He died of a heart attack while playing tennis in Hong Kong, his obituary to be printed in English, in a farm-town newspaper in Iowa, halfway around the world.
Twenty years earlier, he had met his future wife, Marilyn Dreesman. Some thought they maybe met while both were in Geneva, Switzerland, after Marilyn was attracted there by an international program? More likely, they met and married as both had been at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, one of her home state's excellent universities. Marilyn submitted her master's thesis there in 1965, the same year that they married. She called it "The Status of the Chinese Minority in Indonesia". They married with two ceremonies, on different continents, so more could attend. The first, in Iowa, occurred at a judge's chamber in Des Moines. That allowed his brother Anthony to come in from Notre Dame, her parents and brother, from Algona. The next ceremony was in Geneva, Switzerland, at Cures St. Paul Church. That second ceremony let another brother, Leo, also still in college, serve as Jacob's best man.
They stayed in Geneva for a time. More graduate school? Running an import/export business for himself and/or with his family? Marilyn tried culinary school, adding to her skills. They then moved to where Jacob had been raised, in Hong Kong.
Jacob's business, Lotus Creations, Ltd., would be one featured in the fashion and factory filming done for an NBC special called "The World of Pizzazz", shown in the States on March 18, 1969. He had actually begun the business in 1964, growing, producing 80,000 "creations" per year by 1968. By the time of the 1968 filming, the company hoped to work soon with a Paris designer named Jacques Esterel.
Jacob and Marilyn would maintain addresses at multiple places. Fearful of discrimination against their mixed-race children, Marilyn, still a US citizen, would set-up residence in a mixed-race place called Hawaii. (She had brought the eldest two children, while Jennifer was still a baby, with her housekeeper, to her parents' house in Algona, Iowa, for a visit one summer. This writer was home from grad school, visiting her own grandparents in Algona, her grandfather, Marilyn's uncle. Their elder daughter, Dee Brown, Marilyn's cousin, had returned from Hollywood, mainly wishing to see her cousin Jackie while there, but also hoping to visit with her much younger cousin, wanting to meet Marilyn's young children. The funny story told in the Dreesman living room was that the eldest had been drawing with a pen on paper, then decided to crawl into his sister's crib and finish the drawing on her face! He dashed in to see the relatives visiting, then dashed out, a bit embarrassed by the story of his artwork.)
There were big changes later.
Jacob and Marilyn's youngest would be born.
They would divorce.
Jacob would die first, a surprise as still youngish.
Then, Marilyn and all three of their children would die, tragic, in 1987, also "way too young".
The British returned Hong Kong to the possession of mainland China in 1997, something Jacob would not live to see, though his mother and siblings would live through the change. It caused a number to leave the island life.
Sometimes alternating Christmases between their two sets of grandparents, Chuang and Dreesman, their Christmas vacation in 1987 took Jacob and Marilyn's children away from Hawaii's schools. They were visiting at the home of his ex-wife Marilyn's parents when the children died. Marilyn and her parents and her younger brother died that day as well.
What would his children have been, had they grown up? Jacob was well-educated, graduating first from St. John's College in the UK (South Lea). He attended graduate school at McGill University in Montreal and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He may also have received a degree from the University of Iowa.
How did a Chuang come to be called Jacob? A college student at the University of Hong Kong (signing his thesis as Roger Irenaeous Chan) studied the Hong Kong habit of mixing British first names with Chinese surnames. Mr. Chan found many cases among the graves in St. Michael's Catholic Cemetery, its layout and architecture interesting to tourists to Hong Kong. Jacob's grave was part of the name study. Jacob's stone there was still intact, in readable condition, circa July 10, 2010, when the thesis was submitted to the Architecture faculty. Findagrave user "BenStables" (id 50113852) photographed the stone and added it here in 2021, covering stones for Jacob's parents as well. Thank you, Mr. Stables.
Mixing Catholic and traditional names was a tradition in this family (though none of Jacob's Chuangs had the ultra-common Catholic names of Mary or Joseph). The English forename of Jacob's father, Lipton, is harder to explain, unless Lipton Chuang's family was connected to Thomas Lipton, a man remembered as fond of racing yachts, better known as the Glasgow-born grocer residing in Hong Kong, for whom a tea was named. Eventually becoming Sir Thomas Lipton, he was turned away from Hong Kong's perhaps too snobby Royal Yacht Club, with Mr. Lipton then joining a NY yacht club instead.
One of Jacob's younger brothers, Anthony, born 1944, named for St. Anthony, qualified as an Olympic shooter, so saw his name in the media. His mixed name is often shown the English way, but he also used Chinese characters, as did their parents. In English, a name's letters indicate how a name Is heard. In Chinese, that is not so. Each character means a thing, all the characters of a name creating a picture in the mind. Five characters can, thus, be much like five words of poetry.
