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Edna Chun referred me to the recent Oberlin Alumni Magazine where Connie's obituary appeared. Edna also provided some other background information which I hope she will share with us.
What an amazing and productive, cross-cultural life she has led! https://news.stanford.edu/2020/10/19/long-time-manager-stanfords-center-east-asian-languages-cultures-dies/
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Mary Johnson (Gartner)
Connie's contributions to the understanding and appreciation of East Asian cultures are impressive. I remember her as a kind and giving friend.
Edna Chun
Dear friends,
How can I do justice in writing about Connie Powell Chin, a true adventurer, exuberant lover of life, and lifelong friend? I can hear her enthusiastic voice and her upbeat laugh! A highly perceptive individual yet also very unassuming, Connie was always interested in a new vantage point, willing to explore new horizons, open to new experiences. Just as an example, I still remember vividly when we were at Oberlin her detailed and enthusiastic description of the Gullah language in South Carolina where she had lived. Her intellectual curiosity and genuine appreciation for other cultures were apparent.Just think, her master's thesis was completed in 2012 at age 66 at San Jose State while working at Stanford! It is a brilliant and highly original work illustrated with maps titled "Georgraphy and Social Structure of Monasteries: Cultural Diffusion or Convergent Evolution?"td_theses/4127/
http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/e
Connie was a person of so many dimensions: teaching overseas in Hong Kong and then at Tunghai University where she met her husband, Ernest, and married on Yangmingshan. Learning foreign languages, playing the cello, always exploring. We spoke by phone before the Oberlin reunion and she told me she had cancer and wasn't sure if she would be well enough to travel. She was incredibly proud of her son, David Chin, who completed his Ph.D. at the University of California at Davis and landed a teaching job at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. https://www.umass.edu/sphhs/person/david-chin
Stanford University has created a writing prize in her honor:
https://ealc.stanford.edu/news/connie-chin-memorial-prize-writing-east-asian-studies-new-prize-created
When I spoke to her about the loss of my son, Alex, she shared with me a way to keep from breaking out into tears with a story that ended with, "Change the channel." Connie, always a brave and noble soul who is already greatly missed!
Donna Miller (Cleverdon)
Connie was my roommate at South for our Sophmore year. She was delightful, and tolerant. My best memories were of her in the "desk room" practicing her Chinese pronumciation late into the evening, while I loafed and fell asleep in the "bedroom." She was so kind that she never expressed what surely must have been dismay at my behavior as I climbed through our first floor window after curfew on at least one occasion.