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Thank You, Grace, You Enriched Our Lives
Grace often recommended good books to the Chinese staff who worked at the Central Library. She was such a naturally talented librarian. She knew who liked to read what kind of books. She met with my mother once a few years ago. Since then every time when she learned my mom was visiting us in the US, she would bring some books to me and said: “You can check them out for your mother”. Every book Grace recommended, my mother would read from the beginning to the end. Recently she suggested a book to my mom, but I looked at it and said: “my mother probably won’t like it.” Grace said, “Try it.” She was right. My mother liked the book so much she would talk to me every day about its contents while she was reading it. I still have two books at home from Grace. I would hate to ever return them. Grace loved her job. She would use all her channels to get the best selection of books and DVDs for Queens Library. A few years ago, one of Grace’s brothers passed away. Since then Grace would speak to her mother in China every night on the phone. According to Grace, the conversations between them often lasted for more than an hour. During the conversations, Grace’s mom learned that Grace was helping the library select Chinese TV dramas for the Chinese customers. Grace’s mom began paying attention to all new TV dramas showing on TV in China and recommending good dramas to Grace. Amazingly all the titles that Grace’s mother recommended to us soon became best sellers and were very well circulated in our libraries. We not only relied on Grace for Chinese books, movies and TV dramas, but also all kinds of information. She sent us emails almost every day to our personal email addresses. They were beautiful pictures, health information, jokes, etc. If she stopped sending emails to us for a few days, we would make fun at her and say “You have been lazy recently”. Grace would smile. Then soon afterwards she would send a whole bunch of emails to us. On Saturday evening, May 19th, the day before the accident happened, Grace sent me 3 emails. In one of them she forgot to hide the email addresses of other people whom she sent the email to. On Tuesday of the following week, I replied to the whole group. It’s a big group, with more than 60 people. I told them we will never be able to receive emails from Grace in the future. But we will remember all the joy, knowledge and inspiration that Grace brought to us. Many people emailed me back to pay their condolences. I discovered a lot people in Grace’s email list used to be Grace’s students back when she was in China. 20 years after she came to the U.S., she still kept close connections with her students whom she taught 20, even 30 years ago. It’s pretty remarkable. I could tell how much Grace means to them and how much they still love and appreciate her. Grace will always be missed by her family, friends, colleagues, students and customers. Thank you, Grace. You enriched our lives. --- Ying Shieh, Your friend & colleague (Ms. Shieh Ying is the collection development librarian in the New Americans Program, Queens Library)
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I had known Grace since she became a member of the Ni Hao committee 10 years ago. She helped Ni Hao committee purchase Chinese books and DVDs for the community libraries. Grace was a very knowledgeable and dedicated member of Ni Hao Committee. Grace spent her last day at work with Ni Hao committee members in a Chinese bookstore in China Town on Friday, 5/18. She was very energetic, very happy and very talkative that day. She talked about her recent trip to China, and was very excited about two silk blankets she purchased during a tour in South East China. 
