My story is a long one and it begins in 1961 at Miami University where my husband-to-be (Pete) and I were close college friends with Dam Trung Phap (who was in Pete’s German class) and his eventual wife, Pham Minh Nghiem (Lily) who lived across the hall from me. We spent that senior year for Phap and Pete, Lily and I were sophomores, together often. We married in 1963 and Lily and Phap moved to DC to continue graduate school for Phap. Pete and I visited them in Dec 1963 right after the Kennedy assassination.
My mother kept in close contact with Lily, too (as they had visited in my home in Indiana) and in 1965 Lily and Phap were recalled by their government whom I believe helped support their education in the US. Phap returned to teach at the U of Saigon and Lily to eventually work in the American Embassy. They both spoke several languages. My mother did an excellent job of keeping in touch with Lily, sending shoes, fabric, items Lily could not get, etc. to help with their 3 little girls.
Then one night in 1975 my parents were awakened to a phone call from the Red Cross, saying they had, among over 10,000 others, 7 refugees who were hoping my parents would take them in. It is a long story how Lily and family escaped, how Phap later escaped and met with his old father at the refugee camp….but anyway, my parents said, of course…..and for the entire summer of 1975, they had 7 Vietnamese refugees living with them. The 3 little girls (ages 10, 9, 4) did not speak English nor did Phap’s father. My children and I (who were living in Maine) returned that summer to Indiana to a reunion with the family. My parents like those everywhere who help refugees are the saints in this story as they helped Phap get his first job, bought them a car, relocated them. Eventually, they were able to settle in Dallas where the girls all graduated from high school, 2 of them valedictorians. Phap was for most of his life a professor at a small Texas college and Lily was one of the administrators for Dallas city schools English as a Second Language program.
(I have wonderful photos of that summer.)
Since then, they have become like our family. Lily and Phap considered my parents their parents….two of their daughters are law school graduates, one is a writer who graduated from Harvard and visited us this past August here in Maine with her husband and two children.
As I watched the war progress from my vantage point in Maine (my husband was a first lieutenant in the Air Force, a four year tour of duty only in the US) I was always concerned for Lily and what their views were of the need for Americans to continue the fighting. But as the war dragged on, it was almost impossible to understand. I see from this story the plight of refugees and the role America played and continues to play as crucial to human kindness. Lily arrived carrying a pocketbook and holding the hands of 3 small children. My parents took them all in.