Einstein Cheng was a compassionate and thoughtful member of the NewYork-Presbyterian Queens team. A helpful mentor to many, when he fell ill, the community rallied behind him. Today, Cecilia Cheng is keeping her husband’s memory alive by organizing support for the very care that enhanced his life and the lives of numerous others.
“We both feel the need to give of ourselves because we can,” says Cecilia Cheng when asked about the similarities between herself and her husband, Einstein. Brought together in 1985 by the persistence of a clever aunt and various family members, the couple shared a wonderful 37 years of marriage, during which they built a family both at home and at the hospital.
“We never would’ve met by natural means: His aunt introduced us,” Cecilia says. The aunt “lived in New York at the time, and she was friends with my parents.… At some point, she said, ‘You know, I have a nephew.’” At the time, Einstein was working in Taipei, having left his family in the Philippines to work with friends he had met in medical school. Cecilia’s parents were frequently traveling back and forth between New York and Hong Kong and, in collaboration with Einstein’s family, organized a meet-cute between Einstein, Cecilia, and her godmother in Taiwan.
“I had not slept in 36 hours and had a really bad trip on the plane. There was some kind of volcanic eruption, and it just took forever, so when I got there, I was just not in the mood,” Cecilia recalls. “I was traveling with a friend named Susan, and Susan had a cousin from Canada named Elvis.… So, I’m sitting here at dinner with a guy named Einstein and a guy named Elvis,” she says. “I thought I was in the Twilight Zone.” From that meeting, Cecilia and Einstein’s love would blossom for decades.
Einstein began his career at NewYork-Presbyterian in the early 1990s, when the Queens campus was still known as Booth Memorial Hospital. “I think when he first started, there weren’t that many PAs [physician assistants] in the Department of Surgery,” Cecilia notes. Then, as new kids came on, he was able to sort of teach what he knew, what he learned.” Experience was a pillar of Einstein’s approach: he would go on to join the Urology Department despite not being formally trained in the subject—empowering and educating the department by immersing himself in the field and sharing the wisdom he gained with others. “The Urology Department was looking for PAs, and he moved into that position. I think he had to learn a lot,” she says. “The attendings helped him and taught him how to do whatever he had to do, and I think he passed that on to the new kids who came on.… His patience with people is just unbelievable.”
He was also invaluable to the hospital’s multilingual approach, often helping translate for patients and families from the Chinese community and more. “When he first started, because he spoke so many dialects, if there was a Chinese patient, they would just shove him into the room,” says Cecilia with a laugh. “He was very multilingual.… He spoke Mandarin because that’s what they taught him at school, and he spoke Taishanese at home with his family. And since most Chinese people in the Philippines were Fujianese, he spoke that too along with Tagalog, which is the native language of the Philippines. Of course, after we got married, he learned to speak my dialect, Cantonese. There were so many languages and dialects running in his head it was sometimes comical.”
As a fixture of the department, Einstein was known for his diligence and seemingly boundless support for his team. He made himself a constant resource for those under his leadership, showing dutiful consideration for each person’s unique needs. This compassion is exemplified in the term “work kids,” a loving nickname for younger team members that Einstein and Cecilia created and the colleagues themselves embraced. Cecilia shares, “I think he just personalized each kid. Whatever they needed, he would concentrate on that.” Often working an early shift, Einstein would be at the Queens campus at least an hour before he had to be, reviewing notes from the night before and providing feedback to his team before his shift started. Just as he sustained his work, kids sustained him—providing advice and insight from their own experiences. “He would talk to them about things that bothered him. If he needed friendly, forgiving advice, he’d go talk to them,” she explains. Patience and persistence were key to Einstein’s methods, making him known for his concise but caring approach to both patients and colleagues. “Imagine in 30-something years, that man never raised his voice at me.… You can ask his work kids—I don’t think he yelled at them, either.”
When Einstein fell seriously ill around 2020, Cecilia sprang into action, becoming his primary caregiver while helping the family navigate the initial uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their life became a whirlwind of hospital visits, specialized procedures, and follow-up appointments once Einstein was diagnosed with cancer, and the community rallied around them. Colleagues and family lent their support, and Einstein’s work kids banded together gifting him a lovingly curated care basket that included a chemotherapy shirt. These specially designed garments are outfitted with discreet openings to accommodate treatment ports, allowing patients to feel more dignified and at ease during their chemotherapy sessions. With this thoughtful gift, his work kids would also help seed the idea in Einstein of fundraising for more shirts.
