![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerOne of my great reading pleasures is the Sunday New York Times Paid Death Notices. The lives described therein are remarkable, in column after column. This week, I was particularly struck by these two:
Ruth Hung-Fang Tung, age 96: Her father, Tung Jing-Cheng. . . was a Confucian scholar, and her mother, Grand Duchess Wang Shou-Kun, was the founder and head of a girls school. Professor Tung . . . graduated from Harbin Normal College for Women, and was the first Government sponsored graduate student to attend Ochanomizu Women's University in Tokyo. To escape the massacres during the Chinese Civil War, she, together with her three infant sons, sought refuge in Japan . . . To supplement her modest academic salary in order to raise her three sons, she wrote poetry, translated books and movie subtitles, and taught Chinese cooking at home and on television. After sending each of her sons to the United States for high school, she joined them there, taught at American University in Washington, D.C., and worked as a researcher in the Chinese Collection of the U.S. Library of Congress . . . .
Leonard Lazarus, age 100: born in the Bronx to German immigrants . . . . Leonard's father contracted TB and upon the doctor's advice relocated to the Adirondacks in Saranac Lake. Leonard's mother, Lillie, was very resourceful and found a place big enough, with land, to run a boarding house and for her husband to run a kosher chicken and egg business. . . . . At a young age Leonard helped his parents. He had the largest paper route in the neighborhood and took furs to the rail station for a furrier. . . . Mr. Lazarus' father died two days after his high school graduation so proud of his son who was the first person in the family to graduate high school. . . . After his father's death, the family relocated back to the Bronx where his mother opened a family grocery business where Leonard worked. One of the customers, Rose, became his first wife. Leonard won a state scholarship to Columbia University at sixteen. He worked for the New York Times and became a soda fountain man in a movie house that showed the first talkie movie with Al Jolson, and then became the manager of the cafeteria at Columbia. . . .. After graduation from Columbia University School of Law during the depression. . . . Leonard represented the bus driver's union, three to four hundred men on strike, and conducted labor negotiations with Mayor La Guardia. . . .
Folks, times are tough. But they've been tougher. Life stories like this are in there every week, and I eat them up, and learn from them.
I Think Continually of Those who were Truly Great
Stephen Spender
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. . . . .
. . .
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.
Ruth Hung-Fang Tung, age 96: Her father, Tung Jing-Cheng. . . was a Confucian scholar, and her mother, Grand Duchess Wang Shou-Kun, was the founder and head of a girls school. Professor Tung . . . graduated from Harbin Normal College for Women, and was the first Government sponsored graduate student to attend Ochanomizu Women's University in Tokyo. To escape the massacres during the Chinese Civil War, she, together with her three infant sons, sought refuge in Japan . . . To supplement her modest academic salary in order to raise her three sons, she wrote poetry, translated books and movie subtitles, and taught Chinese cooking at home and on television. After sending each of her sons to the United States for high school, she joined them there, taught at American University in Washington, D.C., and worked as a researcher in the Chinese Collection of the U.S. Library of Congress . . . .
Leonard Lazarus, age 100: born in the Bronx to German immigrants . . . . Leonard's father contracted TB and upon the doctor's advice relocated to the Adirondacks in Saranac Lake. Leonard's mother, Lillie, was very resourceful and found a place big enough, with land, to run a boarding house and for her husband to run a kosher chicken and egg business. . . . . At a young age Leonard helped his parents. He had the largest paper route in the neighborhood and took furs to the rail station for a furrier. . . . Mr. Lazarus' father died two days after his high school graduation so proud of his son who was the first person in the family to graduate high school. . . . After his father's death, the family relocated back to the Bronx where his mother opened a family grocery business where Leonard worked. One of the customers, Rose, became his first wife. Leonard won a state scholarship to Columbia University at sixteen. He worked for the New York Times and became a soda fountain man in a movie house that showed the first talkie movie with Al Jolson, and then became the manager of the cafeteria at Columbia. . . .. After graduation from Columbia University School of Law during the depression. . . . Leonard represented the bus driver's union, three to four hundred men on strike, and conducted labor negotiations with Mayor La Guardia. . . .
Folks, times are tough. But they've been tougher. Life stories like this are in there every week, and I eat them up, and learn from them.
I Think Continually of Those who were Truly Great
Stephen Spender
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. . . . .
. . .
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 04:41 am (UTC)But I did find those obituaries gave me a sense of perspective about a situation that had me on the verge of boiling over myself.