Community Announcements and Events

Coby Yee – A Celebration of Life

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Coby is cheered by audience members in 2015 at a screening of “Forbidden City, USA” in San Francisco’s Great Star Theatre.  Photo by DeepFocus Productions.

The Bay Area Chinese Genealogy Group is saddened to advise that Coby Yee, a featured panelist in our East meets West: Chinatown Nightclubs, died peacefully August 14, 2020, at the age of 93.

If you wish to see Coby full of life, love and laughter, just weeks ago view BACGG had the great honor and privilege of working with Coby in this interview. Even when we had dress rehearsals, with only three of us present,  Coby was always dolled up in full costume and makeup, ready to put on a show.  It is this zeal of life, I will always remember. She told me about the  gown she made with a 15 foot train (she is only 4’11”!) to make a grand entrance for her acceptance as 2020’s Living Legend from the Las Vegas Burlesque Hall of Fame… never failing to be larger-than-life. Coby never said goodbye… she always ended with, bye for now. So bye for now, Coby, as when I look into the heavens, I will always see your bright star.

Ron Chan, Executive Director, Bay Area Chinese Genealogy Group

Photos provided by Cynthia Yee, webinar panelist, and fellow entertainers to celebrate Coby’s life. view

Coby Yee, 2020 Legend of Burlesque / Last Dance Video by Frankie Fictitious and Joyce Tang (4 min 22 sec) view Special thanks to the Burlesque Hall of Fame site , a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to preserving and celebrating burlesque.

We were unable to have the panelist answer the questions posed by the webinar attendees contemporaneously. BACGG (Ron, Gail, and Jeannie) spent several hours with the panelists going over the submitted questions, and then collating the answers. Please see their output: Questions Answered click

Here is a wonderful tribute to Coby in the New Yorker, posted on Valentines Day

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/an-aging-burlesque-dancers-unlikely-romance?fbclid=IwAR20eT968H276uGzgwa0z8fFeHAv9fO0_xJKwJBG8j8WVofI6kf4UIZFf-Y

Please feel free to leave a story, a memory, or say, goodbye for now, to Coby.

ww2 remembrance

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Lets Start Writing Our Stories!

World War Two was a climatic period for our families, who are members of the ‘greatest generation’ link . Our Operation WWII Chinese American GI webinar aired on 8/29th link focuses on those who have served in our armed forces. But genealogy is about family history, and everyone in our family has an important contribution to our passion as BACGG members.

Because of the 75th Anniversary celebration of the end of World War 2 on 9/2/2020, I have set up a page click for BACGG members to write something about our relatives who lived during that period. Contrary to the 8/29th webinar, I have expanded the remembrances, including not only those who have served in the armed forces, but also on the home front, in the industrial war effort, and those interred by the tragic decisions of our leaders.

Your remembrances can be elaborate like Ron’s site click on a 3rd party website, or they can be a simple paragraph(s) like Doug’s site click . For Leona and Susan, they formatted their stories as a PDF, exported to an image, and we imported Leona’s page click and Susan’s page click.

Members of BACGG, lets return to our roots. This is an opportunity to practice writing our family history and share your family’s stories to publish on our site. These remembrances will be permanent pages on BACGG website. Members will be able to access their page at any time to change or update. Membership has it privileges.

Next year Ron will pay tribute to our veterans in the Korean Conflict, and the year after to veterans of the Vietnam war. As you gather your family history, remember to collect information on relatives in those two conflicts.

Contact Doug email me or email bacgg.doug@gmail.com

Create a Free Remembrance Vet Plaque

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https://remembrance.togetherweserved.com/sign-up.jsp?source=ROH&goals=ROH&InvitedBy=Association-1988

This Memorial Day, Together We Served is inviting any Veteran or Family Member to create a Remembrance Military Service Plaque, at no charge, to remember an Active Serving or Veteran Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman or Coastguardsman who is now Deceased.

TogetherWeServed offers our Members the highest quality photo scanning at no cost. Send us a box of all your photos, slides or negatives and we will scan them, fix them for imperfections, post them online, and send them back to you, with a DVD of all your photo files, in the same condition you sent them. In addition we will automatically upload your selected photos to your Together We Served profile page photo album free of charge!

Email us at admin@togetherweserved.com for more details.