Joseph's application to the Peace Corp - I found this today

Motivation Statement

I am attracted to the Peace Corps because its two main tenets, travel and service, interest me. I believe I have sufficient tact and training to live in a foreign country and work for others. Francis Bacon wrote in his essay on travel, ““Travel in the younger sort is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience;” he then goes on to describe a lasting association with a foreign culture which involves total immersion, deep personal relationships and continuing contact. Bacon and many other authors wrote about the difference between a superficial trip and true travel; however I have never really had this sort of experience, and experience with other cultures has been limited at best. In high school and early in college I studied Latin and Greek, believing that they would help my mastery of English and expand my understanding of western culture; however I now regret never learning to speak a modern language. In college I had a concentration in history, which is a sort of travel in which the student must seek to understand past cultures with an open mind. However, books and artifacts are severely limited and cannot substitute for actual experience. I hope to continue my education now by living abroad for an extended period of time.

To a large degree I was shaped by my high school, a Jesuit boy’s school which chose as its motto the phrase, “A Man for others.” All of its students had to perform community service in order to graduate, and I spent several weekends at a hospice for terminal cancer patients. In college, however, classes and work limit my time and I have not reached out as much as I would have liked. The service aspect of the Peace Corps is also important for me, and I hope to be more than a traveler in whichever country I work in.

In addition to these reasons I wish to test myself in a new environment. I have spent well over a decade in school and now hope to put my education to use. I have studied under teachers who told us students that we were being trained to think, that we could work through a wide array of problems as they arose by approaching them logically and weighing our options. I believe I can put this sort of ability to use serving others and I hope that I can react to new situations as they arise. I dislike backing away from challenges, and after every failure I spend hours thinking about what I could have done differently, about how I could work harder to change the next result. I believe that service in a foreign country could be the most difficult and rewarding thing I have done thus far in my life, and I am excited about the prospect of working abroad.

Two years of Joseph in Africa

Part of the whole loss issue is the fact that Joseph was not at home for the last two years. He was a young man, and he was serving his country, so it was not unusual he was not at home. But to go away for two years (3 months) was a long time to leave home. Joseph thought so too. He was only going to apply to medical school in NY city and Westchester.

Luckily, we got to spend some quality time with Joseph in the last two years. In September 2008 Joseph was supposed to go to London to visit his girlfriend. Llana is an investment banker and had been working for Lehman Brothers. After a year in Africa, Joseph was not sympathetic to the consumer US society (still very idealistic). Unfortunately, Joseph showed up in London the week that Lehman's Brothers went bankrupt; and I doubt he had much sympathy for the investment bankers. Anyway, we got a call late on a Friday saying that he and Llana were splitting up, could he come home for 2 weeks. Two days later he was home, and we spent a week and a half together. Joseph got to visit his friends in NY, and then we drove up to Amherst to see Daniel play rugby. The next weekend we drove up to Middlebury so Joe could spend some time with Daniel, we played some golf. Then we did an incredibly long drive down to see Kyle at Georgetown. Something like a 12 hour drive thru upstate NY, Pennsylvania, Maryland and DC. It gives fond memories.

We had said we would visit Joe in Africa, so in January 2009 we started the trip. It was perfect, Kyle could go before he started work for the summer, and we could leave the day after Daniel's graduation. We got to spend three great weeks with Joseph - when I came home, I was so happy. Tanzania was a great place to visit; the Serengetti was amazing and we spent all that time together as a family. What memories.

The other way we stayed in touch, especially the first year was through mail and packages. Every week I wrote Joseph a letter for the first year - when he had no internet. Then, we wrote emails. The packages were from all the Aunt's and Uncle's and family and friends. Joseph knew he was missed, and he had enough to read. Every Sunday for the entire two years I would call at 1 pm on Sunday. Every Sunday, most of them we would talk for an hour. He was lonely, and he liked the phone calls. He was always there to pick them up. The first few weeks after the accident the hardest part of the week was 1 pm on Sunday. It had become a habit.

