Immigrant's restaurant was a fixture in Bellevue
"If you have character and the will to succeed, you can go places in this great United States."
With these words, Hoy Fung described a country that opened its doors to him and where, through hard work, intuition and determination to succeed, he operated one of the most successful Chinese restaurants in the north boroughs.
Hoy Fung, of Bellevue, one of the original donors to the Chinese Room at the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, died on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2003, at Suburban General Hospital, Bellevue. He was 99.
"Dad loved this country," said his daughter, Karen Yee, who served as chair of the Chinese Nationality Room Committee at Pitt.
"Since Dad became a citizen in 1950, he voted in every election with the exception of the last one when he was too ill to vote."
When Mr. Fung arrived in the United States from Canton, China, in the early 1920s, he couldn't speak a word of English and understood little about American customs.
And yet, when he arrived in Bellevue in 1926 to live with relatives, he was astute enough to know that a Chinese restaurant would fit well in the affluent community with a strong business district.
In the ensuing years, with the help of his wife, the former Lorraine Christoff, of Patton, Cambria County, whom he married in 1937, the Bellevue Tea Garden was considered one of the finest Chinese restaurants in the north boroughs.
"My father had a great understanding of people and what would go and what wouldn't go," Yee said. "After all, opening a Chinese restaurant and marrying a Hungarian woman wasn't exactly the norm in Bellevue in the 1920s and '30s."
"But my parents were so well-loved and respected in the borough that it was seldom brought up. My mother died in 1995."
Yee recalled that her father retired in 1976 and turned the business over to her and her brother Vincent, but for the next decade continued to come to the restaurant every day to greet and seat customers.
"He was so well-liked that if he missed a day, customers would ask for him," Yee said. "Dad had such a great personality that many in Bellevue considered him the borough's unofficial ambassador."
The family closed the restaurant in 1998.
"Dad took us to China on several occasions. He was proud of his heritage and the strides they were making in his hometown since he left there over 70 years ago."
Mr. Fung also took great pride that his homeland was being represented among the University of Pittsburgh's Nationality Rooms, and was instrumental in helping fund the creation of the Chinese Nationality Room.
"The Fungs were well-represented as the Chinese Room was being created," Yee said. "My father's cousin, Kwok Ying Fung, who was a student at Pitt, did the calligraphy for the room."
Mr. Fung is survived by daughters Karen Yee, of Bethel Park, and Kathleen Rodgers, of Bellevue; sons Vincent Fung, of Las Vegas, Jan Fung, of North Versailles, and Joseph Fung, of Richland; nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Visitation is from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. today at the Lawrence T. Miller Funeral Home, 460 Lincoln Ave., Bellevue.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Monday in the Church of Assumption, North Sprague Street, Bellevue. Interment will be at Restland Memorial Park, Monroeville.
