Lately, I’ve been writing about refugees: Vietnamese, Iraqi, Syrian, etc. A reader sent me a letter, related to the issue — and related to an item I had way back in July.
Robert D. Ray, governor of Iowa from 1969 to 1983, died. I noted something in an obit published in the New York Times:
Beginning in 1975, Mr. Ray volunteered to accept several thousand refugees from Southeast Asia, people from different backgrounds who were displaced by the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Many were concerned that the refugees would take jobs from Americans and fail to assimilate, and the move was unpopular in some circles. But Mr. Ray argued that a compassionate, humanitarian response was required.
“I decided we couldn’t sit here in the middle of Iowa, in the land of plenty, and let them die,” he told The Iowa City Press-Citizen in 2003. “They had to risk everything, their homes and members of their family.”
To this day, Iowa has a department of refugee services. To read about it, go here.
The letter I received came from Kevin Petersen, a student at Columbia University. He writes a column for the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator. He tells me, “I was discharged from the Army a few months back, right before I started school. During my last year there, our command sergeant major, the highest-ranking man in a 700-man battalion, was Thinh Huynh.”
Here is an article about Thinh Huynh, of the 82nd Airborne, from the DoD itself. The article begins, “Full of fear and anxiety, a 10-year-old Vietnamese boy sailed across the South China Sea for 10 days, in 1986, with the expectation that a better life awaited him across the ocean.” Huynh himself is quoted as saying, “If it was not for America, I probably would be dead long ago.”
Back to Kevin Petersen’s letter:
He came with only his mother and his sister. His father, a military officer of the Republic of Vietnam, was imprisoned for eight years in a reeducation camp. I’m not sure what happened to him, unfortunately.
Anyway, I remember CSM Huynh telling me, while we were deployed to Afghanistan and before I read your article, that he was from a town called Nevada, in Iowa. I always thought this was strange — I’m from Northern Virginia, which hosts a huge Vietnamese population, and I know that many went to California as well. I wondered how CSM Huynh had ended up in Iowa. . . .
He has done many deployments overseas, and he is leading soldiers who will soon take over his position, continuing the legacy of our Army. He expressed to me the desire to do other work upon retirement: such as counter-human-trafficking in Central America. He wants to continue to help others.
Let me quote that obituary again, the obituary of Robert D. Ray: “Many were concerned that the refugees would take jobs from Americans and fail to assimilate.” Kevin Petersen observes that Thinh Huynh took a job that not many want, “and I assure you that, with his massive Ram truck, can of Copenhagen dip, and penchant for country music, he assimilated.” He further says, “I am sure that Governor Ray would have liked to hear stories such as this.”
Finally, Kevin sent me this brief video, about CSM Huynh and one other member of the 82nd Airborne — a man from an earlier generation. CSM Tadeusz (Ted) Gaweda was born in 1933. Ten years later, he and his family were forced into a German labor camp. They were liberated by American GIs. CSM Gaweda went on to serve in Korea, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and elsewhere. To read an article about him, go here.
Sometimes, America changes lives for the better, while helping itself in the process. Indeed, this happens routinely. Cause for gratitude, all around.