How old is mona lee locke

And look here: Harry Truman's signature in the guest registry. Hostesses herd clusters of adults from room to room. There is oohing and ahhing at the dainty French porcelain, the shiny silver champagne fountain and tureen, the hefty buffet with the big claw feet, the 11 crystal chandeliers and the two end tables out of only 50 in the world. It is midday and the public tours have stopped for an hour. She arrives in the Family Living Room in zip-up sweater and cotton leggings, with her two pre-Gary companions: cats Gatsby and Maya.

She plops on the couch. Locke will often greet guests here. The room is cozier than the other museum-ish public rooms. It is the one public room that can be decorated with first family mementos, and already there is some "Mona stuff": a photo of the couple in front of the presidential helicopter, the cradle the Legislature gave them when Gary was sworn in.

Maybe some black-and-white photographs Gary picked up once at auction. Her priority is transforming what used to be Mary Lowry's office, a room across from the master bedroom upstairs, into the nursery.

On a vacation in Hawaii, Gary spotted a motorized stuffed bunny and giddily snatched it up. So they passed on Beatrix Potter and Winnie-the-Pooh and went for a bear-and-bunny theme. Gone are the days when Locke, a former KING-TV reporter, did the animal stories her friends tease her about and the live shots at all hours in windstorms and near swollen rivers.

She doesn't miss that at all. She does miss her TV news buddies though, and sometimes, when a press pool buzzes about her husband and she happens to be there, she wants to go over and chat with a friend. Some of her closest female friends are TV reporters. And as the wife of this country's first Chinese-American governor, she has made herself accessible to many media requests, although she says she is always surprised "why anyone wants to talk to me. During a recent TV appearance, she smiled and chatted about nursery wallpaper and White House pictures.

To a woman who said how wonderful she looks pregnant, Locke said, "You should be with me at night. She said she is honored to be considered a role model. Yes, maybe she'd like a bilingual nanny; no, she and Gary hadn't yet picked out a school. She answered each question enthusiastically and thoughtfully. Throughout the show, she later said, all she kept thinking was "Dead air. Dead air. Locke's own role models are her parents: Larry and Celia Lee, who emigrated from China and met in California.

He went from deliveryman in a stock brokerage to running his own business. They raised three children. They have been married for 36 years. Mona grew up in the Bay Area, the middle child and only daughter. Mona was a good girl, her mother says. Never gave her any trouble. Always did her homework before she watched TV.

Always friendly, too. The Lee family did not talk current affairs at the dinner table, which is what probably inspired Locke to go into the news business. She was expected all along to go to college. When the Lees were forced out of cosmopolitan Shanghai, they were stripped not only of their comfortable life of privilege and private property. There was a much more profound loss.

After helping his wife and children set up house in Sichuan province, Lee's father, T. Lee, a politically active Nationalist and general manager of the Central Bank of China, returned to Shanghai. Father and son never met again.

After T. She ultimately fled her homeland, where several other pieces of property had been confiscated by the government, and moved to the United States.

In the late s, the Communists invited her back, returning some property and a house near the U. Consulate here. Lam, an activist herself, died in that home last year. Larry Lee's return to the house of his childhood caused something of a stir for the elderly ex-transit workers who now occupy the run-down apartments.

They asked if Lee had come to take their house away, a right he has under Chinese law. Gary Locke will be guest at a Saturday reception for ex-Vice President Joe Biden, one of two private donor events to support Biden's presidential bid.

Most Popular. The couple were toasted by their children, and one friend wrote: "A highlight of the wedding was watching Cory discard his reputation as a non-dancer and perform for Mona a dance of many moves that he had practiced over 13 weeks.

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