Joseph - on teaching

Cross-Cultural Experience

My first day teaching swim lessons was a disaster. In my first class I was immediately confronted with fifteen unruly six-year olds who were thrilled to be in the water but weren’t interested at all in listening to an instructor, and try as I might I could not keep their attention for more than thirty seconds. If I stopped to yell at one child, another three would jump off the walls and meander throughout the pool. I resorted to blowing my whistle, normally just a safety mechanism, but even then none of the kids listened to me. In my second class I realized that years of competitive swimming cannot prepare anyone to persuade a child to put his face in the water. I spent twenty minutes yelling at one boy to submerge his head, not realizing that this process required patience and understanding over an extended period. By the end of the day I was exhausted, but more importantly, I was frustrated. I had collapsed under the pressure and let my classes spin out of control; I had no developed any rapport with my pupils and had lost my temper too many times. I felt like a failure.

My first teaching was not in a new environment, as I had worked at this pool for two years prior to my promotion to swim instructor, and had been a member there for as far back as I can remember. I was still surrounded by the same staff, friends who I had known for years. Competitive swimming had been part of my life for almost a decade at the time, and I knew swim technique as well as anyone. However, the experience of leading a class, of working with children, was entirely new terrain for me and at first I felt vastly overmatched and overwhelmed. I was suddenly on the other side of the teacher-student divide and I felt uncomfortable there.

Happily I was given new classes after the first day and got a chance to make a better first impression on my students. I realized immediately that I had to establish myself as the boss and never let any swimmer get out of control. The first weeks served as a sort of trial by fire as I struggled to help out each child and still run the class. I found that I had to learn every name or I could never exercise control over an individual troublemaker. I experimented with drills and reached back to my technical background to support myself. I also learned about leadership; I recognized that the true leaders are the most focused and intense group members, that they set a high standard for themselves and demand the same dedication from those under them. Instructing classes of children did not come naturally and I was constantly assessing my efforts. Soon, however, I had adapted to the rhythm of each class, and I began to relax in front of my swimmers.

Skiing

When Joseph was in second grade he joined the Cub Scouts. Joseph's friends had all joined and he wanted to be with them. That winter the scouts had a day ski outing at Sterling Forest off the NY State Thruway. I helped to drive, and I took Daniel, who was 5 years old with them. I made Daniel ski that day in a private lesson. Joseph strapped on a pair of skis and happily went off with his friends in the group lesson. I left to go sit in the lodge and read a book - peace at last! But a friend of ours saw me and insisted that I go skiing also. I never liked skiing as a kid, I had tried it a couple of times, but my borrowed equipment was ancient and I only had wool socks and blue jeans. The last time I went skiing with my friend Lee, some little kid made fun of us for the jeans, the leather ski boots -and the wooden skis.

Anyway, technology had changed, and I found skiing easy at Sterling Forest in 1992. I went home and told Ray that he should try it - I thought it might get him out of the house in the winter. Before then, he hated the winter. I created a monster. Ray loved it, and before I knew it we were taking ski weekends to Catamount all winter long, as many weekends as we could get away. We started going to Lake Tahoe as a family in the winter in 1994, and continue the Chow winter ski vacation - in some form- to this day. Ray got me a new pair of skis for my 51st birthday. And every chance we could, we would get the boys on a family vacation by making it a ski vacation.

Joseph was perfect for skiing. He was light and flexible and very athletic - in a non-ball sport way. The boys would spend the day together exploring all over the mountain. The last trip we took all together was in December 2006, when we took a long weekend in Vermont. I don't remember all getting together in February or March 2007. Ray had found a used pair of skiis that would have been perfect for Joseph, and was waiting for him to come home to get the bindings.

This week we are on our first ski trip, and it is not so fun laden with so many happy memories.

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.

