Photo of
Mei-Ling Soong, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, made at the Fisher Studio in Demorest,
1910.
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(Back to Piedmont News)
Attended Piedmont Academy
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek
dies at age 106
(10/24/03) Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, 106,
formerly of Demorest, died Oct. 23 at her home in New York City.
Born Soong Mei-ling, Madame Chiang was one of the world's most famous and
powerful women as she helped her husband fight the Japanese during World War
II and later the Chinese Communists. She had lived in semi-seclusion after
President Chiang Kai-Shek's death in 1975, spending much of the time in her
Manhattan apartment. She caught a cold Wednesday and developed minor symptoms
of pneumonia "before going very peacefully" at home Thursday night, a family
member reported.
Madame Chiang and her husband were once major political forces in the Nationalist
government that ruled China before losing a civil war to the Communists in
1949 and retreating to Taiwan. Even in seclusion, Madame Chiang was a force
in Taiwanese politics right up until her death.
How Madame Chiang came to be a student in Demorest, Ga., in 1908 is a story
that begins with her father, the remarkable and rather mysterious Charlie
Soong. While little is clearly known about Soong’s early life, it is known
his real name was Chiao-shun and that he came from the Kwangtun Province of
China. In 1879 at age 14, he stowed away on a sailing ship, the Albert Gallatin,
whose captain made him a paid crew member and transliterated his name to
Charles Sun. The spelling was later changed to Soong.
The ship captain introduced Soong to Col. Roger Moore, a Civil War veteran
and leading figure at the Front Street Methodist Church in Wilmington, N.C.
Moore introduced Soong to Julian Carr, the wealthy tobacco merchant who made
Bull Durham famous, and Carr agreed to pay Soong’s tuition at Trinity College
and later Vanderbilt University.
After graduating with honors from Vanderbilt in 1885, Soong returned to
Shanghai as a missionary, but soon went into business as a book publisher
and merchant. Soong was determined that his children would be educated in
the U.S.
Mei-ling was the youngest of his three daughters — all known for their beauty
and their marriages to some of the most influential men of pre-World War II
China. Ai-ling, the eldest, married China's finance minister H.H. Kung, reputed
at the time to be the richest man in the world. Ching-ling married Dr. Sun
Yat-sen, leader of the Nationalist revolution that overthrew China's last
emperor in 1911 and a close associate of her father. Mei-ling's wedding completed
the picture and inspired a famous saying about the Soong sisters, "One loved
money, one loved power and one loved China." The one who loved power was
Madame Chiang.
Ai-ling attended Wesleyan College in Macon, where she met a classmate, Blanche
Moss, the daughter of Mrs. Minnie Moss, matron of Georgia Hall at Piedmont
College. One summer, Ai-ling came to Demorest to visit the Mosses and brought
her two sisters. When Ching-ling and Ai-ling returned to college in Macon,
Mei-ling remained in Demorest and attended the eighth grade at the Piedmont
Academy, where she received high marks.
Mei-ling later attended Wesleyan College as well, and graduated from Wellesley
College in Massachusetts in 1917 before returning to China, where she met
Chiang Kai-Shek, then director of a military school. They were married in
1927. In 1928 he became head of the Nationalist government at Nanjing and
"Generalissimo" of all Chinese Nationalist forces. Thereafter, under various
titles and offices, he exercised virtually uninterrupted power as leader of
the Nationalist government.
When the Japanese attacked China at the start of World War II, Madame Chiang
took on a variety of roles, from serving as Chiang's interpreter in meetings
with Churchill and Roosevelt, to serving as head of China's air force.
Madame Chiang also was one of her husband's most prominent lobbyists in
Washington. In one of her most famous U.S. public appearances, she addressed
the U.S. Congress in 1943 in perfect English—with a Southern accent. She
tried to convince the American lawmakers that defeating Japan was more important
than stopping Germany, and that U.S. forces should concentrate more on battling
the Japanese in China.
In 1930, Madame Chiang, who Time magazine described as one of the most popular
women in the world, wrote to Piedmont President Dr. George Bellingrath about
her time in Habersham County: “I remember that Miss Olive Van Hise taught
me physiology and physical culture. I was never so proud in my life as on
the day when she announced my average grade in physiology was 98 percent,
and that I was the only pupil who, because of high marks in that course, was
exempt from final examinations.”
“It was at Piedmont that I was initiated into the mysteries of parsing sentences.
My knowledge of English then was at best somewhat sketchy as I had only been
in America for two years and I had many funny little tricks of phraseology,
which baffled my grammar teacher. To cure me of them she made me try to parse
them. Her efforts must have been productive of some success for people now
say that I write very good English.”
In 1968, while on tour with 12 Piedmont students, Dr. James Walter, then
president of Piedmont, presented Madame Chiang with the honorary degree of
Doctor of Humane Letters. The presentation took place in the presidential
residence in Taipei, Taiwan.
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