Dear Prof. Wu, We Miss You

(The two sides of the card handed to us attendees at the gate after we signed)

This morning I attended Prof. Wu's (Roseller Ortega Ing, 吳國賢教授) funeral at Holy Family Church Taipei. During the two hours, I got to know more about Prof Wu through the talk by his eldest son, his student Ms. Ho (何慧玲教授), his former colleague Ms. Shih (施玉惠教授), and his youngest sister on behalf of his wife.

Prof. Wu was smart, hard-working, passionate, and romantic. He majored in music at NTNU, but transferred his major to Linguistics when studying at graduate school. He received his PhD degree in London at the age of 29. I remember my senior-year homeroom teacher Ms. Liu (劉璧君老師) once told us that at an NTNU English speech contest, Prof. Wu, then a music major, won the first prize, which put all the English majors to shame.

Prof. Wu was my homeroom teacher in my second year at NTNU and taught me phonology. A conscientious teacher, he won respect from every student. In fact, students who took his Public Speaking were under great pressure because he was very demanding. However, they all agreed that they learned a lot from his teaching. In her talk, Ms. Ho mentioned it was Mr. Wu who changed the course of her life. She was a literature major, but after taking Mr. Wu's Public Speaking in her senior year, she decided to study speech communication at graduate school in the States and later taught such course at NTNU.

Although Prof. Wu will live forever in my mind, I still feel sad about Mr. Wu's passing. Also, I regret not visiting him often after graduating from NTNU...









Yesterday is already a drem,

and tomorrow is only a vision,

But today, well-lived,

makes every yesterday a dream of happiness

and every tomorrow a vision of hope...

-Kalidasa