Jacob's parents often called themselves Lipton and Florence when amidst English speakers. Like many, they had fled to a British-run Hong Kong to escape dictatorship on the mainland. Much of the moving was timed with a Japanese invasion, circa WW II, another unpleasant problem.
Did using traditional characters mean that Anthony was, like their parents, born back on the mainland, in China proper, not on the island at China's edge called Hong Kong? If so, Jacob, several years older, would have been born there as well. However, this has not yet been verified in official records.
Jacob's stone is beautiful, with a motif of Peace.
The other photo, just below it, shows the gateway to Jacob's cemetery, also of note. Click it twice, first to open it, then, again, to enlarge it, to see its full beauty. Chinese characters are part of the design. NOTE: The photo of the Gate may be re-used by family members and others, provided they always give proper credit to the Gate's photographer. The credit must be stated as:
"By Tksteven - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19728766"
JB, Revised Y22 Jan 31, page added at Findagrave 2018, Mar. 5.
Twenty years earlier, he had met his future wife, Marilyn Dreesman. Some thought they maybe met while both were in Geneva, Switzerland, after Marilyn was attracted there by an international program? More likely, they met and married as both had been at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, one of her home state's excellent universities. Marilyn submitted her master's thesis there in 1965, the same year that they married. She called it "The Status of the Chinese Minority in Indonesia". They married with two ceremonies, on different continents, so more could attend. The first, in Iowa, occurred at a judge's chamber in Des Moines. That allowed his brother Anthony to come in from Notre Dame, her parents and brother, from Algona. The next ceremony was in Geneva, Switzerland, at Cures St. Paul Church. That second ceremony let another brother, Leo, also still in college, serve as Jacob's best man.
They stayed in Geneva for a time. More graduate school? Running an import/export business for himself and/or with his family? Marilyn tried culinary school, adding to her skills. They then moved to where Jacob had been raised, in Hong Kong.
Jacob's business, Lotus Creations, Ltd., would be one featured in the fashion and factory filming done for an NBC special called "The World of Pizzazz", shown in the States on March 18, 1969. He had actually begun the business in 1964, growing, producing 80,000 "creations" per year by 1968. By the time of the 1968 filming, the company hoped to work soon with a Paris designer named Jacques Esterel.
Jacob and Marilyn would maintain addresses at multiple places. Fearful of discrimination against their mixed-race children, Marilyn, still a US citizen, would set-up residence in a mixed-race place called Hawaii. (She had brought the eldest two children, while Jennifer was still a baby, with her housekeeper, to her parents' house in Algona, Iowa, for a visit one summer. This writer was home from grad school, visiting her own grandparents in Algona, her grandfather, Marilyn's uncle. Their elder daughter, Dee Brown, Marilyn's cousin, had returned from Hollywood, mainly wishing to see her cousin Jackie while there, but also hoping to visit with her much younger cousin, wanting to meet Marilyn's young children. The funny story told in the Dreesman living room was that the eldest had been drawing with a pen on paper, then decided to crawl into his sister's crib and finish the drawing on her face! He dashed in to see the relatives visiting, then dashed out, a bit embarrassed by the story of his artwork.)
There were big changes later.
Jacob and Marilyn's youngest would be born.
They would divorce.
Jacob would die first, a surprise as still youngish.
Then, Marilyn and all three of their children would die, tragic, in 1987, also "way too young".
The British returned Hong Kong to the possession of mainland China in 1997, something Jacob would not live to see, though his mother and siblings would live through the change. It caused a number to leave the island life.
Sometimes alternating Christmases between their two sets of grandparents, Chuang and Dreesman, their Christmas vacation in 1987 took Jacob and Marilyn's children away from Hawaii's schools. They were visiting at the home of his ex-wife Marilyn's parents when the children died. Marilyn and her parents and her younger brother died that day as well.
What would his children have been, had they grown up? Jacob was well-educated, graduating first from St. John's College in the UK (South Lea). He attended graduate school at McGill University in Montreal and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He may also have received a degree from the University of Iowa.
How did a Chuang come to be called Jacob? A college student at the University of Hong Kong (signing his thesis as Roger Irenaeous Chan) studied the Hong Kong habit of mixing British first names with Chinese surnames. Mr. Chan found many cases among the graves in St. Michael's Catholic Cemetery, its layout and architecture interesting to tourists to Hong Kong. Jacob's grave was part of the name study. Jacob's stone there was still intact, in readable condition, circa July 10, 2010, when the thesis was submitted to the Architecture faculty. Findagrave user "BenStables" (id 50113852) photographed the stone and added it here in 2021, covering stones for Jacob's parents as well. Thank you, Mr. Stables.
