Richard H Chiu Biography

Chapter 5 West to Study, Work and Farm

Richard became convinced that his career would go better if he had a Doctorate and he applied to the BYU to once again enter their graduate program. Pat was pregnant when they made plans to move back to Provo and since she was in her eighth month of pregnancy, she decided to fly with Meg and David. Richard packed the family’s bare necessities into a Volkswagen Van and started out across the country. The freeway system was still not completed and the wide swells of Iowa’s landscape made for quite an adventure as Richard revved up his overloaded van to over 70
mph on the downward side of the hills and let the momentum carry
him most of the way up the other side, slowing to a crawl as he
approached the summit.

They settled into a duplex in western Provo, where their fourth
child, Nancy Mei-yun, was born and
brought home on October 21, 1968.

Pat holds baby Nancy and Richard holds David and Meg.
Richard’s Brother Mark and his wife, Janell, gave birth to a son within a month or so of Nancy’s birth.

Richard began to look for a building lot in preparation for the distant
retirement years when he supposed he would want to live in Utah. In keeping with his ambitions, he bought a farm in Lehi that had a dairy herd. It was quite a busy time with much to learn to keep the dairy working.

This is a view of the white house with green gables on 180 acres that
was fully ½ mile from the main road. It was a long walk for Meg when she got off the school bus after kindergarten. Richard was pursuing a Doctorate, teaching at the BYU, consulting with the Utah Highway Department about developing computer driven plotters for their engineers, working on a contract for the U.S. government, and running a dairy farm.  When the state health department decreed that the farm required a new dairy barn at an expense in excess of $50,000, Richard had to decide if his future lay in farming or in working as an engineer.  A long night spent digging a cow out of a pit of manure may have played a part in his decision to rent out the farm, give up his plans for obtaining a doctorate in engineering, and return to the ranks of Navy research engineers.