in my grief I did not send a global message to those of you on the list.
I did immediately send out a message to a group called Aroiders but curiously
got few responses and I suspect that this is because the list consists mostly
of students of Araceae and most of these people have changed their e-mail
address. Suffice it to say that I regret not writing earlier.
Guanghua died on November 2nd and had been in the hospital since he
arrived back early from China
at the end of September. I think many of you knew that he was diagnosed
with stage 3 lung cancer two years ago. He was given only a 30% chance of
survival but was as strong as a bull ox, taking the radiation and chemo in
stride, coming back into work and remaining productive. However, toward
the end of his radiation treatment his lungs were so inflamed that he had
difficulty breathing. He wanted to return to China with his son of 3 years (at
that time). He brought me all his manuscript, photos, reviews of his
Revision of Dracontium and left them with me making me promise to get it
finished and published. I did promise and my thoughts at the time were that
he was saying his final goodbye, that he was going home to Inner
Mongolia to die. I worked hard on the thesis, dealing with
the many suggested changes and was in touch with him by e-mail on some of the
questions I could not answer without his help. I am happy to report that his
Revision of Dracontium was accepted and published in The Annals of the Missouri
Botanical Garden Volume 91 (4) along with my Revision of Dieffenbachia of
Central America. I was happy to be able to share this last volume with
his major work in Araceae.
Guanghua
returned from China
at the end of the summer and was in apparent good health and in good spirits,
making big plans for the future. Many friends had helped him with
medicines in China
and he thought that these had helped him improve his help. It was not long
after he returned that he was first told of a large tumor in his gut. The
doctors had deliberately withheld this from him, realizing that he had taken
about all the treatments his body could handle but then there was an
experimental drug made available that worked on only 10% of the people in the
world but did work on him to reduce greatly the size of this tumor in his
gut. He was again optimistic. When I saw him in Vienna
in August during the International Botanical Congress he complained of stomach
pains but he went on to China
on a professional trip for the Flora of China Project at the Missouri Botanical Garden,
of which he was Co-Director. He had to cut his trip short owing to the
serious pains in his abdomen. He entered the hospital and spent most of
October in the hospital, leaving only for a few days. He has serious
internal bleeding and finally went into the intensive care unit, never to
emerge.
We
had a fine Memorial Service for him here at the Garden with comments by Peter
Raven, myself, his close buddy Hong Song and his wife Yuxing Feng. I am
preparing an obituary with the help of others who knew him and I appreciate
hearing from those of you who knew him and reminded me of how wonderful a
person he was. He was so genuinely generous and friendly to all he met. I
was astonished how everyone we met in China already knew him so well and
always marveled at how this young Chinese lad rose from such poverty to become
a world class botanist. When he arrived in St. Louis and asked if I would be his major
professor his English was not good and he had scarcely ever used a
computer. Before long he was showing me all kinds of things with the
computer that I knew nothing about. As Scott Hyndman stated, he was
instrumental in setting up the IAS webpage, something that we are all so proud
of now. His revision of Dracontium was a major accomplishment. It
is a group that was exceedingly difficult to understand. His work on the
Flora of China Project was equally impressive. His skillfull negotiations
with Chinese authors were essential. He regularly traveled to China with
Director Peter Raven because Guanghua could make any trip easy. He
arranged two trips to China
for me, making it possible for me to see many parts of China and see
things that tourists are not allowed to see. Visiting his family for a
week in Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia was one of
the highlights of my life. I became a part of his family and he a part of mine.
All of us who knew him will always miss him.
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