Mixing Catholic and traditional names was a tradition in this family (though none of Jacob's Chuangs had the ultra-common Catholic names of Mary or Joseph). The English forename of Jacob's father, Lipton, is harder to explain, unless Lipton Chuang's family was connected to Thomas Lipton, a man remembered as fond of racing yachts, better known as the Glasgow-born grocer residing in Hong Kong, for whom a tea was named. Eventually becoming Sir Thomas Lipton, he was turned away from Hong Kong's perhaps too snobby Royal Yacht Club, with Mr. Lipton then joining a NY yacht club instead.
One of Jacob's younger brothers, Anthony, born 1944, named for St. Anthony, qualified as an Olympic shooter, so saw his name in the media. His mixed name is often shown the English way, but he also used Chinese characters, as did their parents. In English, a name's letters indicate how a name Is heard. In Chinese, that is not so. Each character means a thing, all the characters of a name creating a picture in the mind. Five characters can, thus, be much like five words of poetry.
Jacob's parents often called themselves Lipton and Florence when amidst English speakers. Like many, they had fled to a British-run Hong Kong to escape dictatorship on the mainland. Much of the moving was timed with a Japanese invasion, circa WW II, another unpleasant problem.
Did using traditional characters mean that Anthony was, like their parents, born back on the mainland, in China proper, not on the island at China's edge called Hong Kong? If so, Jacob, several years older, would have been born there as well. However, this has not yet been verified in official records.
Jacob's stone is beautiful, with a motif of Peace.
The other photo, just below it, shows the gateway to Jacob's cemetery, also of note. Click it twice, first to open it, then, again, to enlarge it, to see its full beauty. Chinese characters are part of the design. NOTE: The photo of the Gate may be re-used by family members and others, provided they always give proper credit to the Gate's photographer. The credit must be stated as:
"By Tksteven - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19728766"
JB, Revised Y22 Jan 31, page added at Findagrave 2018, Mar. 5.
He died of a heart attack while playing tennis in Hong Kong, his obituary to be printed in English, in a farm-town newspaper in Iowa, halfway around the world.
Twenty years earlier, he had met his future wife, Marilyn Dreesman. Some thought they maybe met while both were in Geneva, Switzerland, after Marilyn was attracted there by an international program? More likely, they met and married as both had been at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, one of her home state's excellent universities. Marilyn submitted her master's thesis there in 1965, the same year that they married. She called it "The Status of the Chinese Minority in Indonesia". They married with two ceremonies, on different continents, so more could attend. The first, in Iowa, occurred at a judge's chamber in Des Moines. That allowed his brother Anthony to come in from Notre Dame, her parents and brother, from Algona. The next ceremony was in Geneva, Switzerland, at Cures St. Paul Church. That second ceremony let another brother, Leo, also still in college, serve as Jacob's best man.
They stayed in Geneva for a time. More graduate school? Running an import/export business for himself and/or with his family? Marilyn tried culinary school, adding to her skills. They then moved to where Jacob had been raised, in Hong Kong.
Jacob's business, Lotus Creations, Ltd., would be one featured in the fashion and factory filming done for an NBC special called "The World of Pizzazz", shown in the States on March 18, 1969. He had actually begun the business in 1964, growing, producing 80,000 "creations" per year by 1968. By the time of the 1968 filming, the company hoped to work soon with a Paris designer named Jacques Esterel.
Jacob and Marilyn would maintain addresses at multiple places. Fearful of discrimination against their mixed-race children, Marilyn, still a US citizen, would set-up residence in a mixed-race place called Hawaii. (She had brought the eldest two children, while Jennifer was still a baby, with her housekeeper, to her parents' house in Algona, Iowa, for a visit one summer. This writer was home from grad school, visiting her own grandparents in Algona, her grandfather, Marilyn's uncle. Their elder daughter, Dee Brown, Marilyn's cousin, had returned from Hollywood, mainly wishing to see her cousin Jackie while there, but also hoping to visit with her much younger cousin, wanting to meet Marilyn's young children. The funny story told in the Dreesman living room was that the eldest had been drawing with a pen on paper, then decided to crawl into his sister's crib and finish the drawing on her face! He dashed in to see the relatives visiting, then dashed out, a bit embarrassed by the story of his artwork.)
There were big changes later.
Jacob and Marilyn's youngest would be born.
They would divorce.
Jacob would die first, a surprise as still youngish.
