Woman Who Could Not Forget (21 page)

In February 1991, President Bush ordered the bombing of Baghdad and the war in Iraq was dominating the headlines. Iris immediately called us, saying that all her classmates in JHU were watching the news in the TV lounge and were very concerned. We were also watching the news attentively. But the most important thing I was concerned with at the time was Iris’s wedding. Because my gastrointestinal illness had not improved over time, I was very worried that I would not be able to prepare a good wedding party for Iris. However, Iris seemed not to be worried about her wedding at all, and urged me to relax and take care of my health.

On Valentine’s Day, Iris mailed us a card. On the front was a kitten licking the mama cat’s cheek and the mother cat was closing her eyes and enjoying the moment. Inside, Iris wrote:

I miss both of you very much and I can’t wait to see you again in May! Brett sent me half a dozen roses today and told me he might have a chance to be in a submarine—his research on sonar imaging will be used by the Navy.

I’m pretty busy writing fiction, nonfiction, teaching and reading novels and poetry. (Baltimore has a rich literary heritage. . . did you know that Edgar Allen Poe, H. L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Francis Scott, they all came from this city!) In all honesty, I think my stay at Johns Hopkins has been quite exciting and well worth the year-long separation from Brett. He’s going to love it out here when he visits me in March. He has the most incredible memory for historical facts, and yet he’s never been to Washington!

Very soon after this letter, she called us in excitement with good news. Her adviser, Professor Barbara Culliton, told her that her friend, Susan Rabiner, a book editor at HarperCollins, was trying to find a writer for a book on a Chinese rocket scientist named Tsien Hsue-shen. Culliton seemed to like Iris’s writing style and thought she was a good candidate to be this writer. Professor Culliton was a renowned science writer and editor for many prestigious science magazines such as
Science
and
Nature
. According to Culliton, Susan Rabiner heard the story of Tsien at a scientific conference in 1990 and felt his life was worth a book.

Iris said that Culliton had recommended her to Susan Rabiner because of Iris’s Chinese background and her scientific writing skills. Iris did not know anything at all about Dr. Tsien, however. Over the telephone, Iris asked us, “Do you know this Chinese scientist, Tsien Hsue-shen?” Shau-Jin told her, “Of course I know him. He is quite famous in China.” In fact, Shau-Jin had met him in person in 1980 in Beijing, when Shau-Jin had been invited as one of the overseas Chinese physicists for a physics conference. Shau-Jin told her what he knew about Tsien and, in addition, told her that on our bookshelf we had a Chinese book on him. Iris got very excited and said she would tell Susan Rabiner about it. Several days later, Iris told us that Susan had really responded to the fact that Shau-Jin and so many other contemporary Chinese scientists knew about Tsien and asked Iris to gather as much information on Tsien as she could. This was the beginning of a huge transition point in Iris’s life.

Dr. Tsien Hsue-sen was a brilliant Chinese-born scientist who was educated at MIT and Caltech. He had made enormous contributions in rocketry and had helped America enter the space age. At the peak of his career, he was caught up in the witch hunt of McCarthyism and was accused, falsely, of being a Communist. After being deported back to China, he became the father of the Chinese missile and space program.

Iris ended up writing three books in her short life that were all related to China. Many people thought that it was her own idea to write something related to her ethnic background and cultural heritage, but actually the first book on Dr. Tsien was completely due to Susan Rabiner’s suggestion. I remember Iris told me that she had talked to Susan about her book idea about John Bardeen, the American two-time Nobel laureate in physics, but Susan thought Dr. Tsien’s life was more interesting and would make for a better book.

In March, Brett flew to Baltimore to visit Iris during her spring break. They went to Washington, D.C., not only to visit the museums, but because Iris wanted to go to the National Archives to see whether there were any files there on Tsien. On March 19, 1991, Iris wrote us a postcard :

Dear Mom and Dad:

Brett and I went to the FBI museum today! . . .

By the way, Susan Rabiner at HarperCollins talked to me today and she wants me to write up a proposal on Chien Xue-xin (more than one of its spellings) . . . She was really excited about the project, esp. after I told her about the info Dad told me. More later . . . Love, Iris

Then, on March 24, she mailed us another postcard that said:

Dear Mom and Dad:

. . . Brett and I went to Washington on Friday, so I could do some research on Tsien Hsue-shen. NASA had a file on him that was more than an inch thick! I spent an hour xeroxing all the articles on him, then went to the National Archives. There was no information on him there because Tsien is still alive. I will have to file a Freedom of Information Act form to get the FBI files on him, and that can take 2 to 5 years!!! Anyway, Susan Rabiner had called me early Friday morning and told me Barbara Culliton (my advisor) is really excited about this and that
Nature
may print an excerpt or article about the book if it works out. More later. . . . Love, Iris

She was working hard and using her spring break to collect information on Tsien. Several weeks later, she gave Susan Rabiner a written report. Susan was really impressed.

I had been continuously working in my lab, in spite of my abdominal discomfort, until May. I was so sick in May that I could not work further. I finally took some sick leave. At the time, I had lost almost fifteen pounds. In the latter part of May, the doctor finally confirmed that it was pseudomembranous colitis again and prescribed vancomycin, and I was back on the healing track.

For Iris’s wedding, Luann visited us several times and brought a book to tell us how to prepare a good wedding. We had discussed the reception in detail. With Iris and Brett on the East and West Coast, respectively, the planning was on the shoulders of both sets of parents.

