My aunt started an e-mail thread in my family. I’ll include excerpts here periodically.

I am cleaning the house of more pictures — so many. In the album Grandma Omma left, I found some pictures your mom. I will send another email of your mom and dad’s wedding that you probably have seen already.

My mom, like her father before her, loved science. She started in physical chemistry like her father but her heart condition caused by rheumatic fever led her to work in biophysics studying the neural network of the heart and heart arrhythmias.

Because of her health condition, which she eventually succumbed to, her father, my grandfather, would not allow her to leave Salt Lake City for college or graduate school.

[Here is a photo of your mom] Apchang’s graduation. Back of this photo has the date March 1961

So she got her Ph.D. from the University of Utah in Chemistry at the age of 23, finishing her undergraduate in three years and her graduate in two. (This includes the half year my father forced her to repeat her senior year in high school, her first year in the United States.)

I’m told the University of Utah still has a three year post-graduate residency requirement. That rule was put in place because of her.

I also found a picture of the three sisters having fun with Grandpa Aboji and Grandma Omma.

This photo needs no commentary.

“I love you, too, mommy Chay.”

Your son,

terry chay