Mary Fan

Mary Fan was born in Chongming Island, outside of Shanghai and spent her childhood there with her beloved grandmother before leaving for Taiwan after the Chinese civil war. There she met and married William Hu and gave birth to her first son, James Hu. Due to limited opportunities in Taiwan, Mary and her family sought better opportunities in the United States. They moved to San Francisco where William worked as Vice-Consul for the Chinese consulate. Life in the Taiwanese Consulate was both exciting and humble as the family of three lived in a modest apartment that did not even have a kitchen. They then resettled in southern California where she gave birth to Kenneth and Linda Hu.

Mary began her career as keypunch operator and from an entry level position at the L.A. Times self-trained to become a computer programmer then a Senior Systems Analyst over a 35 year time span. As one of the initial Chinese immigrants from Taiwan during the early 1960's, Mary and her family faced many obstacles to survive. Despite rudimentary fluency in English, Mary's determination and adaptability allowed her to assimilate with her co-workers and thrive at her profession. At the L.A. Times she met her 2nd husband James Smith with whom she had her fourth child Deanna Smith.

Anyone who knew Mary would best characterize her as vibrant, honest, loving, gregarious, humorous, insightful, and outspoken with a stong sense of self. Some of her passions included cooking, playing mah-jong, karaoke and dancing. She enjoyed hosting large dinner events where she would whip up over 10 delicious dishes that emphasized precise cutting, immaculate cleaning, colorful presentation and pureness of natural flavor brought out with basic seasonings. Her cooking would be the centerpiece of all family events and holidays and would add to the richness of the family bond.

Professionally, she loved the process of programming, debugging and delivering highly practical programs including one used to the present day to deliver payroll checks and facilitate advertising billing. She was instumental in preventing a shutdown of the payroll systems during the transition to a new millennium in 2000. Mary was an indispensible part of the computer transition team and was highly sought for ther advice and determination of finding solutions to problems. This determination and fight is a trait that was passed down to her children.

She valued education and encouraged all of her children to pursue college-level training and beyond. In Taiwan, where higher level education was limited, Mary understood its value and never wavered in her belief that a strong education was the way to succeed. No matter the cost, the college diploma was always the goal for her children. She would even take out second mortgages on her home for two of her children. Later, two became physicians, one a computer programmer who is a software product leader at IBM and a 4th had a successful career in sales at the L.A. Times.

The greatest challenge she faced in her life was a two year bout with liver cancer which she faced with courage, fortitude and hope. She underwent multimodality therapy and was able to live independently while trying to maintain her regular social routine of mahjong, karaoke and occasional dancing. She enjoyed getting out of the house with Sunday morning breakfast and dinners with her family at a local diner then shopping at the farmer's market for organic vegetables or popping down in a day trip to a casino. She even was able to attend her grandson's graduation from a prestigious US Navy school in South Carolina.

She passed away on 2/25/2013 with her family at her side. She is survived by her 4 children, 7 grandchildren and 2nd husband.