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The Baumhammers Case: The senseless shooting of Jerry Sun is lamented from Churchill to China
Sunday, May 07, 2000 By Robert Dvorchak, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
They fused as one for a single, harmonious purpose -- to say their final farewell to Jerry, an only son, only brother, husband, stepfather, friend, an industrious man with a passion for music and life, a man whose passion for peace was cut short by violence in his adopted homeland.
In a eulogy given by his sister yesterday, Ji-Ye "Jerry" Sun, 34, was remembered as a man who loved and received love in return from his parents, his family, his wife and two stepchildren, his many friends.
"Jerry loved life, loved peace, loved the land that he lived in and all of the kind people who lived in this city. He loved the grass and the trees and the mountains and the water; he loved everything this city gave him," said Lili Sun.
She spoke in her native Chinese tongue at a Unitarian service at the Calvary United Church of Christ in Turtle Creek, not far from where the immediate family later held a private service at Ji-Ye Sun's modest two-story house in Churchill.
Jerry Sun is one of five persons Richard Baumhammers is charged with killing April 28. Both Baumhammers and Ronald Taylor, who is charged with a previous murder rampage left three dead, had been treated for mental illness. A package of stories discusses how isolation makes mental illness hard to control; why the mentally ill are no more likely to be violent than anyone else; and why mental illness is hard to prove in court.
Lili Sun, who with her parents traveled across 12 time zones from Shanghai to say goodbye, spoke of an active, intelligent, talented young man, of how those same parents worked hard all their lives to have a happy and beautiful future when they flowered into adults.
At the magnet school in Hanzshou where his mother taught, pictures of Jerry hang in a room of honor. They show him playing his drums, like he had done since he was 6, for foreign dignitaries such as the prime minister of Japan and the president of France.
In addition to getting good grades in school, Jerry schooled his acting skills by studying at the Zhe Jing Kwun Theater Group. He won the group's highest drama award -- the Plum Flower Award, plum being the national flower of China.
He pursued his studies of percussion at the Shanghai Music Academy, and in 1990, he came to America to study at the University of Pennsylvania school of music.
Nothing was handed to him in his new country.
Shortly after marrying May Ling Kung in 1994, he began working as a waiter at the Chinatown Inn, Downtown, where he eventually became a manager.
The Suns moved to Phoenix for about a year so May Ling could be with her daughter and his stepdaughter, Chi-Lan "Molly" Wee, and they supported themselves by working in Chinese restaurants. But they moved back in about 1996 because Pittsburgh was smaller and felt safer. His friends say he called it his second home.
After returning, he worked at the Sushi House and the New Dumpling House, which are adjoining restaurants in Squirrel Hill.
He purchased a modest two-story home in Churchill about a year ago, commuting like most suburbanites to pay the mortgage, two car loans and the Penn State University tuition for his stepson, Chi-Craig "Chuck" Wee.
Just two months ago, he took a new job as manager of the Ya Fei Chinese Cuisine at the Robinson Town Centre.
"My heart is grieved with sorrow," Lili Sun said in the stained-glass light of the stuffy church.
"Jerry is gone. He's gone forever. He is gone so suddenly," she said. "My good brother, rest in peace. You will live in my heart forever."
Before church, Sun's body lay beneath a canopy of white linen. On a table was a shrine of two white candles, a cup of tea and a receptacle for the sticks of sweet-smelling incense each mourner lit in his honor. Nearby was his picture draped in black cloth.
Six pallbearers -- his best friends, wearing white carnations and swaths of black with white ribbons -- carried the casket across the street to the church. Two Allegheny County police officers blocked traffic.
His remains were to be cremated. Later, family and friends gathered for a wake at the Chinatown Inn.
Only once during the somber day were the circumstances of Sun's death mentioned.
His sister thanked all those who had shown their support, and she thanked the many layers of government agencies who had helped her and her parents fly from China on Wednesday.
"At the same time," she said, "we strongly request the government severely punish the criminal in order to preserve the dignity of your country and the safety of the peace-loving people."
It was just eight days ago that Jerry Sun, ringing up a sale at his restaurant, was murdered by a man wearing a brown sports coat, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a .357 Magnum in the other.
Sun and a Vietnamese deliveryman were killed because they were different, victims of a hate crime spawned by a twisted Mt. Lebanon attorney who himself is the son of immigrants, a periodontist and a dentist from Latvia.
The five people murdered and a sixth paralyzed in an April 28 rampage, during which two synagogues were desecrated by a 34-year-old man who hated Jews and non-European immigrants. His attorney is planning an insanity defense, and his parents, in a written apology, say they are as shocked as anyone else that the heartache of a region was spawned in their stately suburban home.
The Chinese have an age-old saying: The greatest pain in life is when the gray mourn the black.
Jerry Sun's gray-haired mother and father, Yun-cheng Jiang and Jun Sun, shared their grief over the loss of their black-haired son. A mother's tears for her dead child transcend cultural and ethnic barriers.
For the handful of Caucasians who joined the tight-knit Asian community in their grief, it was like clasping their hands and saying in the universal language of sorrow: You don't know my language, and I don't know yours, but what could I say anyway? What would ease the pain of knowing your son was murdered in a country whose ideals profess that we all are created equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
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