Although diminutive in size, Gloria Lee Wong, who passed away on Jan. 24, 2024, one month shy of her 96th birthday, had a mighty impact on many people. Faith was at the heart of Wong’s life. Ian Douglas, retired bishop of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and longtime colleague of Wong’s in the Episcopal Diocese in Massachusetts, says, “She was incredibly faithful to her family, to her church, to her God, and to her community.”
Wong first came to the Vineyard in 1964, was a seasonal resident in the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association for nearly 60 years, and moved to the Island year-round 25 years ago. Speaking to just a small handful of those who cared deeply for her, it is easy to get a strong sense of how remarkable she was.
Wong came from a religious family, and both her father and maternal grandfather were ministers. Born in 1928, she grew up in Canada until her family moved to San Francisco in 1944. Becoming a deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1993, she was involved with numerous churches and ministries, including Boston Chinese Ministry at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Church of the Holy Spirit, and here at Grace Episcopal Church and Trinity Episcopal Church in Oak Bluffs, as well as offering healing prayers at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital chapel.
Her prayer partner, Carolyn Eddy, spoke about their 30-plus-year friendship. They met at Grace Church in about 1990, and both became involved with the Order of Saint Luke, which is an international, interdenominational Christian healing organization, where they received training. Together, they brought the healing ministry to Grace Church. “We had healing services and prayer times where we would pray with people for inner, emotional, or physical healing. It’s quite dynamic,” Eddy explains. “Gloria was always the person who would hold the Holy Spirit and have the Holy Spirit hold us while other people would be voicing something. You always knew it was good and safe, and filled with light and something beyond what we were thinking of ourselves.”
Eddy spoke about the centrality of love in the healing ministry, saying, “We cannot hope to pray for another human being if we cannot see God’s love and extend God’s healing love to the other person. That really was Gloria’s message: God loves you. And they knew it because — not just her own love that she would emit, but Christ’s love, and that’s what she would extend to everybody.” She adds, “Gloria didn’t just pray for people, but served people, fed people, went where they were hurting. And she was a social worker, so she knew all those clues. She was a real beacon.”
Hansel Tookes, who knew Wong through both her longtime association with the Polar Bears and through Trinity Episcopal Church, says, “I adore, in the present tense, and admire Gloria in so many aspects of her life. I served with her many times. She was a very spiritual person, and she approached people in a way that never made you feel uncomfortable with her spirituality.” Tookes explains how he would help Wong when, as a deacon in the Episcopal Church, she would read the Gospel from the congregation rather than at the altar. “Gloria was rather small and short in nature, and I’m 6 foot 2. I would carry the book for her to read from, and I would have to open it and put it out in front of her. It was a really cute scene to see this little lady reading, without glasses, in her nineties, standing there with the entire congregation focused on her reading. She was outstanding.”
The Rev. William B. Heuss, priest-in-charge at Trinity Episcopal Church, who knew Wong for many years, wrote in an email, “I called Gloria a ‘little ball of fire.’ She served there many summer Sundays as a deacon at our Holy Eucharists, read the Gospel each Sunday, and with her strong commitment to the healing ministry, she invited those who wished to to receive the laying on of hands after the service for inner spiritual healing for what is on their hearts and minds. She exuded Christian joy, and was much loved by the Trinity congregation.”
One of Wong’s daughters, Andrea Wong Monteiro, provides a sense of Wong’s inner being: “All our whole life, she was spiritual. She was always very even-tempered. She was in a prayer group once, and they were talking about fear, and everyone was supposed to talk about themselves, and she said, ‘I have no fear.’ And that’s how she lived her life. She was very daring.”
Monteiro shared a good deal about Wong’s essence: “She was very generous, always thinking about other people. She was always planting little gifts.” Monteiro’s sister, Janice Skilling, adds, “I think helping others was ingrained. Mom was about, ‘What can I do to help somebody else?’ Little things, whether it was just to give them a hug or drop a little snack off, or just to say hello. Just those little gestures mean a lot.”
Bishop Douglas knew Wong in several capacities, first meeting her when he was a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, teaching a course on ministry with immigrant and refugee communities. Wong would come to lecture about the Chinese ministry in Boston. Their paths crossed again, both when he served as a priest at Trinity Episcopal Church, and later as a bishop of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut: “Whenever I came back to lead the service at Trinity, Gloria would always be there to assist as a deacon.” More recently, they both regularly worshipped at the same service at Grace Episcopal Church.
“Gloria helped to start the Chinese congregation at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Boston,” Douglas said. “The amazing thing about her, in addition to her faithfulness and dedication, was she was a person that some would discount because of her diminutive stature; she was incredibly strong, and really legendary, in the Episcopal Church in her nurture and raising up of other deacons. The deacon, as a holy order, is particularly committed to service in the community, and that’s what she was all about.
“For an almost 96-year-old person, a lot of people think that when you get to be that age, you don’t occupy as much of a part in people’s lives, hearts, and community, but she was a dynamic and huge presence right through to the end.”
There will be a memorial service in July 2024 in Oak Bluffs, with details to be provided at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Gloria’s name to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, online at giving.mvhospital.org, or to Grace Episcopal Church, online at bit.ly/GEC_donate.