Frank Ney-Fong Mah

When Frank Mah learned that he had cancer, many people asked him if he was worried.

His answer was always the same: "I've fulfilled my duty. Everyone is doing well. What do I have to be worried about?"

Duty. It was a word that you would often hear when you sat down and talked with Frank. If you asked people their life goals, it is doubtful that many would say "to fulfill my duty." That may not have even crossed Frank's mind when he was younger, but eventually it became his defining virtue, an unyielding loyalty and dedication to family.

Duty was his life's work. It was the way he expressed his love.

Frank Ney-Fong Mah died on April 21, 2007, having fulfilled his duty to his family. According to his official records in the United States, he was born in 1924 (although in later years he came to believe it was actually 1921) to Hon Loon and Fown Tow (Wong) Mah. He grew up on his family's small rice farm. And although his family was poor, his childhood was rich with adventures. He spent hours exploring the mountains and forests around the village, he told tales of capturing baby birds and having ferocious pet crickets that could chomp through a person's ear, and he loved to tell of fishing with his father. His father's bountiful catch would be stored alive in a well in the center of the house, and at night the fish would keep Frank awake as they splashed and jumped against the well cover.

He was allowed to go to school for only a few years, but that early experience influenced him for the rest of his life. Although he was not a good student at first (he was too busy playing practical jokes), he eventually came to love school, especially math. He also developed a great love of reading and spent many years reading and rereading classic Chinese texts. He would later use his innate curiosity and intelligence to learn many new skills and talents - including teaching himself English when he came to the United States.

At the age of 14 he left home for Hong Kong where he was given an apprenticeship in a shipyard. It was dangerous work for a boy, and he often told of nearly being electrocuted by machinery and almost being blinded by flying metal shavings. He worked for pennies a day, eating endless meals of rice and eggplant and sleeping on sheets of cardboard on the sidewalk. As he moved up in ranks and earned more money, he and other apprentices would rent beds, which they shared on a rotating schedule.

He would have perhaps stayed in Hong Kong, continuing as a tool and die maker, if it had not been for World War II. During the war he returned to the village, and the family suffered through the devastation of the war and the Japanese occupation. Unable to find work, he supported the family by selling used clothing in other villages or working as a laborer carrying things from place to place, sometimes walking as many as 50 miles a day. The horrors of the war - bombings of the market place, massacres and starvation - were not memories he liked to share. He would shake his head and simply say, "War is a terrible thing."

After the war, opportunities were limited in China, and so, like so many of his countrymen, he left for the United States, where he would join his older brother Ming. His other brother Soo was already in the Philippines. If you asked him if he was worried about going to a foreign land or leaving behind two infant boys Tak Wei and Tak Chee, he would tell you that there was no choice. It was his duty to go where ever he could to find the money to care for them. It was not about being scared or not scared, it was about having a responsibility to support his parents, his sons and his wife Bo Tang, who died a few years after left China.

He came to the United States in 1950 aboard the ship the President Cleveland. He came as Shew Ping Wong, the "paper son" of a family friend. He came with great hope, a willingness to work and little else. In California, he initially found work as a dishwasher, working 70 hours a week for a few dollars a day. It was not enough to support his family, pay back the $5,000 cost of his immigration and build a future. So only a few months after arriving in America, he left his brother's family and boarded a cross-country train with $5 dollars, the address of a friend in New York's Chinatown, and a note that read, "This man does not speak English."

In New York, Frank found financial stability and began his long career in the restaurant business. He honed his skills as a chef and learned the business side of running a restaurant. After New York City, he moved briefly to Syracuse and then left New York for Michigan and the opportunity to buy a partnership in a restaurant in Grand Rapids in 1953.

Grand Rapids was to be an important segment of his life. There he met Ruby Liu, a Chinese missionary, who helped him learn English by reading the Bible, convinced him to become a Christian, and introduced him to the Chinese student community at Calvin College. He also was befriended by the Rev. Walter DuBois and formed many friends at his church, the Madison Square Christian Reformed Church.

