Dorothy Yuan Chen

Dorothy Yuan Chen, age 86, passed away peacefully in her sleep on October 27, 2013. She was born in China in 1927 and grew up in Shanghai and surrounding areas during the years of the Depression and World War II (which for China was 1937-1945). She attended a Catholic boarding school for some of this time with her two brothers and two sisters. Dorothy’s mother was a physician and her father worked for what we now know as Chevron (before and after the war). The family had 4 houses destroyed by the war. Dorothy’s disappointment from this period was not being able to go to school to be a nurse. After the war, she married Stephen Chen, a civil engineer who had returned from a study tour in the United States. Leaving many of their relatives behind, the couple and their daughter Jennifer left China when the country fell to the Communists, living in Taiwan from 1949-1952. In 1952 the family found a sponsor (the Roosevelt family) and emigrated to the United States, living in New York, where their second child, Martin was born. During the years 1957-59, Dorothy attended Seton Hall College. In 1960, the family moved into a new house in New Jersey, in a small town called New Providence. Dorothy insisted that the children attend a private school and take piano lessons. She liked the house neat and tidy, enjoyed entertaining and was a fantastic cook. I recall hours of helping mom make food for dinner parties. During these years, she worked at Ciba, a pharmaceutical company. We were friends with a number of families at church and in the neighborhood, but particularly the Young family who had a girl and boy roughly the same ages as Jennifer and myself.

In 1964, the family moved to the Bay Area, where Stephen had a new job at Bechtel. The family spent a year renting a home in San Francisco. During this year, Dorothy worked as a hospital volunteer. The family settled in a new tract home in Marin County. Dorothy commuted to San Francisco each day with Stephen to her job in the payroll department of Pacific Bell. By this time, Jennifer was at UC Berkeley and Martin was in junior high. She left the phone company for a year to try working with a startup computer company, and also operated a small women’s clothing store. Later we moved to an old house in Berkeley, which became progressively larger as rooms were added and altered. Dorothy made many good friends at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church.

The turbulent times of the 1970’s took its toll on the family and for a number of years we were in sporadic contact with Jennifer. After her daughter developed throat cancer in 1976, Dorothy made a number of trips to Washington D.C. to help out, and later Jennifer and her husband Ken and her son Sage Stevens stayed with Dorothy and Stephen until Jennifer’s death in 1985. Dorothy and Stephen continued their close relation with their grandson Sage with summer visits and vacation trips.

After Jennifer’s death, my mother needed a new challenge and direction, and spent more time in Shanghai, China, reconnecting with friends and family. Dorothy found an infant girl in an orphanage in China and brought her back to the Bickner family in Southern California. She eventually leased a large lot on the grounds of Chiao-Tung University and with Stephen shipping parts, built a house that she designed. In this house she taught English to elementary age students for a large portion of each year. She also visited Martin’s family in the Southern California desert town of Victorville and Sage’s growing family in Los Angeles. During this time she began a book about her life in America, which was completed and published in China, selling 400,000 copies.

The next challenge in Dorothy’s life was Stephen’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2000. Together mom and I made the rounds of specialists and tests, but it was Dorothy who again bore the brunt of the care until Stephen died in 2002. After that she was free to spend more time with her young students in China. With the house, she was able to host her friends and family in China. She spent several months of the year in the US visiting friends and family. She was there when Jennifer Te was born in 2004 and saw me and Roy in Washington state each year.

In declining health, she made her last visit to China in 2006, traveling solo as usual. Dorothy sold her beloved house in Berkeley in early 2007 and moved to a country property south of Tumwater, Washington, close to me. She had a lot of improvements done on the house and was able to host a party there. In 2008, we put a Jersey steer in the newly fenced pasture. She fed and watered this mendacious horned critter named “Bo” each day, but from behind the fence. She had a severe fall at home October 24th, 2008 and was in care facilities for fractures, stroke and dementia until her passing in 2013.

Dorothy had high blood pressure, angina and a tendency for headaches. She didn’t handle stress particularly well. Despite this she drove herself to take risks, beginning with coming to America, to be involved and to achieve. She had an instinctive knack for making financial investments. She was a very generous person. She attributed her successes to hard work, thrift during the early years, but most of all, a God who takes care of His own. She always said that God had blessed her and her family.