With Words, Paint, Plane Victim, 78, Created Legacy of Artful Memories

About 300 family and friends gathered Saturday at the Fountain Valley Baptist Church to honor Chi-Pang An, who was among nine Orange County residents killed aboard a Singapore Airlines jetliner in October.

In this memorial for an Orange County victim of the doomed flight, An was remembered as a man devoted to his Chinese culture, country and family. He was 78.

Rows of flowers lined the entrance to the church, where the smell of roses, lilies and pink orchids wafted. Inside, a large picture of An hung behind a jade urn containing his ashes. A photo collage hung on the wall, depicting his activities and volunteerism.

“He disappeared so suddenly that we think he’s still upstairs painting and writing,” his oldest daughter, Amy Chen, said during the solemn ceremony.

Chi-Pang An was on his annual trip to Taiwan to visit family and friends. This time, he had brought along paintings he wanted to get framed in hopes of opening an art exhibit when he returned to the United States.

But his trip ended when a Boeing 747 barreled into a concrete barrier and a construction crane as it hurtled down the runway at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taipei, killing 82 people.

Born in Shan-Dong, China, Chi-Pang An was the middle of seven children. He worked for the Chinese Nationalist government in 1937 and experienced several brushes with death during World War II, when he was the bureau chief of the Chinese Nationalists’ intelligence. Serving behind the enemy line in Tsing Tao, he was captured, then managed to escape from Japanese counterintelligence when he was 20 years old.

Retired from a publishing company he founded, An spent most of his time painting orchids, drawing Chinese calligraphy and teaching students in the same subjects at his Fountain Valley home.

Friends said An had an art for guiding youngsters to their careers, as he did with his children, Amy, a banker from Arcadia, Ann, an architect who lives in Taiwan, and Arthur, a physician in Los Angeles.

Carlton Puntawongdaycha said An gave him strong guidance during weekend calligraphy classes in An’s study room, decorated with his paintings and scattered with paintbrushes.

“All day long, he’d be writing,” said Carlton, 16, of Westminster who was An’s student for four years. “He was a quiet man who gave me lots of inspiration to pick up paintbrushes.”

The two-hour service ended as An’s son, Arthur, carried his father’s ashes into a limousine for burial at Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach.