Wai Tan Dies at 99; ITT Executive Was From Royal Family

Wai H. Tan, a retired ITT telecommunications executive in the Far East who was born into the royal family of the Ch'ing Dynasty, the last to rule China, died of heart failure Friday at his home in Corvallis, Ore. He was 99 years old.

Mr. Tan was born in Peking (now Beijing), the grandnephew of the Empress Dowager. Before the downfall of the Ch'ing Dynasty in 1911, he was sent by the Imperial Household to be educated in the United States. He attended the Worcester (Mass.) Academy as one of the early recipients of a scholarship established by the Chinese government as an indemnity for the Boxer Rebellion. He went on to Yale, where he became a close friend of Prescott Bush, who was later a United States Senator and the father of President Bush.

He received a master's degree in economics from Columbia and returned to China, where he entered the utility business and eventually became president of the Shanghai Electric Company and the China Electric Company, which were later acquired by ITT - then International Telephone and Telegraph.

In 1920, as was the custom in traditional families, a marriage was arranged for Mr. Tan with May Chin, the daughter of Ai-Ting Chin, the first Chinese Minister to the Court of St. James's during the reign of Queen Victoria.

In World War II, Mr. Tan was responsible for installing telephone lines along the Burma Road and helped to administer the United States Lend-Lease program in China. Along with Gen. Claire Chennault and T. V. Soong, the financier, he was instrumental in organizing the Flying Tigers, which fought over China.

Soon after the Communist takeover in China in 1949, Mr. Tan came to the United States with his wife and their three children. The family was given residency status by a special Act of Congress.

Mr. Tan continued to work for ITT, handling business in the Far East until 1957, when he retired as a vice president.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Ellen Drake of Corvallis; two brothers, Robert, of Honolulu and Edward, of Caracas, Venezuela, and by nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.