Then, Marilyn and all three of their children would die, tragic, in 1987, also "way too young".
The British returned Hong Kong to the possession of mainland China in 1997, something Jacob would not live to see, though his mother and siblings would live through the change. It caused a number to leave the island life.
Sometimes alternating Christmases between their two sets of grandparents, Chuang and Dreesman, their Christmas vacation in 1987 took Jacob and Marilyn's children away from Hawaii's schools. They were visiting at the home of his ex-wife Marilyn's parents when the children died. Marilyn and her parents and her younger brother died that day as well.
What would his children have been, had they grown up? Jacob was well-educated, graduating first from St. John's College in the UK (South Lea). He attended graduate school at McGill University in Montreal and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He may also have received a degree from the University of Iowa.
How did a Chuang come to be called Jacob? A college student at the University of Hong Kong (signing his thesis as Roger Irenaeous Chan) studied the Hong Kong habit of mixing British first names with Chinese surnames. Mr. Chan found many cases among the graves in St. Michael's Catholic Cemetery, its layout and architecture interesting to tourists to Hong Kong. Jacob's grave was part of the name study. Jacob's stone there was still intact, in readable condition, circa July 10, 2010, when the thesis was submitted to the Architecture faculty. Findagrave user "BenStables" (id 50113852) photographed the stone and added it here in 2021, covering stones for Jacob's parents as well. Thank you, Mr. Stables.
Mixing Catholic and traditional names was a tradition in this family (though none of Jacob's Chuangs had the ultra-common Catholic names of Mary or Joseph). The English forename of Jacob's father, Lipton, is harder to explain, unless Lipton Chuang's family was connected to Thomas Lipton, a man remembered as fond of racing yachts, better known as the Glasgow-born grocer residing in Hong Kong, for whom a tea was named. Eventually becoming Sir Thomas Lipton, he was turned away from Hong Kong's perhaps too snobby Royal Yacht Club, with Mr. Lipton then joining a NY yacht club instead.
One of Jacob's younger brothers, Anthony, born 1944, named for St. Anthony, qualified as an Olympic shooter, so saw his name in the media. His mixed name is often shown the English way, but he also used Chinese characters, as did their parents. In English, a name's letters indicate how a name Is heard. In Chinese, that is not so. Each character means a thing, all the characters of a name creating a picture in the mind. Five characters can, thus, be much like five words of poetry.
Jacob's parents often called themselves Lipton and Florence when amidst English speakers. Like many, they had fled to a British-run Hong Kong to escape dictatorship on the mainland. Much of the moving was timed with a Japanese invasion, circa WW II, another unpleasant problem.
Did using traditional characters mean that Anthony was, like their parents, born back on the mainland, in China proper, not on the island at China's edge called Hong Kong? If so, Jacob, several years older, would have been born there as well. However, this has not yet been verified in official records.
Jacob's stone is beautiful, with a motif of Peace.
The other photo, just below it, shows the gateway to Jacob's cemetery, also of note. Click it twice, first to open it, then, again, to enlarge it, to see its full beauty. Chinese characters are part of the design. NOTE: The photo of the Gate may be re-used by family members and others, provided they always give proper credit to the Gate's photographer. The credit must be stated as:
"By Tksteven - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19728766"
JB, Revised Y22 Jan 31, page added at Findagrave 2018, Mar. 5.
Twenty years earlier, he had met his future wife, Marilyn Dreesman. Some thought they maybe met while both were in Geneva, Switzerland, after Marilyn was attracted there by an international program? More likely, they met and married as both had been at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, one of her home state's excellent universities. Marilyn submitted her master's thesis there in 1965, the same year that they married. She called it "The Status of the Chinese Minority in Indonesia". They married with two ceremonies, on different continents, so more could attend. The first, in Iowa, occurred at a judge's chamber in Des Moines. That allowed his brother Anthony to come in from Notre Dame, her parents and brother, from Algona. The next ceremony was in Geneva, Switzerland, at Cures St. Paul Church. That second ceremony let another brother, Leo, also still in college, serve as Jacob's best man.
They stayed in Geneva for a time. More graduate school? Running an import/export business for himself and/or with his family? Marilyn tried culinary school, adding to her skills. They then moved to where Jacob had been raised, in Hong Kong.
Jacob's business, Lotus Creations, Ltd., would be one featured in the fashion and factory filming done for an NBC special called "The World of Pizzazz", shown in the States on March 18, 1969. He had actually begun the business in 1964, growing, producing 80,000 "creations" per year by 1968. By the time of the 1968 filming, the company hoped to work soon with a Paris designer named Jacques Esterel.
