Their Journey from the Fall

For my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary, I directed a production along with my cousin Linda called "If you still believe..." as a gift to them and to show guests that we understand, or at least acknowledge the journey they had to go through to come here to America in order to have a future for their children, grandchildren and so forth. In this post, I want to retell the story as I know it to share with anyone who might want to read it. I'm sure the way the retold it to us is such a small portion of the emotions and memories they have, but it's all that we have.

My grandpa in the South Vietnamese army, but was injured on the battlefield so he was able to work as a guard for the last president of South Vietnam before the fall of Saigon. Being there, I guess he has some background knowledge about what was going on, so he sent two of my oldest uncles first.

Bac Ruong and Cau Bic were sent off with some money and family possessions to sell to somehow scout the way to America. There was no way a family of 11 was going to be able to escape at once, so they were sent first. Soldiers came to our family's house and they asked where the two boys went, and my grandparents had to lie that they were visiting an aunt's house...

Some time passed (I should find out how much) and the rest of the family decided to try escaping. Grandpa, Grandma, and 7 kids were dropped off in the countryside, and trekked through a pathless jungle in order to reach a boat that would bring them to a camp in some other country in order to wait to find a way to get to America.

They were caught two times and sent home before finally being able to break through the third time. In the jungle, my grandpa heard a gunshot and out of fear, the family broke apart. Somehow, my grandma found all the kids, but grandpa was missing. They decided to go on any how, not knowing if they would ever see my grandpa again.

After watching Journey from the Fall, my aunt told me that she still remembered the smell of the gas in the boat, about how people were packed so tightly you could barely move...I could hardly imagine...having to go through that...at such a young age with everything else happening...it's so crazy..

Luckily, my grandma's boat was only out at sea for a few days before being rescued and taken to a camp in (Thailand?). There they stayed for 6 months before being sponsored by a Catholic Church in Napa, California and flown over.

My grandpa's boat was attacked by pirated, and in the event of protecting people on the boat, he was axed in the left eye. The scar is still there and it's hard for him to see from that eye..

Somehow, some way...they were all united in Napa. I don't know the details, but we so blessed to not lose a single person and to be able to have the whole family together in one place. My grandpa stressed education, and would not let his children work and made them focus on school. He became a farmer, and while the kids were at school, he farmed and my grandma was a seamstress in order to put their kids through school. They were refugees, didn't know any English, but they were embraced and received by the community there.

Now, thirty something years later, everyone is grown up and moved away. All of their kids are married, except one became a priest. The amazing thing is, no one lives more than 2 hours away from my grandparent's house in Napa. 9 families, 22 grand kids all live within a 2-hourish radius from their house and we all come home together once in a while to enjoy each other's company, to celebrate, to play, to smile, to laugh, to run in the backyard, to feed the chickens, to swing on the swings, to lay in the hammock on the deck, to eat good food, to pray, to sing, to embrace, to tell stories, to take pictures, to play games, to BE FREE.

I realize how lucky and blessed we are, there were countless lives lost, countless families torn apart...I don't know what else to do but acknowledge what happened, to pray for the lives lost, and to hope to help the refugees still abroad to find a place to go. There are so many people stuck in limbo in places like Cambodia, and I hope that through the success of culture show 2008, we can contribute some of our proceeds to Vietnam VOICE to build a resource center for Vietnamese people who are still refugees, 37 years after the war.

Thank you Ong Ba Ngoai for your sacrifice, love, and prayers. Thank you God for bringing my family here, together so that we are who we are today. Thank you mom and dad, aunts and uncles, cousins for showing me the unconditional love of family.