Burma and married Violet, a Burmese surgeon, and became the stepfather to three young daughters. They moved to the US, and David completed his coursework towards a PhD at the University of Virginia. Prior to finishing his dissertation, he joined Cargill in 1955 and went on to become the company’s Far East representative based in Manila, Philippines in 1956. Unfortunately, two years later Violet passed away. He decided to return to the US and in 1959 became Cargill’s coordinator of export commodity and barter operations for commodities processing in Minneapolis.

Years later he left Cargill to start the first of his many entrepreneurial exploits. Starting in San Francisco, he developed and ran a US AID project in Ghana, which became the largest grain producing farm in the country. In 1968, David married Annabella in San Francisco. They moved to the Bahamas and shortly thereafter settled in Brussels, Belgium to lessen the commute to Ghana. Ariane and Erika were born in Brussels, and the family continued to commute several times a year between Brussels and Accra as David took over the joint ownership of the farm with the Ghanaian government from US AID and its partners. After a series of coup d’etats and bullets grazing their apartment in Accra followed by the nationalization of the farm, they decided to return to the US. They searched for the best place to raise a family in the US and chose Austin. They moved there in 1980 with the plan to retire.

Unable to avoid the entrepreneurial drive, they bought several businesses, which ranged from home security, steel fabrication, real estate development, swimming pool construction to vitamin supplements developed at MD Anderson Cancer Center. After he and Annabella decided to part ways in 1999, David continued his entrepreneurial activities as well as his civic involvement with numerous organizations. He served in several officer roles with the Texas Asian Chamber of Commerce which he co-founded, as Vice President and Trustee Emeritus of the Austin Lyric Opera, on the Board of Trustees of the Long Center, and as Chairman and CEO of the U.S. Asian Chamber of Commerce. He received numerous awards for his civic and charitable contributions.

David remained an intrepid traveller throughout his life, including most recently trips to Nepal and China in October 2011 and December 2011 on business. He also had plans to be in Japan and China at the end of March 2012. When he was not working or volunteering, he loved spending time with his daughters and their families, cooking and, more importantly, eating.

He is survived by his loving family - daughters, Ariane and Erika Chan and their husbands Jeff Clark and Frank Mendez; his grandchildren, Gabrielle, Scott and Gavin Clark; his sister and her husband, Kathleen and Mouta Chen; his sister, Eileen Chan; his brother, Robert Chan; and numerous nieces and nephews. His parents and brother, George, predeceased him.

Friends are cordially invited to a visitation with the family from six o’clock until seven o’clock in the evening with a Rosary to be recited at seven o’clock in the evening on Wednesday, the 14th of March 2012, at Cook-Walden Funeral Home, 6100 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, Texas.

A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at eleven o’clock in the morning on Thursday, the 15th of March, at the St. Theresa’s Catholic Church, 4311 Small Drive, Austin, Texas.

David lived life to the absolute fullest seizing every opportunity and always doing his best to make the world around him a better place, never imposing or asking for much in return. Dad - rest in peace knowing that you accomplished so much while bringing joy to so many. You will be incredibly missed for the rest of our lives, and you leave a void that no one can fill. You will always remain in our hearts and minds, and we will treasure our memories of the time we had with you on this earth. May you find peace and eternal rest with God and the angels. We will love you forever.

In lieu of flowers and the customary remembrances, memorials may be sent to the Texas Asian Foundation http://www.txasianchamber.org/texas-asian-foundation/david-chan-memorial-fund/ for a scholarship to honor his pursuit of knowledge.