Joseph Lawrence Chow – Eulogy

I am John Welling, Joseph’s Uncle

My first memory of Joseph was at his Mothers Doctoral presentation at Cornell. Everyone in the room knew Joseph was there since Donna was the pregnant women flawlessly defending her position but even then we got a glimpse of Joseph’s disposition, he was perfectly behaved causing his mother no problems.

Shortly thereafter we all got to meet Joseph and watch him mature. I will always remember those observant eyes and you could tell, like with all his cousins, that the mind was always going 2000 miles an hour.

That quiet confidence and intellect was always a part of him.


Recently, I looked forward to speaking with Joseph when he returned from Tanzania to see what he had learned, what he had seen and how his life had changed from his time in a totally different culture. I am sure there would have been some extremely interesting and insightful observations he would have shared with all of us.

While we all have faith that Joseph is in a better place a very special place it is still very difficult to accept the situation we find ourselves in.

So I asked myself what can we learn from this:
To not take anything for granted
To appreciate the Sun as it come up each and every day
To appreciate your friends and family
To treat people the right way and
To tell the people you are close to that you love them.

Life is so fragile you cannot afford to waste any of it. Appreciate each and every moment, each and every experience.

Having had the flu for the last couple of weeks allowed me to spend time thinking. With some of that time I thought about the decision Joseph made to join the Peace Corp. I was struck by the image of a young man with his science and math books setting off for Africa to make an impact and to change some lives. I was struck by the unselfishness of his decision and how he always wanted to help and do what he could to make things better for everyone. This was just another example of how he was raised and the values instilled within him. This was Joseph doing what was important to him the way he wanted to do it.

How many of us ever do something like that? One of the most important things we do as a society is to educate our own. Joseph jumped in with both feet and like he did with most things in his life he excelled. Nothing gets done half way in the Chow household and Joseph took that with him to Africa.

I wonder if it was Joseph’s familiarity with ancient Greece and the knowledge that you need an educated citizenry to make democracies work that motivated him? I would certainly like to think so and I vote for that, But

Whatever the motivation, you had a young man heading to Africa so that he could teach people who don’t have the same opportunities we all take for granted. He was making a difference, he was impacting lives.

He learned Swahili, he ran a marathon, he won an award from the government for his teaching and he set a fantastic example for all those young people he met and taught. They will be talking about him for a long time in Tanzania. He accomplished what he set out to do.

Going forward our job is to keep Joseph’s spirit alive. As long as any of us is here he will be here. That has to be the mission we take away from today; Keep his spirit alive and celebrate his life.

As I was working through all of this, trying to make sense of all of this I realized something very important. I was dealing with a young man who was serving his country and who was fighting one of the more important battles any of us will ever fight, educating young people. A word popped into my mind and I had to look up the definition.

That word is Hero. Webster’s dictionary defines hero as: A man of distinguished valor, intrepidity or fortitude.

You can say someone who encounters danger with firmness, someone who is fearless, bold, undaunted or someone who has the strength of mind which enables them to encounter danger or to bear pain with coolness and courage is a hero.


I feel by any of those definitions Joseph is a Hero. What he did, what he accomplished, the way he lived his life and the lives he touched make him a hero in anyone’s book. We are all so lucky that we were around such an outstanding, accomplished person.



Donna and Ray thank you very much for allowing me to speak about my nephew. It is an honor to have done this for my Hero, Joseph Lawrence Chow.