Pedersen shares her zeal for life

The first question everyone usually wants to know about Anne is, “Where does she get all of her zeal for life?” The answer comes immediately, “I got it from my father! He is bubbly, full of energy, and always helpful!” 

Anne Pedersen was born in Hong Kong, which at the time was a British Colony. The official languages were English and Cantonese. Cantonese was the Chinese language that Pedersen learned as a child.  Cantonese has 8 tones for every character, thus, there are 8 ways to say each character. It is really difficult to learn.

When the Japanese Occupation was taking place in Shanghai, China, Pedersen’s paternal grandmother, Shuk Yun, had to wear all black and walk bent over so the Japanese soldiers would think she was an old lady.  The soldiers were known to rape anyone that was young.

As a result, her grandmother’s family attempted to escape to Hong Kong when she was fifteen years old. She soon became a refugee because she lost her parents as they were running to safety. By the time she reached Hong Kong, Pedersen’s grandmother was only accompanied by her aunt and cousin.

Since that time, Hong Kong has been taken back by Communist China after the one hundred year lease with the British Empire expired. Now, the official language is Mandarin Chinese which sounds totally different from Cantonese. There are only 4 tones for every character. Pedersen explained, “I don’t understand a word they say! However, it’s actually easier to learn. So, most foreigners learn Mandarin Chinese.” 

Pedersen admits that she still has a Chinese reading and writing ability up to a sixth grade level.

In Hong Kong, Pedersen’s grandfather was in his thirties at the time. He had one wife who was also in her thirties. She had three kids with Pedersen’s grandfather, two boys and a girl. 

As they were Buddhists, a man could have more than one wife as long as he could provide equally for each wife and her children.  Pedersen explained, “As long as everything is fair, a man can take as many wives as he wants.”  Her grandfather asked his first wife for permission to take a second when she didn’t want to have any more kids.  She plainly said, “I had three - that’s enough.” 

He responded, “Well, I want more kids, so if you aren’t going to have any more kids for me, is it okay if I take a second wife?” His wife agreed for him to take a second wife under the condition that she be the one to pick out the wife for him. 

Pedersen’s second grandmother had been taken in as the attendant for her first grandmother and had served the family for five years from when she was a refugee. Thus, she was now 20 years old. She knew how to read and write from going to the temple every day and reading the Buddhist prayers which a Buddhist monk had taught her. 

The first grandmother said to her husband, “This is my attendant. She is very smart and very pretty and she will have good genes for our children.”

The marriage resulted in adding six more children to the family.  The first two children were girls, but the third child was considered the “golden child” because he was a boy. He happened to be Pedersen’s father Patrick.  He would get the best of everything because he was the first born son of the second wife. “He was able to go to university, they gave him everything he needed, and more! He learned to speak fluent English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.”  

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong at the time, they only taught Chinese in the public school system.  If you wanted to learn English, you would have to attend a Catholic school. Pedersen said, “Second grandmother was very smart!  She took her daughters to Sacred Heart and her sons to Raimondi College. The Catholic priest said, “I will let all six of your children come to school for free, but they have to be baptized Catholic and I will give them an English name.” 

Second Grandmother replied, “Baptize them! I want them all to get an English Education so that they have a better future.”

Pedersen laughed, “So, my father and all of my aunts and uncles are all named after Catholic Saints! Her plan worked out well.  They all ended up with successful careers.”

On the other side of the family, Pedersen’s maternal grandmother (Paw Paw) lived in the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. Pedersen recalls having to cross an underwater tunnel when driving to her house. Pedersen said, “She was an equally strong woman and her grandfather, James Wong, was a successful businessman in Kowloon and Shenzhen.  He owned several bakeries.  He also had 3 wives… her Paw Paw was his second wife.  She had 5 children and Pedersen’s mother was the oldest child. Her mother went to a teacher’s college and met her dad at a Christian summer camp while building a road to a school in rural Kowloon. Pedersen said, “The “tea” for my grandfather was that he was very handsome and called himself “The ‘James Bond’ of Hong Kong.” The family didn’t find out that he had a third wife until his funeral when she showed up for her piece of the inheritance! Pedersen chuckled, “I could write a book on my family!”

Fast forward to the birth of Anne Pedersen, Patrick’s first child…being the first grandchild on both sides of her family and the only grandchild for three years, she exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! I had so many toys! I was the tester of toys.  Whenever my Auntie Annie had a new toy shipped to her to test, I became the test subject. I had three large rooms of toys!”  

Pedersen went on to say that her family lived in Happy Valley of Hong Kong and they lived really well. It had a race track. Every weekend there were million dollar bets. As an executive for IBM, Pedersen’s father took his family everywhere possible. Pedersen said, “As a child, I went to Disneyland in LA, Disney World in Florida, Hawaii, and San Francisco. Like, everywhere dad went, he took us….I had a very good childhood.”

Pedersen’s father transferred from Hong Kong to Vancouver, Canada when she was 13 years old. They lived in Richmond, BC with residents who were extremely welcoming and kind to immigrants.  

When Pedersen went to school there, she was tested on English, math, reading, and writing.  Because of her British education in Hong Kong, her reading level was actually higher than the other students. Yet, her oral English was not the best because Cantonese was her mother tongue. Anne’s  teacher placed her with a girl whose father was a Vietnam Veteran and her mother was Chinese. 

Pedersen said, “She looked like me!  The teacher said, ‘Alene, I want you to be Anne’s buddy because you two look alike and it will make her not so scared to come to school. I want you to help her make friends and get accustomed to the school.’” Alene became Pedersen’s best friend who walked to school with her everyday, made sure she had someone to eat with at lunch, and helped her with English.  

