陈的后人讲述他家的故事
Services for William C. Chin were held Friday at Fort Logan National Cemetery. He was 96 when he died in mid-March. Time caught up with him. Aspirin and an occasional antacid were the only medications he thought worth taking. He had a stubborn streak.
William C.Chin 2012 年以96岁高寿去世，他是 陈林新 的孙子
WILLIAM C. CHIN (February 29, 1916-March 13, 2012)
Chin was a quiet and solemn man. He did not like to make a fuss. He did not like to be fussed over. It did please him, however, that people would stop and shake his hand when they saw him wearing his beloved veteran’s baseball cap embroidered with the words “China-Burma-India.”
This pleasure had nothing to do with him per se, but rather came from a moment’s commune with someone else who did not take this country for granted. I knew I had arrived at his house in Parker on Friday because it was the one with a big American flag on the front porch — and the red door. Chin was as proud of his Chinese heritage as he was of his service.
“I’m not sure other people will find this story interesting,” his daughter, Cindy Hoffman, told me when we first spoke. “It’s just a family story.”
But there is no such thing as “just a family story.” And as for the Chins, what a family and what a story.
Perhaps you have visited the state Capitol and seen the beautiful “Heritage Windows” honoring Colorado’s minority pioneers. One of them is of Chinese immigrant Chin Lin Sou. Chin Lin Sou’s face is also among those in the tile mosaic at the Convention Center. He also has been memorialized, along with Horace Tabor and Buffalo Bill, with a chair at the Central City Opera House.
Chin Lin Sou was William Chin’s grandfather.
Chin Lin Sou was a railroad worker, a recruiter of Chinese labor, a miner and, finally, a businessman who married a Chinese woman who gave birth to a child named Lily. Lily, according to various historical accounts, is the first recorded Chinese-American birth in Colorado.
Lily had a brother named William or Willie, and Willie proved to be as industrious and forward-thinking as his father. He insisted his children graduate from high school and go to college. Willie Chin was the unofficial mayor of Hop Alley, Denver’s version of Chinatown in what is now Lower Downtown. It should be noted that Denver’s version was seedy, full of opium dens and tucked among the saloons and the brothels. But it was a segregated city and the Chinese lived where they were allowed to live.
William Chin, the soldier, was born in Hop Alley, and he used to joke with his son named — you guessed it, William — that “my house was right around where third base is now in Coors Field.”
William Chin’s three children say their father knew what his forefathers went through in this country. Anti-Chinese sentiment was high in the late 1800s, and it hit a low point in Denver in 1880 when white laborers instigated a riot in Hop Alley that saw the lynching of a Chinese man.
Chin, too, faced discrimination: redlining, limited job opportunities, the inability to join a union. “He wasn’t bitter about it,” his son says. “He was just matter-of-fact.”
Despite that, Chin and his brother, Edward, enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Fort Logan in 1942. William Chin became a communications officer and served in the 14th Air Force. Until his last days, he never went out without pinning to one lapel an American flag and to the other his Flying Tigers pin.
“He talked about his time in the service as being the best time of his life,” Chin’s youngest child, Diane, says.
He would later help found and become first commander of Cathay Post No. 185, an American Legion post composed almost entirely of Chinese and Japanese veterans.
“To the mothers and fathers of the boys who paid the supreme sacrifice, we say that we shall carry on so that they shall not have died in vain,” he wrote in his opening message.
Patriotism among those whose devotion to this country has never been tested, who have known only its benevolence, strikes me as easy enough. But to know firsthand its flaws and commit oneself to it still is more than an act of loyalty. It is an act of faith.
“He always felt blessed to have been born here,” Cindy says. “He always taught us the life was what you made of it.”
William Chin returned from war to work many jobs, eventually finding a permanent place as a television station sound technician in Los Angeles. He returned to Colorado about 19 years ago.
His family honored him Friday with a Chinese custom. They handed out red envelopes to those who knew and will miss him. Each contained a dollar coin and two pieces of hard candy. The coin, Diane explained, was so that he could buy his loved ones one last gift. The candy was to take away the bitterness.
—— Denver Post
他竟然入籍了？！
到，然后一顿搜寻
查找，竟然没啥中文介绍而被二次震惊
