Pangs' Lives Marked By Success, Ordeal -- Frozen-Food Business Made Millions; Deaths In Fire Bring Grief

Harry and Mary Pang have survived ordeals - he as a World War II bomber gunner and she as a teenage orphan in a family of 10 kids.

Mostly, they've thrived since they were married in 1945.

In local supermarkets for 40 years, Mary Pang's name has graced the labels on colorful boxes of frozen Chinese food. Lock, stock and wok, they own the International District building where they make food. They've owned a Mercer Island home for 33 years.

In recent years, though, a competitor from the Midwest has been selling a fast-food version of their carefully prepared frozen Chinese dishes, undercutting their price by as much as a dollar, said food broker Chuck Morris.

The Pangs' business grossed more than $1 million annually a decade ago, but they had to lay off some workers a few years ago, said Mary Pang.

The 16,000-square-foot building at 811 7th Ave. S., built in 1908, was aging and "approaching the point of economic uselessness," a county assessor recently wrote. The underlying property was valued at around $432,000.

But Harry and Mary Pangs' prospects were brightening after hiring Morris a year ago to market their product.

Then Thursday night, the Pangs were watching television when an announcer broke in with a bulletin stating that their building was ablaze. Mary Pang says her 73-year-old husband's heart "fell down to the floor" and the pair rushed to the scene, where they learned four firefighters had been killed.

"We feel just really, really badly. The building is gone . . . but the lives that were lost, oh, that's terrible," she said.

The Pangs were shocked again the next day when investigators from the Seattle Police Department and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms told reporters there had been threats against the building, and it had been under surveillance.

"We know nothing about (any threats)," said Mary Pang. "If we've been under surveillance for two weeks, we certainly don't know about it."

Ciro Pasciuto, the owner of La Panzanella bakery which is also in the building, said he, too, has heard nothing about threats.

Mary Pang says she fully expects investigators to examine their background if they suspect arson.

"That is in their line of duty and we are answering them," she said. "There is nothing we have to hide. This is as great a shock to us as everyone else."

"That's always going to be investigated. That's standard," said their son, Martin Pang, an actor who lives in the Los Angeles area and flew to Seattle after hearing of the blaze.

Harry Pang, a quiet man with an engaging smile, was born in a small Mississippi town and subsequently moved back to China with his immigrant family.

Mary Pang, a vivacious woman with a pixy-like demeanor, was born in Seattle and has spent her entire life here.

In the early 1930s, her immigrant dad, a railroad worker, moved back to China without the family. After he died in China in 1932, her mom supported a family of 10 children on a meager living by, among other things, selling legal lottery tickets on a street corner, said the Pangs' niece, Cheryl Chow, who is a member of the Seattle City Council.

When their mother died in 1941, the older children raised the younger ones. On some occasions, the older brothers had to ask for food from local restaurants, Chow said.

One of Mary's sisters, Ruby Chow, became a well-known restaurateur, King County councilwoman and Democratic Party leader. However, following an argument over business, the two women have not talked in more than three decades.

Harry and Mary Pang got together by a circuitous route. Harry's father moved the family back to China until after the Japanese invaded China in the 1930s. Harry Pang's dad opened the Atlas Grocery at 14th Avenue and East Yesler Way.

Harry graduated from old Broadway High School and was sent off to war in 1942 as a sergeant in the Army Air Forces. Given the average life expectancy of a waist gunner on a B-17, Pang counts it as a huge blessing that he survived 32 missions over hostile Europe.

Mary, meanwhile, graduated from Franklin High School, briefly attended the University of Washington and worked in Chinese restaurants.

When Harry Pang returned from the war in 1945, one of Mary's sisters introduced the talkative girl to the slightly shy, young war veteran.

Mary was by then reattending the UW, where Harry also enrolled. But after they married and after Harry Pang's dad helped them purchase a small grocery store in the South End in 1947, they both dropped out of college, never to return.

Pang's Grocery Store, at 14th Avenue South and South Lander Street, was a landmark mom and pop grocery store until the Pangs sold it in 1954. The couple took time deciding what to do and then, with Ruby Chow's help, they got into the frozen-food business.

Ruby Chow founded Ruby Chow's Frozen Chinese Food, Inc. in her basement in 1950.

In the mid-1950s, Harry and Mary Pang took over the management of the firm. In 1955, the Pangs owned 75 percent of the business, and the Chows 25 percent, corporate records show.

Mary and her sister had their falling out in 1960 and Ruby Chow pulled out.

In 1963, the name was changed to Mary Pang's Food Products, Inc., and the product began carrying Mary's name. Her fame grew.

The couple first rented the building in the International District where they made their product, and then purchased it.

Mary Pang's trademark, well-regarded in the local media, was frozen Chinese foods that are prepared from scratch, with traditional ingredients, in woks. She briefly operated a cooking school and in 1990 she self-published a cookbook, "A Wok with Mary Pang: A Healthy Stroll through Chinese Cooking." Five thousand copies of the book were printed, and it included pictures by an award-winning artist, said Elliott Wolf, publisher at Peanut Butter Press.

By the early 1980s, the couple was employing 19 people in their old building and raking in sales. But cheaper products began to crowd them off the grocery-store shelves throughout the state. One chain, Safeway, stopped buying their product, but there was a loyal following.

Harry and Mary Pang adopted two children, who are now grown. Mary Pang says she and her husband are estranged from their daughter. The son, Martin, was a onetime race-car driver who grew up in the family business. He served as president of the company until he left the company a little over a year ago. He remains close with his parents.

Martin Pang was divorced four times between 1979 and 1989, according to King County Superior Court records. He has children.

Martin Pang has also gone through Chapter 7 bankruptcy. His attorney, Steve Levy, said a condominium that was technically owned by Martin's parents was sold as part of the liquidation action.

The fire destroyed not only the building but also nearly all of the last remaining copies of Mary Pang's cookbook. All their equipment went up in the flames, too. Harry Pang said the building contained soy bean oil and vegetable oil, in gallon containers, which could have fed the blaze.

Pang was at the business until about an hour or so before the fire. He said he saw nothing suspicious.

Pasciuto, the bakery owner, was also there to drop off paychecks at his business between about 6 p.m. and 6:15 p.m, and he, too, saw nothing.

Mary Pang says she and her husband will come out all right financially. They have insurance and savings, and distributors have offered to give the popular couple a hand, said Morris, the broker.