U Htin Paw's Obituary
Life of U Htin Paw.U Htin Paw was born on November 17, 1935 in Moulmein, Burma to U Ba Aung (Sio Wan Kee) and Daw Yu Tee. He was born to a family with 5 other living siblings (4 sisters and 1 brother) in rural Burma. Shortly after the Japanese War, his family moved to Rangoon working as small shop keepers and merchants. He helped out with the family business while attending classes for higher education.He attended the Faculty of Engineering of Rangoon University (formerly, BOC College of Mining and Engineering), graduating with a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering with 2 academic gold medals in April 1958. He then attended the University of Michigan in the U.S. as a State Scholar, earning a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering in June 1960. He returned to Burma and worked for the Burmese Government.He married Eileen (Shu Hee) Chan in 1960, and remained married to Eileen until her passing in 2013. Their son, Barry Paw, is an academic pediatric oncologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA.U Htin Paw and his family emigrated to the U.S., arriving in Los Angeles in February 1969. His family lived in the LA San Gabriel Valley until they relocated to the SF East Bay in 1972, where he lived in Fremont for 40 years. His journey in the U.S. and success in achieving the American Dream for his and future generations are what makes America still the land of opportunity.Professionally, U Htin Paw worked as an Electrical and Control System Engineer for various large engineering construction firms, such as Parsons, Kaiser, and finally Bechtel Corp., where retired in 1999 after 26 years of service. He was registered as a professional engineer in the States of California, Washington, and the U.K.Since his retirement in 1999, U Htin Paw’s focused devotions were caring for his wife, Eileen, and spreading the teachings of Theravada Buddhism. He wrote and discussed the teachings of Buddhism to many of his devoted colleagues and friends. He also supported Buddhist monks who are studying Buddhism in Sri Lanka. U Htin Paw passed away on October 2, 2016. U Htin Paw is survived by his son, siblings (1 brother and 2 sisters), his nieces and nephews, and the many god-children and devoted friends and followers. Thank you and many blessings.Eulogy for U Htin PawI would like to first thank the relatives, friends, and associates of my father for fdcoming today to pay their respect.I would like to share a few personal aspects of my father with you today. The first characteristics are pioneering and willingness to take a risk for a better future. From his biography, you learned that he and others of his generation that grew up during the Japanese War were the first group in Burma to attain higher education, instead of continuing the traditional way of life as shopkeepers and merchants. When given the opportunity to study in the U.S., he came to Michigan in 1958. What he saw in America, gave him the courage to emigrate with his family in 1969 to start a new life after conditions in Burma deteriorated. With newly found freedom and sense of adventure, my parents in their youth would love driving around, first all over the LA basin, California, and the entire West Coast to Vancouver.His focus was always to make a better opportunity for me (the next generation) to succeed here with no limits because of your ethnicity or class. There is not a single day that I do not think how blessed I am for the opportunities and privileges I have without their sacrifices. When I attend elite science/medical conferences in the U.S., Europe and Asia, in my heart, I am most grateful for my parents in taking a gamble to start a new life.Next is responsibility to family and friends, as one of the first wave of emigrants from Burma, he worked hard to bring members of his brother and sisters and in-laws over to the U.S. so that they could share in what America had to offer. Now, his nieces and nephews, their children, and grandchildren have deep American roots too. Our house was open to so many friends and new arrivals from Burma, such that life-long lasting friendships exist going back to the early days in Los Angeles.Patience and compassion were the next things he taught me from his care of my mother, Eileen, after she had a stroke in 1999. Over the next 14 years, he became the main care taker: cooking, bathing, dispensing medications, dressing, you name it. He did it all without complaint. A relative from Australia, once recalled seeing my father helping to hair color and set my mother’s hair for a wedding. He joked that even with an engineering training, he was a pretty good hair dresser. They were an inseparable pair.The last impression I have of my father is his commitment to Buddhism. He taught and set moral examples. In the last 25 years or so, he had more time to seriously read and contemplate the scholarly scriptures. He began writing and distributing the teachings of the Buddha. Even with increasing poor eyesight, we would spend several hours on his Mac computer writing daily on Buddhist teachings to supporting Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka. He still had working chapters on his computer desktop he was completing before his passing.In the teachings of the Buddha, all of us will pass away eventually (impermanence of lives). Death is liberating from this existence to start another form that result from the accumulated Karma. The way we conduct our lives to cultivate good Karma, our good actions, are all ways to reflect a good life and help in journey to achieving Nirvana or enlightenment. Given the many good merits my father had done, he is in a peaceful, blessed, higher spiritual state of existence.Thank you for your respectful attendance at my father’s funeral and for your prayers. Tha Dhu, Tha Dhu, Tha Dhu.
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