Sophia Shih-Chung Ku

The youngest of five children in an ethnic Hakka family, Sophia was born in 1943 in rural Taoyuan County(桃園縣), Taiwan. Extreme poverty and preference for sons had led her family to give up two of her older sisters for adoption at the time of their birth, but her fortune-teller grandfather decided to keep the infant Sophia due to his belief that she would bring good fortune to the family. (Many details of Sophia’s life can be found in Dori Jones Yang’s 2011 oral history Voices of the Second Wave: Chinese Americans in Seattle.)

As an infant, her family sometimes had to rush to bomb shelters and ration food to survive the effects of World War II. Her absent father Chung Tien Chang (鍾天璋） failed to provide support to the family so Sophia’s mother Chen Li (陳里）took on work as a maid for a wealthy family in Taiwan’s largest city Taipei, leaving Sophia in the countryside with her grandmother. Sophia’s mother had never attended school, so with the support and guidance of Sophia’s older brother Anthony Chung (鍾和安）, Sophia’s mother made sure Sophia attended school, even though attending school required Sophia to walk 30 minutes each way barefoot (Sophia acquired her first pair of shoes at age 12).

Eventually, Sophia was able to join her mother and brother in Taipei where her mother set up a vegetable stand on the street and she and her brother took on work to help support the family. In Taipei, Sophia was able to attend public schools. She was an excellent student, eventually passing examinations to enter Taiwan’s most selective university, National Taiwan University (台灣大學). She graduated with an accounting degree and got a job working at a division of Taiwan’s central bank (中央信託局）.

In 1967, Sophia was awarded a scholarship to study for a Master’s in Business Administration at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. Upon arriving in the U.S., she was met at the airport by Peter Ku (古嘉訓), then a librarian working at East Carolina University who had been asked by the university to help her transition to life in America.

Peter and Sophia quickly fell in love and married a few months later in March of 1968. Since neither Sophia nor Peter had any family in the country, members of the local community in Greenville made arrangements for the ceremony and hosted a reception for the couple in their home. One husband of Peter’s co-worker even took on the role to give away the bride during the ceremony. (Their courtship was described in this article about a donation they later made to East Carolina University. https://news.ecu.edu/2023/01/05/unexpected-kindness/)

The newly married couple soon welcomed their first child, Faye, and began to build their life in the United States. Sophia graduated and passed her Certified Public Accounting license exam on the first try. She worked as an accountant to support the family while Peter enrolled at Duke to earn a doctorate in educational administration. Female accountants were rare in North Carolina at that time and she had a difficult time finding an accounting firm that would give her the one-year internship needed to complete her license.

Shortly after Sophia gave birth to her second child, Julian, the family relocated to Columbia, Maryland. It was here that Sophia completed her licensing requirements. She then began her career as auditor at the General Accounting Office (GAO). The GAO provides Congress with auditing and analysis to aid its oversight and legislative work. Because most of the work involves generating written reports and briefing members of Congress and their staff, foreign-born GAO auditors were very rare in the 1970s. Nonetheless, Sophia persisted and eventually retired at the second highest government service rank possible.

Sophia was also a successful investor in both real estate and stocks. She bought and managed numerous apartments and homes for investment purposes while also keeping active in the stock markets. Her combination of personal thrift and careful investments helped build her family’s wealth.

In addition to a successful professional career, Sophia was a devoted daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother. She spent much of her personal time supporting her children Faye and Julian in their studies and extracurricular activities. She set high academic expectations for her children, and also instilled in them values of hard work, thrift, and honesty. She was proud of their academic success and their professional accomplishments as attorneys. She later played an important role helping them raise her three grandchildren. During this time, she also supported her mother by helping her find a community in the U.S. where she could live independently despite language and cultural barriers.

Sophia also focused her life around supporting her husband Peter, and, if necessary, making sacrifices to advance his career opportunities. She was a loving wife who would pay her own way to travel with him on his business trips (even overseas ones) whenever possible. They were inseparable as a couple in all aspects of their lives. Though she had never played sports, Sophia took up golf with a passion and the two became frequent golfers.

Sophia retired at the age of 60 at the same time as Peter. During the first decade of their retirement, Sophia and Peter indulged their love of international travel. Their trips took them to five different continents as well as regular trips to their favorite vacation spot in Hawaii. They eventually purchased a condo on the Big Island of Hawaii and spent many of their winters there.

In her final years, Sophia was diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a degenerative brain disease that first deprived her of her ability to speak, and then many motor functions, and eventually led to her death almost five years after her diagnosis. Her husband of fifty-five years, Peter, was her primary caregiver throughout this difficult period. She passed away at Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, Washington, with Peter, her children, and her grandson at her bedside during her final days. In addition to Peter, she is survived by her daughter Faye Ricci (古慧倫) and Faye's husband Vincent Ricci (雷文森), her son Julian Ku (古舉倫) and Julian's wife Winnie Chu （朱文慧), and Sophia's three grandchildren Vincent Ricci (雷文森), Lillian Ricci （雷文慧), and Lyra-Anne Ku（古永琳).

A service will be held for Sophia on January 13, 2024 at Sunset Hills Funeral Home at 10 a.m.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions in memory of Sophia Ku be made here:

https://securelb.imodules.com/s/722/lg20/form.aspx?sid=722&gid=1&pgid=2127&cid=6416&dids=2151

They may also be sent as checks payable to ECU Foundation, Inc. Please add "Peter and Sophia Ku Endowment” on the memo line and mail to the Office of Gift Records, East Carolina University, 2200 S. Charles Blvd., Suite 2213, Greenville, NC 27858.