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Kate's earliest
years were as refugee in her own country. She was carried by her
mother, running with a group of women and children trying to stay
one village ahead of the invading Japanese Army. During the brief
peace between WWII and the Revolution, she attended kindergarten
in Canton. In 1949 the revolution forced her family to join the
exodus to Macao, which was then a tiny picturesque Portuguese Colony
with a quaint combination of Mediterranean and Chinese culture;
a tropical peninsula, where a child's daily companions were crickets,
dragonflies and silkworms. Kate spent her formative years in Macao
and it's where she first fell in love with a "place". Later
her family moved to Hong Kong, which was yet another culture combination
- this time British and Chinese. There she received an English education
in an American Catholic high school.
Her father left his one-room school at the age of 14 to care for
a large extended family. He went on to become a poet, teacher, writer,
and editor of a succession of major newspapers long before he reached
the age of 30. One of his novels was turned into a movie. He took
his children to American movies where he read the Chinese subtitles
while the kids absorbed the language. The family may not have known
they were watching "film noir" - but Mr. Wong knew what he liked.
His gene for reading and education was passed to each of the Wong
children along with an appreciation for James Cagney, Edward G.
Robinson and Humphry Bogart movies.
Her father's words to her as he sent his daughter to the other side
of the world were: "Remember, that your actions in America will
not be seen as the actions of Kate Wong, but as the actions of a
Chinese."
Kate came to the United States via a slow boat from China, for things
were still unhurried in 1965. It was a time when one could look
up at the Golden Gate Bridge instead of looking down on it from
30,000 feet. On her trip across the Southwest by bus, she was amazed
that each town seemed to be having a festival. She later learned
the flags were used-car lot pennants. She attended Texas Woman's
University in Denton where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in Library
Science in three years. She worked summers - but not in Texas. She
got a job at a resort in the Catskills of New York State.
After graduation, she worked as a Houston children's librarian by
day and a cocktail waitress by night - a combination you seldom
hear of anymore (that's what one does when one has many younger
brothers and sisters). She then moved to New York, where she attended
City University of New York. There she earned a Master's Degree
in Speech Pathology. She was amused when the city of New York appropriated
her personal phrase of "I Love New York" and used it to promote
tourism.
Her artistic side eventually led her to a career in freelance textile
design, where she designed linen patterns - some of which were recently
displayed as far away as a London boutique. When she returned to
Houston to comply with an immigration directive, her experience
in design led to art restoration and later yet another career in
conservation framing, where she worked with some of Houston's most
prestigious interior designers.
John and Kate met in 1990 and were
married shortly thereafter in Paris (Arkansas).
Sometimes addressed by her childhood friends as "Cat" - after naturalization
she was known to her movie-buff friends as "Citizen Kate."
When the time came to build Texas
Escapes, being a computer illiterate, she had to start from
less than ground zero. Once again, her artistic instinct and Library
Science training came through.
Since becoming webmaster for Texas
Escapes, she discovered the many layers of Texas she never got
to see when she worked and studied in Denton, and came to understand
and admire Texans' pride in their state. By now she has lived in
Texas longer than anywhere else in her meandering journey through
life. It has become a place she now loves as much as she once loved
New York, or Macao.
John
Troesser, May 2001
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