Lily decided to return to the U.S. to continue practicing social work. She studied Communications at San Francisco State University. San Francisco was also the city she was able to meet her future husband.

In 1959, Lily met Paul Chen at a restaurant in Berkeley, California. At the dinner, she found out that Paul had also fled to Taiwan years prior. Coincidentally, both Paul and Lily were born in the same city, and had also escaped on the same boat. They quickly connected and began dating in the winter semester.

In 1959, Paul transferred from UC Berkeley to the University of Washington, and found employment with the Boeing Corporation in Seattle as an aerospace engineer. Paul asked Lily to go with him, offering a plan for Lily to continue her social work studies at the University of Washington. With her father’s blessing, Lily agreed and the two set out for Washington on February 9, 1960.

Lily and Paul’s journey across the Pacific NorthWest came to an abrupt stop while driving on Highway 99. Due to the icy roads and old condition of Paul’s car, they experienced a severe crash. The accident was so drastic that it made headline news in the local newspaper. With the help of friends, Paul was taken to a private hospital. The doctor drilled two holes in his head with a middle bar going through to support and stretch his neck. He was then placed in a 35-pound body cast.

The doctor explained to Lily that Paul needed to recover at home due to the hospital’s expenses and his lack of insurance. It was then that Lily decided to marry Paul, despite her friends concerns that he would be perpetually disabled forever. Lily valued Paul’s character and wanted to support and care for him, just as he did for her. On April 17, 1960 they were married.

Sixty years later, Lily muses that marrying Paul had grounded her. “I was no longer a young girl who loved to talk and to laugh, but a woman, a wife of her loved one. With the call of ‘my husband,’ I felt that  I have found a harbor, a destination for my life.”