Peichen Hsu Sgro

Peichen Hsu was born in early 1944 in Shanghai, China.

In 1949, when the communists won the civil war, her family escaped to Taiwan by way of Hong Kong. She attended primary public school and then Blessed Imelda High school. After graduating her family moved to the New York city area and she attended Adelphi University on Long Island. After graduating with a degree in mathematics, she searched for a graduate school.

One school she considered was Columbia University Engineering school. One day she visited and spent a minute or two looking at the bulletin board near the entrance.  It happened that a graduate student taking a break from writing his Ph.D. thesis walked into the engineering school just then and looked at the bulletin board also. As she sometimes did, she was thinking aloud in a soft voice. The fellow thought she was asking him a question and he answered, startling her, which resulted in a snack in the student lounge, then a date the next weekend, an eventual engagement and marriage on March 5 1972 to Anthony Sgro.

After a honeymoon, they flew to New Mexico so he could start a position at LASL (as it was then called). She soon enrolled in UNM graduate school in the computer science department. After acquiring US citizenship, she began work in the computer division at LASL. During the ensuing years, two sons were born to them. She eventually switched to part time work so that she could be with her sons when they came home after school. She retired in the year 2000. After retiring she managed a small rental property and eventually realized she very much enjoyed interior decorating, so some parts of her house were redecorated.

After their sons went off to college and her husband retired, they did some traveling to Asia and Europe, visiting her family in Taiwan and her father-in-law in Calabria. She enjoyed sightseeing in Europe, especially in Salzburg where part of the Sound of Music movie was filmed, and she climbed the cupola at the Vatican.

Throughout her life she very much enjoyed singing, which gave great happiness to her family when she sang to them. She enjoyed attending opera performances in most of the major cities she traveled to, including Santa Fe.

Soon after marriage, Peichen chose to be baptized into the Catholic church. As she progressed in her faith she found that the (traditional) Catholic Mass and Gregorian chant were much more reverent and meaningful to her than the new Mass. She sang in the Gregorian Scuola for over 20 years until a hereditary lung condition caused her to stop. At her final Mass, a complete high Requiem was chanted for her by her Scuola.

Peichen was preceded in death by her father Hsu Wen-Hwa, her mother Chao Chin-Young, and her brother Hsu Chih-Chia.

She is survived by her husband Anthony, two sons Marcus (Huayin) and Titus, three sisters Hsu Weichen, Hsu Mingchen, and Hsu Ihchen, and her brother Hsu Chih-Chien, as well as numerous nieces and nephews.

Rivera Funeral Home provided excellent care including arranging her last flight home (with the collaboration of A.J. Desmond&Sons Funeral Directors) from Michigan, where she passed, and provided compassionate viewing arrangements and care on the day of the funeral and internment.

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