Because she was integrated into the classroom, Pedersen learned English quickly. One day Pedersen’s father asked, “Anne, do you dream in Chinese or English?”  She thought about it and said, “I think I dream in English.” Immediately, Pedersen saw that her father’s eyes became so sad. He turned to her mother and said, “Your daughter dreams in English!” Pedersen laughed, “Suddenly, I was my mom’s daughter because he was so disappointed with my answer.”  Pedersen thinks it was the sign of progress because as an immigrant, she had made friends and integrated really well into her community.

After three years, Pedersen’s family moved from west to east, because IBM was having middle management downsizing. Her father was able to continue as a manager by relocating to Toronto, Canada. Pedersen was able to finish her last two years of high school there. The school she had attended in Vancouver was an International Baccalaureate School. However, there were no IB schools in the neighborhood that she moved into in Toronto, but there was a private school that was funded by the university called University of Toronto School (UTS) for accelerated learning. Pedersen had to take an entrance exam and complete an interview to get into the school. She was successful in that endeavor. It was during this time that Pedersen picked up another language - French.

After high school, Pedersen went to the University of Toronto for Physical Therapy. It was there that she met Paul Pedersen who had got into medical school after only two years of undergraduate school because his grades were so high. 

 As it turned out, PT students used the school’s cadavers from the neck down, the dentists got the cadavers from the neck up, and the medical students used the whole thing. Pedersen commented, “It was like Gross Anatomy Romance.” She and Paul would go to the lab and study.  She continued, “I was very lucky.  My cadaver was a male that had really good muscles. He had died of a massive heart attack in his fifties, so he was well developed physically, but Paul wasn’t so lucky. His cadaver was an eighty something year old lady that had died of natural causes and had lived the last thirty years of her life in the nursing home. That meant she was all atrophied and Paul couldn’t see a lot of the structures. So, he was always asking to study Anne’s cadaver.  “I thought he just wanted to learn, but I guess there was more…he just wanted to see me more and we started dating.”

On Saturday evenings, when study time was complete, a group of their friend couples including medical students, PT students, OT students, and dentists would go ice skating or do other fun things together like going to the National Ballet Theater where they would quiz each other on surface anatomy on the ballet dancers. 

Paul and Anne dated for four years. Anne got her first job without a resume because they needed someone to cover maternity leave at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, where she did her last internship. Meanwhile, Paul was completing his medical internship at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. Paul ended up getting a full time position in Chatham at the Wallaceburg Hospital. He was working 15 hours daily between the hospital, nursing home and house calls. As it turned out, they needed a physical therapist at the Chatham Hospital.  Paul asked Anne to consider moving from Toronto to Chatham to take that full time position.  Believing Paul “to be the one,” Anne moved from her hometown of Toronto and took that position.

One day, a medical recruiter came to Paul’s office and asked if he would be interested in looking at three different practices in the United States in order to consider a partnership. He did in fact visit the other practices, but when he visited the practice of Dr. Scott Black, the two quickly became friends and Scott invited Paul to become his business partner.

Anne’s parents were in dismay, “Wait a minute! Moving to Chatham was one thing, but moving to another country is another story. Unless Paul proposes with a ring, we don’t want you to go to the United States.”

Paul knew about their wishes and decided to answer it with style.  He took Anne to Paris and proposed in front of the Eiffel Tower. Anne explained, “It was so romantic and lovely!”

Paul and Anne relocated to Barbourville in 1995.  They bought the Faulkner House which is 100 years old this year in 2024. They were married in 1996 at the Laurel Cove Amphitheatre in Pineville, Kentucky. Their twins, Lauren and Kristen, were born in 1998 and a third daughter, Sarah, was born in 2002.

Anne has thoroughly immersed herself into the Barbourville Community as an active parent, a physical therapist, a member of the Junior Study Club, and a member of the GSWC (General Federation of Women’s Clubs) where she was recruited two years ago as the Kentucky Arts and Culture Chairperson. Her project was tablescapes. With tablescaping, she learned the food of a culture and how their food is presented. This worked out well because not only does Anne love cooking, she is also a fine china collector. To date, she has 12 sets of china. Regularly, she uses these dishes to wow facebook friends by displaying the food she has prepared for the day.  As Arts and Culture Chairperson for Barbourville Jr. Woman’s Study Club, she is also in charge of the Knox County Art Show in March each year.

This year for their anniversary, Paul gifted Anne with a set of Theodore Haviland Limoges China like the one that they were served on in France when they were engaged.

Besides home life, Anne is proud to be a Physical Therapist. “I love my job! I am so blessed to be able to see patients of different ages with different diagnoses. My caseload is different everyday and it’s never routine. With a busy outpatient orthopedic focused practice, it is ever changing and I’m always learning!  I’m so fortunate that I have excellent coworkers and am able to be close to home. I work in a female owned company PT Pros, Inc which has now grown to over ten clinics and across state lines.  When I had kids, I was allowed to go home and nurse or pump at work.  PT Pros provided annual continuing education and I just took a three-day dry needling certification course last December.  Her motto is that of Maya Angelou “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.”

Anne concluded, “People make their own opportunities. Even though we live in a small town in Kentucky, I was able to find enrichments for our daughters.  They were able to do anything that a child in a large city can do. They did ballet, gymnastics, academic team, Odyssey of the Mind. They attended both private and public schools, and the Gatton Academy, which is a state run STEM school on WKU’s campus. They were able to reach their goals of becoming a medical doctor, an aerospace engineer and a computer science engineer.  The school systems here are only getting stronger and all the children have a bright future here. I think for being in a small town in rural Kentucky, Paul and I have chosen well. We have made lifelong friends and made Barbourville home.”