Fay Chew Matsuda

Click Here to View and Download the Memorial for Fay Chew Matsuda Fay Chew Matsuda was born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, born on April 11, 1949 to first-generation immigrant parents, Chock Nom and Bick Koon Chin. Her world was New York City's Chinatown and Lower East Side communities. Upon receiving her Bachelor's degree from Barnard College and Master's degree in Social Work from NYU, she went on to work at the Hamilton-Madison House, a non-profit serving Asian American and LatinX communities in Lower Manhattan. While there, she worked with the community for thirteen years. She later became Executive Director for the New York Chinatown History Project, and contributed to its transformation into an institution that eventually became the Museum of Chinese in the Americas (MOCA). Following work with the Chinatown Health Clinic (now known as the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center), Brooklyn Children's Museum, and the Asian American Federation, she returned to MOCA in 1997 as Executive Director. In 2006, she served the Chinatown and Lower East Side community's senior population as Program Director of the City Hall Senior Center, a division of Hamilton-Madison House and where her professional career had begun 33 years earlier. She retired in 2016, and was honored by MOCA as a Community Hero. She is remembered lovingly by her husband of 40 years, Karl Matsuda; her daughter, Amy Matsuda; her grandson, Miles Alexander Chin; her sisters, Vivian Eng, May Chew Ortiz, and Rose Chew; and the hearts of the Chinatown and Lower East Side communities of New York City.