Janie Chu, 101; One of Last Survivors of 1906 San Francisco Quake
Janie Chu, 101, one of the last survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, died Dec. 30 in her Oakland home of causes associated with old age.
Born in San Francisco, Chu was just 3 years old and sleeping in her crib in the family’s Chinatown flat when the shaking began in the pre-dawn hours of April 18, 1906.
Her family fled their home and joined others camped in Huntington Park across from the Fairmont Hotel.
After briefly living in Berkeley, her family relocated to Tucson, where she was the first girl of Chinese descent to graduate from high school in that city, her family told Associated Press.
She enrolled at UC Berkeley and graduated with a degree in education in 1924. Last year she was honored as the university’s oldest alumna. After college, she married and she and her husband settled in Oakland. He died in 1995.
She taught Sunday school at a San Francisco church for 70 years.
She was remembered as a feisty woman who refused to live in an assisted living facility even after having hip surgery a couple of years ago.
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