Family flees Vietnam, looks for hope in the U.S.
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BY ERIN ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
It’s 12:30 p.m. Sunday. Cuong and Mary Nguyen are still walking home from late mass at North American Martyrs Church. Children Maria, 23, Teresa, 22, William, 21, and John, 19, are working in the kitchen, studying in their rooms or taking a break in front of the television. Every few minutes someone’s cell phone rings and there is a universal look from sisters to brothers: “Is that yours or mine?”
Sunday afternoon is family time for the Nguyen family.
“Every Sunday we eat lunch together,” says Teresa.
Everyone is expected to carve out an hour or so of their busy schedules to pull up a stool and sit around the counter-high island in the middle of the bright sunny kitchen. Here they will eat Mary’s delicious noodle soup, drink church wine or soda pop and talk, laugh and tease before they return to the hectic lives of full-time students, active teens and 20-somethings and always busy parents.
Cuong Nguyen came to the United States in 1975. His wife, Mary, and their oldest son, Francis, tried three times to escape Vietnam before seeking refuge in a crowded cargo hold of an overloaded boat.
The family reunited in 1981 in Kansas, and four more children were born.
The Nguyens moved to Lincoln 10 years ago because the community had good schools.
They are happy. They are surrounded by family. They work hard.
And day after day they find themselves straddling two worlds — the Vietnamese culture that defines them and the American way in which they live.
It was Teresa who volunteered her family for the Stories of Home community art project. The full- time international relations student at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln was working at the Asian Cultural Center when she first heard of the Lincoln Arts Council’s search for families.
Teresa says her family’s story is symbolic of the tens of thousands of stories of Vietnamese immigrants who came to the United States in three separate waves during the Vietnam War.
Like so many Vietnamese families, her parents dedicated their lives to creating a better life for their children. A life that centers around the premise that it all begins with a good education.
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A giant Vietnam Freedom flag hangs from a wall in the Nguyen living room. Centered between the red stripes on the yellow flag is a wooden cut-out of Vietnam. Blue letters mark three main cities and denote the north-to-south route Cuong took to his eventual departure.
A member of the South Vietnamese Navy, Cuong was among the first wave of military refugees to come to America.
A sponsorship from the Dodge City (Kan.) Diocese brought him to Great Bend, Kan.
Meanwhile, Mary and Francis were trapped in Vietnam.
Translating for her mother, Teresa explains how Mary paid a man to take them to freedom. But when she reached the meeting place, the man was nowhere to be found, and her money was gone.
On the second escape attempt Mary was captured. She and her brother were jailed. Her brother was put to work in the Vietnamese jungles. Mary worked as a cook.
She used a grocery shopping trip to escape. She and Francis returned to their home in Phuoc Ly, just outside Saigon.
Mary recalls her father, who on his deathbed urged his daughter to find a way to America — regardless of whether she could find Cuong.
Using gold and money from her family Mary bought passage for herself and her son aboard a cargo boat.
One hundred thirty-eight people stuffed themselves under the boat’s storage area.
Half the refugees were South Vietnamese, the other half were communist, Mary explains.
“Even the communists wanted to go to a better life,” Teresa says, repeating her mother’s words in English.
“There were a lot of arguments and fights over the money,” Teresa says.
There was talk of throwing the refugees overboard.
“People said the boat will probably sink anyway,” Teresa translates.
“Everybody was really hungry,” Mary says in English. “There was no food. No water. People were so hungry and exhausted they didn’t want to fight anymore.”
After five days at sea they were rescued by a U.S. Naval ship. The refugees went to the Philippines and later to the United States.
Mary located her husband in Kansas and joined him. Their family grew to seven.
They spoke Vietnamese at home, but wanted their children to learn English. Some they learned at daycare.
“We learned most of our English from television,” Teresa says. “When we were young we would watch WWF and ‘The Price is Right.’”
Teasing at school made the girls determined to speak English well.
“I will learn English. It will be clean, and it will not have an accent,” Teresa recalls thinking. “I’m going to talk just like other kids.”
In 1996 the Nguyen family moved to Lincoln.
“Lincoln has good schools,” Cuong says. “We want kids in good schools, that’s why we moved.”
They selected their Highlands home because it was within walking distance of North American Martyrs Church and School.
“They always want you to get all the education America has,” Maria says.
“They always want us to be doctors and lawyers,” she says with a laugh. “Or they want us to be nuns and priests.”
Adds Teresa, “My parents didn’t want me to play sports. They wanted me to focus on school.
“But they didn’t stop me,” she says. An athlete Teresa plays softball, soccer and rugby.
“You need school first,” Cuong chides.
Teresa understands her father’s insistence.
“My parents always said, we want you to have a better life than we have,” she says.
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com
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