Ted Wah Sing Chong, M.D.

Dr. Ted Wah Sing Chong (FamilySearch GDG6-3J1, eleven sources) was born in Honolulu on August 24, 1920 to Mr. and Mrs. C.S. Wing — five years before Stella Sunn, in the same city. He attended McKinley High School in Honolulu, then went to the U.S. mainland for higher education: undergraduate degree, medical degree, and graduate medical studies all at the University of Pennsylvania, with medical school taken under the United States Naval Reserve program.

He was on active duty as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in the USNR from 1943 to 1945, serving at Tripler Medical Hospital in Aiea, Hawaii and at Operation Sandstone in the Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific. After the war he began a private obstetric and gynecology practice in Honolulu.

In the years that followed he relocated to Moorestown, New Jersey, where he practiced medicine in South Jersey for over fifty years. He served on the clinical faculty of Thomas Jefferson University and Cooper Hospitals, and at Zurbrugg Hospital in Riverside, NJ, was a founder of a breast cancer clinic for women — a notable thing for a male OB/GYN of his generation to have organized.

He was a serious amateur golfer. He carried a single-digit handicap for many years and remained a golfer through age 92. He belonged to the Doctors Golf Association of Philadelphia and the Tavistock Country Club. He kept a garden.

First marriage — to Stella Elaine Sunn, in the years after the war. Stella died February 15, 1971. They had two children: Sue Lin / SueLynn and Glenn.

Second marriage — to Janice M. Chong, who survived him. Two further children, Jei Lee Freeman (married Barry Freeman; of Winchester, MA at the time of Ted’s death) and Erica Slavin (of Nantucket, MA at the time of Ted’s death). Grandchildren listed in the obituary as Ryan Chong, Kevin Chong, and Lucy Freeman.

Surviving extended family in 2013 included his sister Marietta Eng of Honolulu and sister-in-law Blanche Chong of Honolulu.

He appears in the late-1960s family group portrait standing beside Stella, with Uncle Will in front.

Aunt Jeanne’s most durable memory of Ted is a non-memory: he was at work the afternoon she visited Stella and Ted’s home on the East Coast, hadn’t come home yet, and Jeanne ate the last cookie Stella had set out for him. She was “fussed at” for it. Fifty years later that was the detail that came back when she thought about Stella and Ted — “that cookie is probably why I remember the visit.”

Sources: FamilySearch GDG6-3J1; Ted Chong’s published obituary (Burlington County Times, January 2013).