Remembering My Mother Jindi

Jindi Tian

July 22, 1932-March 11, 2019 

My mother Jindi Tian passed peacefully on March 11, 2019. She was 86. A private memorial service was held on March 16, at Chun Fook Funeral Services in Flushing, New York.

Jindi started her life with a tragic bang. At age three, she lost her mother who died from a difficult childbirth. To seek a better future in Shanghai, her father Ruixin Tian left her in his mother’s care in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province. After her grandmother died, Jindi joined her father who by then had established himself in both family and career: he was remarried, and promoted to a head foreman in the Yufeng Textile Mill (later changed to the Shanghai #17 Textile Mill). At age ten, Jindi began working in the same textile mill to help support her new family.

Despite her calamitous beginning, Jindi lived a full life by taking charge of her own destiny. She managed to receive an alternative education by attending the Textile Mill’s Evening School. It was there that Jindi met her future husband Rushan Huang. They married in 1953, and had three daughters (the firstborn died in infancy), and one son. In her mid-thirties, Jindi became a director, managing thousands of workers and technical personnel. However, her professional life was not entirely smooth sailing. During the Cultural Revolution, she was thrown out of power and bodily injured, as she did not kowtow to unjustified accusations.  

Jindi was a firm believer in education and lifelong learning. From 1989 to 1997, she and Rushan were fulltime caregivers of their grandson Nick, while his mother was in the States for her graduate degrees. Seeing her second son-in-law doing his postdoctoral work at Johns Hopkins University, she succeeded in encouraging her second daughter, to study and obtain her Master’s in biotechnology. Inspired by Jindi, her three children all graduated from prestigious universities, such as Fudan, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Stanford. Her five grandchildren have followed in their parents’ footsteps by also graduating from top universities on both coasts.

Jindi considered herself a lifetime worker. By her retirement in 1988, her three children had all departed for America. She reorganized the remaining four family members: she and her husband, her 91-year-old father-in-law, and 4-year-old grandson. After the passing of the grandfather and then of her husband, she immigrated to this country in 2003. In 2012, following a hip replacement and diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s, she was transferred to Cedar Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Ossining, New York. There she would help the staff with activities in the dayroom, under the supervision of Helena O’Brien, a staff member who incredibly shared the same birth year as Jindi. When asked, Jindi would tell people that she worked there, still not retired.

Jindi visited Santa Cruz for the first time in July 1997. She came back several more times on her way to New York or Shanghai. When those visits coincided with the Independence Day, she thoroughly enjoyed the “Shortest Parade in the World” in Aptos, and the Fourth of July parade in La Selva Beach. Jindi loved to pamper her daughter’s cat Chippy with treats. They spent many mornings listening to tapes together, as she did her Tai Chi. Chippy was concerned whenever the sound of the tape stopped; and she truly worried when Jindi suffered from one of her Alzheimer’s episodes, and remained outside for hours.

Jindi is preceded in death by her parents, Ruixin Tian and Aibao Shao, and, stepmother Qianmei Luo, her first daughter Jian Huang, and her husband Rushan Huang. She is survived by her daughters Hui-Lan (Paul) Titangos of Santa Cruz, Hui Huang (Baolin Wang) of Croton-on-Hudson, NY, and son Ying (Sue) Huang of Yorktown Heights, NY. She is also survived by five grandchildren, Nicolas C. (Lee Anne) Titangos, Wendy Wang (Peter Lubell-Doughtie), Stephanie Wang, Eric and Emily Huang, and two great grandchildren, Elena Lee and Paul George Titangos. Back in Shanghai, Jindi left behind her stepbrother Cunmin Luo (Rongxie Yao), two half sisters, Rongdi Tian (Youxin Ma) and Xindi Tian (Youmin Song), plus six nephews; and one niece in Cupertino, CA.

My family would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude to Cedar Manor and it’s nursing staff for their professional loving care. We would like to thank her roommate’s daughter, Mariam Walker, for her highly skilled nursing advice, and help. We would also like to thank Doris, Lisa and Bob’s family, and colleagues and management of Regeneron for coming to the memorial service, and for feeding Jindi last year. The caring feeding team includes Na, Li Pan, Shirley Jiang, Amy, etc. In Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz Public Libraries in particular, we are equally grateful to the many colleagues and friends who have expressed their deepest condolences and sympathy for the passing of Jindi.