Jen-Ho Fang

On Sunday, May 24, 2020 at 350p, we lost our father, Jen-Ho Fang. Husband to our mother, Chuen-chuen Fang; father to James C. Fang, John C. Fang, and Jeff C. Fang, father-in-law to Cindee Fang, Lisa Samson-Fang, and Karen Cheng; and grandfather to Tyler Fang, Jacob Fang, Melissa Fang, Zachary Fang, Noah Fang, and Alyssa Fang. His parents were Jing-chuen Fang (father) and Yueh-O Yen-Fang (mother). He was born in Tainan, Taiwan on October 21, 1929. He was an only child; and only 10 years old when lost his own father to a heat stroke. He was raised by his mother through the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and he ultimately attended National Taiwan University in Taipei, majoring in Geology. He obtained a prestigious scholarship to study at an American university for two years and chose to go to the University of Minnesota for his Masters in Science. He married our mother in 1961 soon after moving to the U.S. He moved onto Penn State for his PhD work and then did a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT. In 1964, he moved to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL to become part of the Geology faculty. He reached the rank of Professor in a remarkable 6 years. We accompanied him as a family for a year-long sabbatical to Taiwan in 1972 and spent 3 months of that year traveling/camping in Europe. In 1980, he became the Chair of the Department of Geology at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. During his tenure, he dramatically elevated the academic stature of the Department by emphasizing the research mission; he championed the use of artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic in oil exploration and had nationally recognized expertise in x-ray crystallography and geostatistics. He retired in 1998 from the University and he and my mother enjoyed their retirement years in Tuscaloosa. He and my mother moved to Salt Lake City to be with us (Jim and John) in 2019. He was honored by his professional community and his students when a new mineral was discovered in a mine in Tooele, UT in 1993 and named after him as Fangite (American Mineralogist 1993; 78:1096-1103). His legacy at the University of Alabama was established with our creation of the Jen-Ho Fang Endowed Scholarship at the University of Alabama in 2003. He was the most colorful individual in our lives and loved students, authentic Taiwanese cuisine, and us. We also believe he was Japanese deep inside. He was never shy about saying what he thought and he wore his temperament on his sleeve, which always left a lasting impression with anyone he met. He was perpetually restless and perennially on the move. Many more knew him for his generosity with his time and money than we will ever know and he touched many lives in these ways. As our mother noted with his passing, he was a good husband, a good father, and a good man. In lieu of flowers, our father would’ve wanted contributions made to the Jen-Ho Fang Endowed Scholarship Fund through the University of Alabama at https://giving.ua.edu (click Make a Gift button and search for Fang).