She was the youngest child of three to her father Cheng-Yang Hsu, a professor at Lingnan University
and mother Grace Chan, a music teacher after whom she was named. Though she was born into an
era of civil conflict and growing Japanese aggression and her life was rocked by the untimely death of
her mother, she remembered her early childhood as an idyllic time, lived in a grand house on the
grounds of the university.
In 1939, the advancing Japanese invasion forced Grace’s family to flee Canton to the relatively safer
city of Kunming in western Yunnan province. Though removed from the imminent threat of Japanese
ground forces, Kunming, a key transfer point at the end of the Burma Road and a base for the Flying
Tigers, remained a target for frequent bombing raids which had Grace and her family running for the
shelters or hiding for protection between tombs in a nearby cemetery. The family remained in
Kunming for the duration of WW II and several years after but chose to leave for the United States as
Communist forces consolidated control over China.
With her father already in America, having secured a teaching position at Cornell University, and her
stepmother remaining in China to care for the family’s two younger children, Grace had to make the
month long journey from China to the United States alone. In August 1949, she boarded the Army
Transport Ship General W. H. Gordon in Hong Kong, as it was embarking on an evacuation run to San
Francisco, CA. From there Grace traveled across the USA by train to Ithaca, NY where her father met
her and took her to Keuka Park, NY where he had arranged for her to attend nursing school at Keuka
College. It was while she was attending Keuka that she met her future husband, Yung Tao, an emigre
from Kunming who was attending engineering school at nearby Alfred University.
Grace earned her RN degree from Keuka in 1953 and began her nursing career at Rochester General
hospital in Rochester, NY. She and Yung married that same year and for several years after their
marriage, they followed educational and work opportunities to far flung cities across the US, having
three children along the way. In 1959 they settled in Richardson, TX, where Grace suspended her
nursing work to raise their children full time. In 1970, a career opportunity for Yung brought the family
to San Diego, CA where Grace resumed her nursing career at a private medical practice. In addition
to her professional work, she and Yung worked tirelessly over the subsequent decades to build a
successful portfolio of investment properties in the booming San Diego real estate market. She retired
in 1990 and maintained a full and active retired life, returning to her lifelong loves of crafts and
gardening, cultivating a cactus garden and filling the yard with topiary sculptures. Grace maintained
excellent health and abilities throughout her senior years, which elicited frequent compliments such
as, “I want to be like you when I’m 90!” During her time in San Diego she became an avid Padres fan
and in her later senior years fell in love with Zumba, which she practiced until a few months prior to
her death.
Grace is survived by and lives on in the loving memories of her sisters Ruth and Margaret, brother
John, sister-in-law Vivien, daughter Janet, son Peter, his wife Jenny and their daughter Aimee, and son
Andrew and his wife Jeanne.
Per Grace's wishes, there will be no memorial service. For those who would have wished to send
flowers or other tokens of condolence, you may instead make a donation dedicated to her memory to
either of the following organizations.
Keuka College
Development/Alumni Relations
141 Central Ave
Keuka Park, NY 14478
https://www.keuka.edu/giving/give-now (Designate contributions to the Nursing Program)
Juan Carlos Organization
P.O. Box 90352
San Diego CA 92169
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