In 1958, those friends rallied around him when it was discovered he was an illegal alien and he was threatened with deportation. His friends turned to U.S. Rep. Gerald R. Ford to sponsor a bill to stay his deportation. In one of the petitions they sent in his support, friends and business associates wrote of Frank: "We make this request because we have found him to be an industrious and successful businessman. He is trustworthy and deeply religious. We have also found him generous and helpful. He speaks strongly and openly anti-communistic. We think he has all the qualifications to make a worthy and loyal American."

The future President Ford's bills to stay his deportation never passed, but for several years, with each new session of Congress, Ford reintroduced the bill. Eventually, that process allowed Frank enough time to qualify for a green card, and then citizenship, which he proudly attained in 1974.

In 1963 he married Gerda Liem and left Grand Rapids for Flint, where his daughter Linda was born in 1964 and by 1965 he had moved to Pontiac, where his daughter Mei was born in 1967. He and Gerda divorced in 1980.

In Pontiac, he started Joy Garden, the restaurant he owned and operated for 31 years before retiring in early 1996. He always said Joy Garden wasn't much of a building, an old farm house converted into a home and a restaurant. It may not have been the fanciest restaurant in town, but for his many friends and long-time customers it certainly had the best food. Everyone remembers their favorites: wontons stuffed with pork and shrimp, fried rice dotted with homemade char siu, clam chowder that was the soup of the day every Friday, steak kow with the crispest vegetables, wor shu gai dusted with crushed almonds. Everything was fresh and made from scratch and that was enough to draw truck drivers and millionaires alike.

Even after his retirement, Frank enjoyed cooking for people. He liked taking food to sick friends, preparing roasts for his family during holiday gatherings, hosting parties where he'd bring out heaping platters of Buddha's Delight and roast duck. The admonishment was always to eat it before it got cold and to eat more. After his retirement and his move to Kalamazoo in 2000, his greatest pleasure was to fix his twin granddaughters Ava and Lena anything they wanted for dinner - and to hear them ask for seconds.

One of his greatest regrets was that while he was able to support his parents financially, he never saw them again after leaving China. He was able to bring to America his sons Chee in 1968 and his son Wei and his family in 1980. And he took great pride in what Wei and Chee's children did with their lives.

When people visited his home, his favorite activity was to sit and talk about family. He would motion to the numerous photographs on his television and cabinets and tell a guest to bring him a family photo.

He would then point to each person in photograph and talk about their educational accomplishments and their jobs and talk about how well they were doing.

Some men might have used their final days to talk about how much money they had made or the businesses they had built. He preferred to talk about his journey, how he came to this country with nothing but the clothes on his back, and how his legacy was going to be a strong, healthy family destined to succeed. He had fulfilled his duty, he said, to give his family a foundation from which they could continue to grow.

Frank died April 21, 2007 at his home in Kalamazoo. He was born February 14, 1924 in Canton, China, the son of Hon Loon and Fown Tow (Wong) Mah. Visitation will be Friday from 4:00 - 8:00 PM at Riverside Chapel Simpson-Modetz Funeral Home. Services will be held Saturday 10:30 AM at the First Presbyterian Church, Pontiac. Interment White Chapel Cemetery. He was preceded in death by his four siblings. Members of his family include four children: Tak Wei (Fung Kio) Mah of Waterford, Tak Chee (Shuk Yin) Mah of Waterford, Linda Sun-Lin Mah (William Wood) of Kalamazoo, and Sharon Sun-Mei Mah (Daniel Fechtner) of New York; eleven grandchildren; three great grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews. Please visit www.lifestorynet.com where you can share a memory or photo of Frank, sign his online guest book or make memorial contributions to the Kalamazoo Nature Center or American Red Cross. Arrangements by Life Story Funeral Homes - Betzler, Kalamazoo 375-2900.