Peter Tong

Bob's  Chit Chat #10 got me thinking about my chance meetings with one particular Lighter and a few other Pui Ching alumni over the years. None of these are really profound like that described by Bob. Instead, my experience is more like the encounter described by Tony in one his poems. But profound or not, each meeting left an indelible impression on me.

Since we are talking about Fight Share, the Class of Brightness, I'll start with my encounter with Shirley, ±` ¥ü¬Ã. I am not sure this is her correct Chinese name but I suspect we all know of her. I did not have a chance to meet her in Pui Ching. One weekend in the Winter of 1965, my Princeton friend Herb decided to go to a party in Boston. He knew some girl in Wellesly and had her set up a blind date for me. No, I was not that lucky. Shirley was not my date on that occasion but she was my date's apartment mate at the time. So I got to meet Shirley for the first time when we went to pick up my date. I cannot remember much about my date but Shirley was charming, quite attractive, intelligent and very articulate. She was then a graduate student at Harvard. Although it was Saturday night, she had to go back to her lab.

I ran into Shirley one more time years later on the streets in Queens. By then, I was married and so was she. It happened that she was living one street from my in-laws. Since people walk a lot in NYC, running into one another on the streets is possible.

Talking about in-laws, ¶À ¦Ê º³ is married to my sister-in-law. As we know, he is Ching Class, just one year behind us. They live in SF area and he is quite active in the local Pui Ching Alumni Club.

The other Pui Ching friend that I remember vividly but do not know well is §õ¦t ¤å. He was one year ahead of us and we came to the States on President Wilson. He was going to Arizona and I was going to Delaware. My Golden Gate Bridge picture in our year book was taken by him as we approached San Francisco. He mailed that picture to me sometimes later with a letter. I found his letter recently in my parents attic among my old correspondence. Does any one know where he is or what he is doing these days? They must have a class organization like ours? Indeed, this is their 40th year after graduation. Where are they meeting?

Finally, of all the chance encounters I had, the most remarkable was the one with Park Chan, the Park Chan in my Lighter class. One day in the middle 70's, my wife told me about a friend from her high school days who lived in Pennsylvania near Philadelphia. She would like to visit her and her husband that weekend when we visited my parents in Phillie. "certainly,¡¨ I said, “just bring her phone number. We' l give her a call when we get there.¡¨ When my wife called Margaret that Saturday morning, it turned out that they were about to leave town for good. She and her husband were moving to Minnesota in a few days and she would rather come to my parents house to meet us. When they arrived later, I was taking shower after a tennis game with my brother. I walk down the stairs into the living room. There, standing in front of me, was Park whom I had not seen since 1959. I do not remember whether I recalled his name or he recalled mine immediately but we knew instantly that we knew each other from the past. It has been twenty some years since that encounter and we have stayed in touch all these years. They still live in the Twin City and both of them are retired now. Park, are you reading this?

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