Stella Elaine Sunn Chong

The documented record (FamilySearch ID L614-Z2P, seven sources): Stella Elaine Sunn, born October 5, 1925, Honolulu, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. Her parents were Koon Hung Sunn (b. ~1898, Honolulu) and Mabel Lee Sunn (b. ~1900, USA) — both Hawaii-born Chinese-Americans. In 1940 the Sunns were living in Representative District 5, Oahu. Stella died February 15, 1971, age 45, and is buried in First Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Moorestown Township, Burlington County, New Jersey.

What the family remembers

In a July 2019 email exchange about old family photographs — the first photographs anyone had thought to ask about in years — three voices on Stella came together. Their words are kept here.

Aunt Maggie (Margaret “Maggie” Eesley, Will’s youngest daughter, Chuck’s paternal aunt):

“I remember visiting Stella and Ted when I was 10 or 11. They were Chinese, not Japanese. Grandpa felt very protective of them.”

That puts Maggie’s visit around 1961–62, with Stella and Ted then in their own household.

Aunt Jeanne (Jeanne Eesley Kamiab, Will’s eldest daughter), on her own visit to Stella and Ted — the story that fixed their names in her memory for fifty years:

“For me to remember their names after fifty years means that they were important. We made a detour to visit them at their home somewhere on the East Coast. Stella served us cookies and Jeanne was fussed at for eating the last one and not saving any for Ted who hadn’t come home from work. That cookie is probably why I remember the visit.”

Cousin Roberta, who keeps “a huge collection of mostly 1940s letters” in Grandpa Eesley’s “almost indecipherable” handwriting:

“Stella is a mystery to me. No one is alive who remembers exactly how she became part of the family. She may have joined the scene after Lyle died … I think that’s possible. Mom said Stella lived with the Eesleys in the family home in Bexley (they often took in boarders) until sometime in the 50s. When Stella left, all the other Eesley kids had grown and gone, and Grandpa fell into a deep depression. That is pretty much all I know. Except when Grandpa died in the early 70s, we got flowers from Hawaii that must have been from Stella and her family.”

Three quietly devastating pieces in that account: that Charles Leonard fell into depression when Stella left; that the Chongs sent flowers from Hawaii when Charles died around 1972; and that Roberta’s collection of 1940s letters — possibly the only direct documentary trace of how Stella came to the household — sits unread because the handwriting hasn’t been deciphered.

What the family remembers — earlier framing

The story-as-told that this archive originally seeded with came from Aunt Jeanne in May 2026:

“Stella was a girl from Hawaii and I think she might have been from a mixed parentage (Chinese & Japanese). At any rate she was in danger of being incarcerated in the concentration camps in the west during World War II. So grandpa Eesley brought her over to live with them during the war and she became part of the family at that time. She later married to Dr. Ted Chong and they had two children — SueLynn and I forget what the boy’s name was. But they used to send us macadamia nuts and toasted coconut cans from Hawaii before they were ever popular here and it was so fun to get those packages. They later moved to Philadelphia and were divorced.”

The 2019 thread sharpens this in two places: Maggie’s first-hand correction — “They were Chinese, not Japanese” — aligns with the FamilySearch record of Stella’s parents as Chinese-American Hawaiians. Roberta adds the Bexley, Ohio address and the timing window: Stella lived in the Eesley home into the 1950s, then left, then sometime later Charles Leonard’s grief reset the household.

After

After the war Stella married Dr. Ted Wah Sing Chong, also of Honolulu. They had two children, Sue Lin / SueLynn and Glenn. They settled eventually in the Philadelphia area — Aunt Jeanne and Aunt Maggie both visited them at their home on the East Coast in the 1960s. The Chongs sent macadamia nuts and toasted-coconut cans back to Ohio, food from Hawaii that the Eesleys could not yet buy where they lived. Stella and Ted later divorced; Ted remarried Janice and would live until 2013.

She appears in the family group portrait taken at Charles and Lillie Dale’s home in Bexley standing beside Ted, with Uncle Will in front. That photograph and her early death in 1971 bracket roughly twenty-five years of her adult life inside this family. She had been part of the family for close to thirty years when she died.

Sources: FamilySearch L614-Z2P; Ted Chong’s published obituary (Burlington County Times, 2013); Aunt Jeanne’s oral account (May 2026); July 2019 family email exchange among Chuck, Maggie, Jeanne, and Roberta.