A PERSONAL TRIBUTE TO Chih Chun Lee Hsu (1924-2023)

BY OLIVIA HSU DECKER

MY MOTHER PASSED AWAY ON FEBRUARY 28, 2023, JUST SHY of 100 years old. She was a woman of strength, a devoted Christian, and a great mother of five children. Her father was a successful textile merchant who moved from their native Fu Jiang Provence in China to Manila in the Philippines. Her mother had only two children: my mother and her older sister. Being a conservative Chinese man in the 1920s, her father wanted sons and left the family to be with a Filipino woman who produced those sons with him.

My grandmother decided to educate my mother and her sister like boys. She sent them to medical school, which was very rare in 1940s China when daughters were usually denied higher education. My aunt became a doctor in Shanghai and married a fellow doctor.

My mother was a nurse studying pre-med when she met my father at end of World War II. She worked at the hospital where he was being treated for battle injuries. They got married and moved to Shanghai where my father was the head of traffic police. He was an old-fashioned Chinese husband and didn’t want my mother to work. That ended her dream of being a doctor like her elder sister. After they moved to Taiwan, their family grew to three daughters and two sons. My mother never had the chance to hold another job.

My writing skills and passion for music came from my mother who encouraged me to read and write and enrolled me in church choirs. I was a writer for college magazine and local newspapers and a classical singer during my school years. Mother was very religious and dragged me to church with her on Sundays. I remember singing “Ave Maria” and “Silent Night” and other church music as a kid. I performed in high school concerts, singing operatic arias.

My family lost their wealth in China, and we had no means to travel. My mother encouraged me to dream big. My school library cards always ran out of space. As I read many classical books, I dreamed of journeying all over the world. I remembered reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and I dreamed of a journey in Spain. I read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and was immersed in Russia. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night took me to French Riviera, while Alexandre Dumas’ Le Comte de Monte Cristo brought me to France and Dante’s Divine Comedy transported me to Italy.

I was blessed with literary and musical riches from very young age. I listened to the radio for all sorts of music, not just operas. I could sing most of the songs of The Platters in 1950s and ’60s, all the songs of Lionel Richie in 1970s and ’80s, and the songs of Motown, the Bee Gees, and the Beatles. I remember having dinner in London with Lionel Richie a few years ago, and I burst into his songs “Hello” and “All Night Long” when he asked if I knew him.

My mother was a great cook. I never got the chance to cook; my task was to wash dishes. I would sing aloud like I was on stage while I washed dishes every night.

I left home at age 15 to attend boarding school and college, then moved to Japan and San Francisco shortly after college. My mother hung on to my brothers, but wanted her daughters to venture out to the world. We three sisters immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s. My sister Katherine has been living in La Jolla with her husband Barry for over 40 years, and my baby sister Angela, her husband Thomas, and their daughter Kimberley and sonin-law Eduardo all live in Belvedere near me. My nephew Geo lives in Singapore with his wife Angela and their two daughters. We are very blessed.

Sadly, my mother was disappointed that I never wanted children nor a husband, although I was married for five years. Her traditional definition of a successful woman was one with a good husband and a bunch of great kids. She never cared how many billions of real estate I sold or how many homes and chateaux I owned. But thanks to the traits I inherited from her, my childhood dream of owning a luxury lifestyle magazine with purpose and sponsoring the Olivia Decker Power of Music has taken off to great heights.

While she is in a better world with her God now, I hope my mother will forgive me for not giving her any grandchildren and be proud of me taking care of my clients like they were family and for spreading the power of music to the others.