Dr. Margaret Chung: Multidimensional Maverick (Part I)
There is a black and white photo of the 1916 graduating class from the University of Southern California’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. In this image, there are three loosely formed rolls of students, all males posing before the camera. Some are smiling broadly; a few have their faces turned nonchalantly at an angle, while others emote the solemnity of their achievements with serious countenances.
There is one who stands out, and that is because he is the only Asian graduate. His name was Mike Chung, and he looked directly at the camera with a slight furrow between his eyebrows, looking reserved, or perhaps it was guarded inward pride at what he had achieved in an era of intense racial bias against the Chinese in America. In spite of that, and the fact that he came from an impoverished family, Mike is now a doctor.
Life presents many improbable tales, and this is the story of a very intelligent, tenacious, and boundary-breaking individual who defied all odds. What is truly remarkable is that Dr. Mike Chung is actually Dr. Margaret Chung. The first American-born Chinese woman to become a doctor in the US. She had to dress as a man during her medical studies to deflect taunting by fellow male classmates.
From a young age, Margaret wanted to be a surgeon. She would play pretend doctor by sewing the opened peels of bananas together with a needle and thread. As she was the oldest of 11 children from a family plagued by poverty, the chances of attending medical school were slim. Add in the other factors of her being Chinese and a woman made her dream seem concretely unreachable. But Margaret was not bothered by immovable obstacles, for she had a gift for breaking down walls, again and again, in order to reach her goals.
Margaret started working in restaurants when she was 12 years old. And eventually got herself into a prestigious private high school by winning a contest to sell the most subscriptions for the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper paid for her high school education. From there, Margaret got a scholarship to attend USC.
Margaret’s father was an unsuccessful merchant who became a vegetable peddler, and her mother, Ah Yane, had been trafficked to San Francisco at the tender age of 5, and would have suffered unimaginable abuse if not for Presbyterian missionaries who rescued her.
For this reason, Margaret wanted, above all else to become a missionary and use her medical skills for the greater good. She wanted to go to China as a medical missionary. However, all Presbyterian missionaries were white during those days. After three rejections from this religious entity, she was so devastated that she ditched the church altogether and carved out her own unique stereotype-shattering ways to benefit society.
At 26, Dr. Margaret Chung was ready to ply her hard-won skills as a surgeon, but America wasn’t ready for her. Due to her race and sex, she was denied residency by many hospitals. Eventually, she found her way to the Mary Thompson Hospital in Chicago, which was founded by Dr. Mary Thompson (the first female surgeon in America and a staunch supporter of women physicians). Here, Margaret found the mentoring and nurturing that she needed among free-thinking and brilliant, courageous females.
After her internship and two years working as a psychiatrist/doctor for The Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Dr. Chung landed a job at the Santa Fe Railroad Hospital in Los Angeles, where she became an accomplished surgeon by stitching up and healing men who suffered acute injuries from industrial accidents.
It is sadly ironic that Margaret was saving and tending to the care of many white, and mainly male patients; her own father bled to death in 1917 after his leg was severed in a car crash in Pasadena. He was refused admittance to a local hospital because he was Chinese.
Her time as an emergency surgeon in Southern California keenly honed her skills with the knife. That talent would lead her to become a sort-after plastic surgeon and physician for Hollywood movie stars. Her clients included Mary Pickford, John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan.
From stitching together banana peels as a young child, who would have dreamt that she would stitch and embellish celebrity faces so they could shine on the big screen?
It is clear that Dr. Margaret was not only a highly gifted physician but had enormous charisma and a unique personality that attracted many people to her, regardless of race, sex, and even sexual orientation.
As if becoming a doctor in a white male-dominated world wasn’t enough, Margaret was also a norm-breaker in other ways. Considering the suffocating social prejudices of the early and mid-20th century, Dr. Margaret’s reputation as a competent physician was never compromised, even though she continued to dress in mainly male-forward attire with matching mannerisms, drove sports cars, and openly befriended well-known lesbians such as Elsa Gidlow. It was widely rumored that Margaret had several romantic liaisons with feminists.
Even the FBI had a special file, no. 65-35400 on her. And the Census Records from the 1920s indicate that Dr. Chung was living with an unmarried woman under uncertain arrangements.
End of Part I
In Part II, Dr. Margaret Chung moves to San Francisco and continues her medical practice as her fame rises, and she plays an instrumental part in helping China fight the Japanese invasion during World War II.