On Mother’s Day, Iris mailed me a card and wrote:

I wish I could spend Mother’s Day with you. . .especially now that you’re resting at home most of the time. You must be exhausted from planning the wedding reception and I feel pretty guilty about staying on the East Coast for a few extra weeks instead of coming back to Urbana as soon as possible. But at the same time, I’m glad to be spending so much time with Grandma! She told me an interesting story tonight (a Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet) of a woman scholar who dresses as a man and falls in love with a poor student, ending with the woman crawling into his grave, from which two butterflies sail into the sky—perhaps you know the name of this fairy tale? I hope to find you relaxed and well when I see you again. I love you very much. . . . Iris.

Because of my illness, I missed Michael’s college graduation ceremony on May 12. Only Shau-Jin attended. Michael graduated from the Electric Engineering Department of the U of I and received an assistantship from the Department of Electric Engineering of UCSB. He was going to study in Santa Barbara, the same place Brett was. I was happy that Iris, Brett, and Michael would be in the same place starting in May.

On May 24, finally, Iris came home from Baltimore, having completed her one-year writing seminar program and having obtained a master’s degree in writing. She did not stay home long. Two weeks later, on June 9, she went to Santa Barbara to be with Brett. She was eager to go to California to collect information on Tsien in preparation for her book proposal, as Dr. Tsien had graduated from Caltech and spent a number of years in Los Angeles, and Iris wanted to interview his friends and colleagues while she was out west. Another reason, of course, was that she wanted to be reunited with Brett. She and Brett missed each other terribly during their separation.

Iris came home on August 7, just ten days before the wedding. By then, arrangements for the ceremony and the reception had already been made.

On the morning of Saturday, August 17, 1991, the weather forecast was cloudy with possible rain. The wedding ceremony was at 5:00
P.M
. In the early afternoon, a summer storm brought a brief shower. I went with Iris to the church a couple of hours prior to the storm. Iris and all the bridesmaids were busy changing clothes and setting their hair in the back lounge of the church. Iris did not want to put too much makeup on her face and insisted that she look natural. I was the one who was nervous, whereas Iris was quite relaxed.

When the time was near, I was ushered to the front seat of the church, whereas Shau-Jin was waiting near the entrance door with Iris since he would be giving her away. When the guests settled, we heard Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” which was sung from the balcony above by a music-major student of the U of I whom Iris had invited. The song was beautiful and touched everyone’s heart. Just at this time, the sun suddenly broke through the clouds and its rays penetrated through the rainbow-colored stained glass of the church. United Methodist Church was huge, with a three-story-high cathedral ceiling and gigantic windows. The whole church was quiet but bright, and the melody was resonating in the spacious open air. The atmosphere was solemn and holy. I could barely breathe as I listened to the beautiful music and soaked up the moment.

The bridesmaids, Amy Orfield, Kathy Szoke, and Carolyn Wu, and the maid of honor, Janice Karlovich, paraded down one after the other toward the altar. All were Iris’s best friends; they wore elegant bright fuchsia-colored dresses. When the wedding procession music was played on the old church organ, we saw Shau-Jin accompanying Iris walking slowly down the red-carpeted aisle to the altar. Iris smiled along the way and finally joined Brett, who was standing in front of the minister. Minister Palmer officiated the ceremony and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “All I Ask of You” was sung midway through the ceremony. When the ceremony ended, everyone told us it was the most beautiful wedding they had ever seen!

I was quite happy—and a bit relieved—that the wedding was over. It had taken me almost a year of preparation, and it went flawlessly. Iris and Brett left for Santa Barbara immediately after the wedding. They had decided to take their honeymoon after resting for a while first.

It was a fairytale to many of our friends as well as to Iris and Brett’s friends: a beautiful princess married to a handsome prince.

A
fter the wedding, Iris lived with Brett in Goleta, a small town next to Santa Barbara where the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) is located. Brett was working on his PhD in electrical engineering.

Over the Labor Day weekend of 1991, Iris and Brett went to Las Vegas for their honeymoon and stayed at Caesar’s Palace. Later she mailed us a big photo portrait of them taken during the Vegas show
Splash
at the Riviera Hotel. In the photo, both look so young and beautiful; this is one of the best photos of them. Her smile is quite cheerful and her eyes glitter with intelligence and drive. The portrait was on the wall of our family room in Urbana for many years. It was also displayed in every house Iris and Brett ever lived in together.

On October 6, Iris wrote us a three-and-a-half-page single-spaced typed letter that touched on several topics. She said that she had talked to Susan Rabiner, and Susan thought her book should have “enormous reviews,” but “how well it sells depends on a number of factors: the details I am able to gather, the quality of the narration, the subject matter, the timing of the book and the promotion.” Iris also mentioned that “There should be three markets for this book: the scientific community, the Chinese-American community, and the political community—particularly those interested in the McCarthy era of the 1950’s.” She was very focused and wanted her first book to be successful even before she got the contract. She was learning every possible bit of information on the book-publishing business while she also gathered information on Tsien.

In the letter, she also told us:

If you are looking for any good books to read, then you should check out
American Steel
by Richard Preston. It’s an excellent example of literary journalism, and I highly recommend it. . . . I’m also reading
Cross Creek
by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
by Edmund Morris in my spare time. Just the other day I read that a woman won the Nobel Prize in literature—Nadine Gordimer of South Africa. I plan to read some of her novels when I get the chance. The caliber of writing in Nobel Prize literature is several cuts higher than even the best of most contemporary American writing, yet so few people put the works of Nobel Prize authors on their reading list. Had it not been for the Nobel Prize committee, I probably would not have discovered the Icelandic epic novels of Halldór Laxness, or the Yiddish short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer or the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, from Poland.