In 2023, after bravely battling the disease for some time, Einstein Cheng died surrounded by friends and family. Always thinking of others, he and Cecilia had already begun discussing how to support the hospital. “I think both he and I are acutely aware that when we walk into a hospital, we’re not as scared as the rest of the world.… I was a pharmacist; he was a PA. Healthcare institutions don’t scare us,” Cecilia says. “But for the rest of the world, if this is your first encounter with serious medical issues and going into this kind of environment, it must be terrifying. So just having this thing where they say, ‘Here, this will help you’ … it’ll feel more like a normal process.”
She elaborates: “We sort of talked about it before he died, but we didn’t have a plan for it.… In Chinese tradition, when friends and family come to the funeral, they give you money. I had money that was given to me that I didn’t really want to use for any other purpose.” Since Einstein was one of eight children, Cecilia consulted his siblings about using the support she had been given to purchase chemo shirts. “I talked to his sister and said, ‘You know, I want to take this money and buy chemo shirts.’ She thought it was a really great idea, and that’s how it started.” Initially, Cecilia donated a small supply of shirts, but as the need for more garments became apparent, she dedicated additional time to gathering support for them. “His work kids—when he needed help, they really pitched in and did this thing for him. And I feel like if we could do that for other people, it would really give them a sense of care,” she adds.
A tutor herself, Cecilia sees the chemo shirts as another way to give back and a meaningful testament to the care Einstein cultivated throughout his lifetime. “I would have never thought that I would be in a position to do something like this: being raised as a kid that came to this country with really no family, no help.… I feel like I’ve been extraordinarily lucky,” she says, “and also maybe in a way that perhaps I shouldn’t have been this lucky—that most people in my situation wouldn’t be this lucky, this fortunate. So, I always feel like I can do something about that, and then I go do it … because I’ve met other people that have done it.”
She credits Einstein for speaking to her through the universe and reminding her to remain committed. “We have a good friend named Pat, whose daughter has special needs. Pat is elderly; and Cathy, her daughter, in her 60s, had developed late stage colon cancer,” Cecilia shares. At the hospital, “they give Pat this chemo shirt for Cathy. She opens it up, and Einstein’s name is on there.” Einstein’s comforting didn’t end there. While waiting for Cathy’s treatment, Pat was playing on a new phone, and an image of Einstein popped up randomly. While the family thinks the image may have downloaded from an email regarding Einstein, Cecilia is certain it was her husband letting everyone know he’s still caring for them. “That inspires me. I think he was talking to us, telling us not to quit,” she says.
A touching example of community coming together for care, Cecilia’s efforts in 2024 provided shirts for all chemo patients. The fundraiser is now in its third year, and Cecilia sees reminders of Einstein’s impact frequently—most notably in their daughter. A caring and creative spirit, she grew up accompanying her parents to various volunteer events and helping out whenever she could. Yet it was during the pandemic that she really embodied the family tradition of giving to others. “Watching her grow up to be the kind of human being that we’d like her to be … has been the most rewarding thing,” Cecilia shares. “During the pandemic, we really didn’t know we would have to ask her to be that resilient and that strong, but she was and could not come home for over a year while her dad was seriously ill. She had to study without family … and this child, in her four years, with one major and three minors, got one A minus and graduated summa cum laude. I don’t know how—we raised her to be independent. As a kid with no other real way of helping, she made art, raffled it off, and donated the proceeds to different AAPI organizations and COVID relief.… She did it a few times. It was all her idea.”
The Cheng family doesn’t plan on stopping how they care for others any time soon. Cecilia notes, “I still teach kids, and I’m in contact with all the kids I’ve helped along the way. I’m always open—text me, call me, send me screenshots of things you don’t understand, whatever it is. And I always say, ‘If I don’t know it, I will go learn it, and then we’ll figure it out together.’ If somebody needs help, you go help.” To support port shirts for NYP Queens patients, you’re invited to join Cecilia’s online fundraiser below.