Jacob and Marilyn would maintain addresses at multiple places. Fearful of discrimination against their mixed-race children, Marilyn, still a US citizen, would set-up residence in a mixed-race place called Hawaii. (She had brought the eldest two children, while Jennifer was still a baby, with her housekeeper, to her parents' house in Algona, Iowa, for a visit one summer. This writer was home from grad school, visiting her own grandparents in Algona, her grandfather, Marilyn's uncle. Their elder daughter, Dee Brown, Marilyn's cousin, had returned from Hollywood, mainly wishing to see her cousin Jackie while there, but also hoping to visit with her much younger cousin, wanting to meet Marilyn's young children. The funny story told in the Dreesman living room was that the eldest had been drawing with a pen on paper, then decided to crawl into his sister's crib and finish the drawing on her face! He dashed in to see the relatives visiting, then dashed out, a bit embarrassed by the story of his artwork.)
There were big changes later.
Jacob and Marilyn's youngest would be born.
They would divorce.
Jacob would die first, a surprise as still youngish.
Then, Marilyn and all three of their children would die, tragic, in 1987, also "way too young".
The British returned Hong Kong to the possession of mainland China in 1997, something Jacob would not live to see, though his mother and siblings would live through the change. It caused a number to leave the island life.
Sometimes alternating Christmases between their two sets of grandparents, Chuang and Dreesman, their Christmas vacation in 1987 took Jacob and Marilyn's children away from Hawaii's schools. They were visiting at the home of his ex-wife Marilyn's parents when the children died. Marilyn and her parents and her younger brother died that day as well.
What would his children have been, had they grown up? Jacob was well-educated, graduating first from St. John's College in the UK (South Lea). He attended graduate school at McGill University in Montreal and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He may also have received a degree from the University of Iowa.
How did a Chuang come to be called Jacob? A college student at the University of Hong Kong (signing his thesis as Roger Irenaeous Chan) studied the Hong Kong habit of mixing British first names with Chinese surnames. Mr. Chan found many cases among the graves in St. Michael's Catholic Cemetery, its layout and architecture interesting to tourists to Hong Kong. Jacob's grave was part of the name study. Jacob's stone there was still intact, in readable condition, circa July 10, 2010, when the thesis was submitted to the Architecture faculty. Findagrave user "BenStables" (id 50113852) photographed the stone and added it here in 2021, covering stones for Jacob's parents as well. Thank you, Mr. Stables.
Mixing Catholic and traditional names was a tradition in this family (though none of Jacob's Chuangs had the ultra-common Catholic names of Mary or Joseph). The English forename of Jacob's father, Lipton, is harder to explain, unless Lipton Chuang's family was connected to Thomas Lipton, a man remembered as fond of racing yachts, better known as the Glasgow-born grocer residing in Hong Kong, for whom a tea was named. Eventually becoming Sir Thomas Lipton, he was turned away from Hong Kong's perhaps too snobby Royal Yacht Club, with Mr. Lipton then joining a NY yacht club instead.
One of Jacob's younger brothers, Anthony, born 1944, named for St. Anthony, qualified as an Olympic shooter, so saw his name in the media. His mixed name is often shown the English way, but he also used Chinese characters, as did their parents. In English, a name's letters indicate how a name Is heard. In Chinese, that is not so. Each character means a thing, all the characters of a name creating a picture in the mind. Five characters can, thus, be much like five words of poetry.
Jacob's parents often called themselves Lipton and Florence when amidst English speakers. Like many, they had fled to a British-run Hong Kong to escape dictatorship on the mainland. Much of the moving was timed with a Japanese invasion, circa WW II, another unpleasant problem.
Did using traditional characters mean that Anthony was, like their parents, born back on the mainland, in China proper, not on the island at China's edge called Hong Kong? If so, Jacob, several years older, would have been born there as well. However, this has not yet been verified in official records.
Jacob's stone is beautiful, with a motif of Peace.
The other photo, just below it, shows the gateway to Jacob's cemetery, also of note. Click it twice, first to open it, then, again, to enlarge it, to see its full beauty. Chinese characters are part of the design. NOTE: The photo of the Gate may be re-used by family members and others, provided they always give proper credit to the Gate's photographer. The credit must be stated as:
"By Tksteven - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19728766"
JB, Revised Y22 Jan 31, page added at Findagrave 2018, Mar. 5.
Inscription
Jacob Chuang
1940
1984
Gravesite Details
NOTE: Inscription recorded in bachelor's thesis at the University of Hong Kong, submitted 2010, to the faculty in Architecture by Roger Man-hin Chan, 陳文軒
Family Members
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