Paul K. Chung, Former Lockheed Missles & Space Chemical Engineer

Paul Kam-Yuen Chung, a former Lockheed Missiles & Space Company chemical engineer, died Sept. 26 at his home in Los Altos. He was 94.

Mr. Chung was born in Gu Jil Wok village, Hoiping County, Kuangdong Province, China in 1917. Leaving his mother, he journeyed to Hong Kong as a young boy, where he spent two years with an uncle and aunt, attending school, and waiting to emigrate to the United States. At 13, he arrived in Seattle on the S.S. Madison and eventually joined his father, Chung Soot, known as Jack Hing Chung, and brother, Fred Jung, working in the family laundry in Minot, N.D. He graduated from the University of Minnesota and joined Standard Oil of New Jersey during World War II. After the war, Paul Chung began what he called the most rewarding and meaningful part of his career, as a civilian engineer at China Lake Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS). During this time in the Mojave Desert, he married Dorothy Kim Hom, of New Orleans, in 1954 and raised two daughters. 

Mr. Chung and his family moved to Los Altos in 1959, when he went to work for Lockheed just as Santa Clara Valley was growing beyond its agricultural roots, burgeoning into an important aerospace center. This was the first boom, long before it became known as Silicon Valley. He survived a yearlong layoff in 1970-71, returning to work and retiring as senior project engineer from Lockheed in 1984, when it was at the height of its influence as the biggest employer in the Valley.

Mr. Chung was an Eagle Scout who led his own Boy Scout troop in Philadelphia and later enjoyed organizing impromptu trips among his co-workers. During those early years in China Lake, young bachelor engineers gathered in the dormitory lobby and plotted their weekend adventures to Las Vegas, Yosemite or Lake Tahoe, and bolted for the wide, open road. He reveled in one trip, organizing a one-way hike to the Grand Canyon floor. His group, he said, split up, one half parking at the North Rim and the other at the South Rim. They each hiked down into the canyon and traded car keys when they met at the bottom, then hiked up and drove home. In turn, he raised his family to love camping trips, our national parks and singing funny songs in the car all along the way.

He was an amateur photographer, potter and furniture maker, pursuits in his life that were all creative outlets for a man who had once hoped to study architecture instead of chemical engineering. In recent years, with a little persuasion, he’d effortlessly turn out a watercolor landscape, as he did in the red rocks of St. George, Utah one year and in Pacific Palisades another, drawing from an earlier creative time in China Lake, when he and his wife painted and potted during their idyll in the desert, before kids.

He loved the ability to experiment with growing things in the climate that the Lower Peninsula afforded. The backyard often sported a Chinese vegetable or two he wanted to try, strawberries in one planter, corn in another spot, and his kids’ sunflowers for the annual summer contest, in the front. He experimented with tree grafts; the tree whose apples he was harvesting when he died was one he prized ­­because he had grafted that delicious apple variety onto the tree himself.

Family throughout his life was paramount. All family. The communist takeover of China in 1949 radically changed the course of their lives. His father had retired to China after World War II ended, but was forced to flee abruptly when he realized he could be detained. Paul Chung worked ceaselessly and strategically for years to bring first his father, then his mother, sisters, and nephews and nieces to the United States after the revolution. Other family members followed. The little cottage in the back of the family home he bought for his parents on 41st Street in Los Angeles housed nieces or nephews, whether they were just starting a family or had just arrived from China.

Mr. Chung was preceded in death by his wife, Dorothy, who died in 2006. He is survived by his daughters, Lisa, of Mountain View, Calif., and Kimberly, of East Lansing, Mich.; his sisters, Yoke Ying Tem of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Soo Dom Chow of Bloomington, Calif., and May Chin of Reseda, Calif.; his grandson, Paulo Yi Kin Arizmendi Chung, his sons-in law Ramon Arizmendi and John Kerr; and many nephews, nieces, grand-nephews, grand-nieces, great-grand-nephews and great-grand-nieces.

Contributions can be made to organizations that were significant in his life. To recognize that special time in the Mojave Desert: The China Lake Museum Foundation, P.O. Box 217, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-0217
(760) 939-3530, www.chinalakemuseum.org. In gratitude to the cadre of volunteers who drive those who no longer can, contributions can be made to “ECH - Road Runners,” El Camino Hospital Foundation, 2500 Grant Road, Mountain View CA, 94040. (Mr. Chung used Road Runners up until the day he died.) In recognition of the good Chinese lunches and help with utility companies: Self Help for the Elderly, feeding, advocating on behalf of, and caring for seniors all over the Peninsula: Self Help for the Elderly, 407 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA 94111; (415) 677-7600

Visitation is Oct. 14, 4-8 p.m. at Cusimano Family Colonial Mortuary, 92 W. El Camino Real, Mountain View. Funeral service is Oct. 15, 10 a.m. at St. Clare Chapel at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery, 22555 Cristo Rey Drive, Los Altos, with burial immediately following.