Joseph and the dogs

Joseph loved the dogs. We got Elko in 1993 when Joseph was 8 and we would run to school every day up the hill from Lynwood Road to Seely Place. It was a big hill for an 8 year old, and 6 year old Daniel, and me with Kyle in the stroller. Most days we also walked with the Paskilides family, we were quite the troupe going up that hill! And that crazy Elko! A springer spaniel puppy who really needed alot more exercise than we ever gave her. But what a good dog she was. She let the kids run after her, and chase her and pull her - when things got really bad she would go hide in her cage in the laundry room. Then, as they got older they would fight over who got to sleep with Elko.

In 2002 we got Shadow from the St. Francis of Assisi society in the Bronx. A true Heinz 57 of a mutt; not very bright but very loving. We got Shadow Joseph's junior year in high school, the year that he decided that he would get to the 5 am practices and the 4 pm practices. At 4:30 am Joe would wake me up (I told him that if he wanted to go it was his responsibility to get me up)and in the dead of winter we would trundle on downstairs with Shadow and go for the 20 minute drive to the YWCA (and 20 minutes back again for me -what a good mom I was). That stupid Shadow to this day does not understand that he cannot sit in my lap while I am driving - and he is not a small dog (black lab, pit bull, great dane, greyhound and god knows what else mix). Joseph was always happy to walk the dogs around the block ("Mom, the ten minute walk around the block is the least I can do for these poor dogs").

This July, when we got home from Africa Kyle and I drove up to the Danbury Animal Society and picked Cyan out (actually Kyle had done a lot of research on the web, looking for a relatively small - 30 lbs- female young rescue dog). It was the first time I had ever heard of a cattle dog, and she does have some beagle in her. The dog (then cheyenne) climbed into Kyle's lap and it was love at first sight. I figured Kyle would be home until September, Daniel would be home from September until November, and it would be only a month before Joseph would be home to help me with the dog - and Thanksgiving was in that month. Joseph was running in Africa and having a needy dog to love and run with would help him re enter the culture.

Well, two days after Joseph died I realized the dog still needed exercise. She was going wild with all the company we were getting, and nothing was like it had been for the previous two months. So I got up and ran with her. I am not a very good runner, and she still was getting used to her new life but she did love the run, and had obviously run on the end of a leash before. I am still running, and my sister-in-laws are thinking of running the Chicago marathon on 10-10-10 (it would have been Joe's 25th birthday), to raise money for the scholarship fund. I ran for an hour and 10 minutes yesterday, and Cyan loved it (btw "Cyan" is ancient greek for blue and she is a blue coated hound.)

The cattle dog has some peculiar personality traits, and she had been abandoned by a family and traveled across the country from West Virginia which could explain alot of Cyan's naughty behaviour. When she first came she snarled alot, and she is very protective of food - both not good things. But with alot of affection and bossing around she has stopped snarling and now we try to overfeed her so her food obsession has decreased in the last month. Cyan is basically a very loving, active mutt who needs a lot of exercise (and food). She never strays from my side (except to fetch a soccer ball), is very loyal and is well house trained (she hates having accidents - except for the first time she was left outside of her cage with no human in the house, she dumped in the middle of the living room and deposited three tangerines around it - I think there is a message there but I don't know what it is). She pesters Shadow to no end (pay back for what Shadow did to Elko) and loves to run with Aileen and her pack of dogs. All in all she is a pretty terrific family dog (if you don't have any kids). You do have to keep reminding her that you are in fact, the boss, and the banana in your hand belong to you. Thank god for dogs,they have kept me very busy the last few months. And they are so happy to see us when we walk in the door.

Oh yes, I recently looked at Cyan's rabies tags for the first time, and they have Mineral Wells Veterinarian practice as the vet. I googled Mineral Wells yesterday, it is a small town in West Virginia, and there are two vets in the practice. The founder of the practice is from West Virginia - and she was a Peace Corp Volunteer. Small world.