Titanic prejudice

The American Dream

Fong was chasing the American Dream when he boarded the Titanic. The plan was to eventually ditch the sailor's life and start a small business together with colleagues Lee Ling, 28, and Len Lam, 23, in Ohio. But on the night of the shipwreck both his mates died from hypothermia. Len and Lee had followed their would-be-employer, and when either of them failed to get onto a lifeboat, all three ended up in the freezing water.

After spending years in the United States as an undocumented migrant, Fong earned his right of abode in the country and became an entrepreneur in Chicago. When he was 62, his Hong Kong friends introduced him to Marie, a 23-year-old Hong Kong resident, originally from Guangdong. The two married in Hong Kong, where their first child, John, was born. In 1959, the family returned to the USA and settled in Milwaukee, welcoming their second son, Tom, soon afterward.

The couple got divorced in 1966. Fong moved back to Chicago in 1973, and soon went on to acquire Cozy Inn, Wisconsin's oldest Chinese restaurant, located in Janesville. He passed away in 1986, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Stickney, Illinois. The Janesville eatery is run by his son Tom.

When Schwankert visited Tom in Janesville, the latter revealed that his father always carried a notebook. Fong's sons were told that they would be free to read it only after his death. Unfortunately, the notebook is lost, but a poem in which Fong recalls the miraculous moment of realizing that he had survived the disaster, remains.

"A great-nephew of Fong's shared the poem with us during our visit to his native village," Schwankert says. "Fong had sent it to him and his mother."