Remembering Iris Pierce (1947 - 2015)

Pei Yuan Wu (2015/03/16)

When reaching a certain age, one is to face the inevitable eventuality: the passing, one by one, of one's contemporaries (or even younger ones). This is the situation I am right in. One more friend of mine, a female one, just passed away.

 Iris Pierce (Iris Ai-Hwa Liu, 劉藹華) died of complications from pancreatic cancer in March, 2015. First met in 1970, we have known each other for more than 40 years. It all started in a 5-day English class given by the "Language Center" in Taipei in the summer of 1970, for the purpose of preparing students for their graduate studies in the US. By that time, with a teaching assistantship in hand, I was about to go to Indiana University (IU) to study mathematics. On the other hand, Iris was not so certain about her future plan. Graduating from the history department of "National Taiwan Normal University", employed as a research assistant at the "Academia Sinica", and granted an admission to the audio and visual department of IU, she had not quite made up her mind whether to pursue a higher degree over there. Our encounter in the "Language Center" was brief. However, she impressed me as an intelligent and idealistic girl, ready to explore the world and fun to talk with, so much so that I was almost ready to pursue her as my girl friend. As the fate has it, this turns out not to be. At the end of the classes, not much happened except that we agreed to get in touch with each other later on.

 

During the year of 1970 - 71, we exchanged some mails, in which I told her my impression of the beautiful IU campus. In the fall of 1971, she finally came and we met again after the one-year hiatus. She was popular among the Taiwanese students there, engaging in all sorts of campus activities. This was the time when China, in the second half of the "Cultural Revolution", was slightly opened up to the outside world. A first group of 6 Taiwanese overseas students just came back from a visit to China and toured around US university campuses to expound the greatness of the communist system. Iris, first exposed to such new viewpoints, was fascinated by them as were most of the Taiwanese students at that time. Since we were accommodated in the same graduate student dormitory, Eigenmann Hall, we ran into each other, almost on a daily basis, during the lunch and supper times in its cafeteria. However, our relation was not that intimate: she was not easy to get close to, and some distance seemed always between us. For the whole year, we dated only once: watching a movie together at a local cinema on a snowy day.

 In the summer of 1972, she went to Boston, and took up some part-time job in a department store in Cambridge. I stayed back in the IU campus preparing for my Ph.D. qualifying exam. For a break, I also took a trip, in June, to the US east coast to look up my former college classmates there. After an all-night car ride, I finally reached Cambridge. I gave her a call and was temporarily settled in her friend's residence at East Gate Building on the MIT campus. During those days, she was apparently attracting quite a few male students there. After I got hold of my friend, the next morning I gave her another call asking her to be my local escort. She said "no" with assorted reasons. As my friend was busy with his own chores, I went through the Harvard and MIT campuses all by myself, feeling somehow lonely and depressed. While I was strolling on Massachusetts Avenue close to 5:00 PM, I happened to run into her, as she was on her way to her 5:30 to 9:30 shift at Sears. She thought that I had been accompanied by my friend, and felt somehow sorry for me. We struck up some small talks and then parted our ways. My crush on her for the past whole year had finally come to an end.

 After finishing her Master's degree, she came back to Taiwan in 1973 and worked as a lecturer in her alma mater. Two years later, I also came back, now newly married and minted with the Ph.D. degree, to join "National Chiao Tung University". My wife Yenlin was also acquainted with her from before. For the 40 years since, we have had our paths crossed only a few times. Once we were all in 紫藤廬 in Taipei, when she showed us the tea ceremony she had just learned some time ago. On another occasion, we even met her mother in one of our gatherings. From mutual friends, we learned later that she had been involved with a married nonpartisan member (王拓, 1944 - 2016) associated with the Taiwan independence movement, again as a result of her naivete. Years later, she decided to quit her job and went back to IU to study for another degree. In 1987 - 88, I had my sabbatical year spent in Toronto, Canada. At the end, on the way back to Taiwan, we stopped by California and visited her at her home in Los Gatos. By that time, she had already been married to William Pierce (1944 - 2004), whom she met in IU, and gave birth to a baby boy, Jonathan Pierce. They treated us with some barbecues and we got to know William for the one and only time. During the ensuing years, we learned that William passed away in 2004 after a protracted bout of cancer and, afterwards, Iris had a surgical operation to have part of her pancrea removed. Fast-forward to 2012, on November 16, she joined a group of senior citizens for a trip to Hsinchu to tour an LED company (宏齊科技), to do some bird watching (in 金城湖), and to have a luncheon prepared by                    

chef in the restaurant 饌巴黎大飯店 in Zhubei. This is the only time we met after almost a quarter of a century, and, as we now know belatedly, it will be the last. We briefly chatted. She looked fine after all she had been through, and seemed reserved as always. Before her departure, we had a photo taken together in front of the reception counter of the restaurant.

Forty-five years have passed since our first encounter in Taipei. Following long and winding routes, we touched on each other's life briefly. Mixed feelings came up when the news of her passing reached me. Sad to say, this also means that another chapter of my life has been folded up and turned over.

 Epilogue: Iris's memorial service was on March 14, 2015. Her son Jonathan Pierce posted an "Iris Pierce Memorial Video" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Ns4FX3cTw) on YouTube. Watching it made me realize that I have missed much of her life before and after.