Longtime community activist and native Tucsonan Esther Don Tang — whose volunteer efforts helped Tucson’s children, elderly and poor — died Saturday night, just days shy of her 98th birthday.
Tang’s daughter, Diana “Cherry” Simoes said her mother died of old age.
A business woman, Tang was diminutive, not even 5 feet tall, but she loomed large in Tucson, volunteering her time with many organizations such as the YWCA, the Salvation Army and the Pima Council on Aging. She was instrumental in creating the Pio Decimo Neighborhood Center, serving as its director for nearly 20 years.
“She was really a pillar at so many levels in our community,” said Peg Harmon, CEO at Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona.
All of 4 foot 9 inches tall, Tang always made sure to have a box or something to stand on whenever she had to address an audience, Simoes said. “Otherwise, you would not be able to see her.”
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She perched on a box for what was perhaps her best-known speaking engagement, introducing former President Bill Clinton when he came to town in 1999. Even still, the 6-foot-2-inch Clinton was taller.
At a 2004 groundbreaking ceremony for the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center, Tang — who’d led fundraising efforts — posed for photos with a shovel, said longtime friend Peter Chan, who was then president of the Tucson Chinese Association.
“The joke was, ‘Hey, Esther, the shovel is taller than you and heavier than you.’
She was small in stature, but she had the biggest heart, said Chan, who added that Tang took him under her wing when he was a University of Arizona student in the 1980s, introducing him to family and friends.
“She set an example for me as an individual community member how to give back and how to volunteer,” Chan said. “She is basically the golden standard.”
Born March 5, 1917, at St. Mary’s Hospital, Tang lived most of her childhood in the area of Convent and Jackson streets, which was Chinatown in those days. Her father, Don Wah, came to Tucson from San Francisco as a railroad cook. He and her mother had a small neighborhood market that grew into a chain of successful grocery stores.
One of 10 children, Tang graduated from Tucson High School in 1935 and later the University of Arizona, where a meeting space and garden is named in her honor. She also received an honorary doctorate degree from the school.
Tang married David Tang, who died in 2002, and had four children. She worked in commercial real estate and co-founded the women-led NetWest Development Corp., which developed properties around the state, focusing on building complexes to serve families with children, the elderly and entry-level workers.
Over the years, she accumulated so many awards and accolades, that if you stacked them all up, they’d likely stand taller than Tang, too. She shrugged off the honors, though, telling the Star in 2001 that her extensive volunteer activities were “just things that I do every day, like washing dishes and washing my face.”
“My mother considered the Tucson community her family,” said her son, David Tang Jr.
Tang said the family plans a small, private service but would likely hold a bigger, public celebration of her life in a few weeks.
Tang was preceded in death by her oldest child, Patti Tang Crowley. In addition to Simoes and David Tang Jr., Esther Tang is survived by daughter Liz Tang as well as six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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