Margaret Chung (1889-1959)
Mom Chung Tunnel Boring Machine (2013-14) (Central Subway, San Francisco)
Margaret Chung was born in Santa Barbara, California. She was the first Chinese American woman to become a physician. In the 1920s, Margaret founded one of the first Western medical clinics in Chinatown. She wanted to help Chinese women patients in particular, but Chinatown residents were skeptical about Western medicine. They treated her as an "outsider" but this made it easier for her to attract non-Chinese patients. Margaret was well known as "Mom Chung" because she hosted weekend dinners at her home in San Francisco and sent care packages to troops. She volunteered to be a front-line surgeon during the Sino-Japanese War, and was asked to secretly recruit pilots for the "Flying Tigers" Emergency Service (WAVES), the women's branch of the US Naval Reserve.
(Portrait by Joyce Bantugan, SFSU 2020)