Years later Vietnamese family grateful for Austin SVDP
Catholic Spirit, June 2010, In Our World
By Enedelia J. Obregón
Senior Correspondent
It was a bittersweet reunion for Frankie Wright and some members of a family that the Society of St. Vincent de Paul helped settle in Austin from Vietnam 35 years ago.
Wright was one of the volunteers who picked up the family at the airport and helped them acclimate to a new life.
“We had no idea the family was so large,” Wright said as they recently gathered around her kitchen table. “We were just told it was a family.
The family included nine children and their parents, Le Ngoc Minh and his wife Kim Hai Chu. In her arms was 4-month old Chuong, born that February before the April 30, 1975 downfall of Vietnam. Her daughter, Tra-My Justine Richardson, known as My Le to her friends, was 11 years old.
In late April, My Le and Kim Hai Chu traveled from their California homes to visit Wright. This time, it was My Le who arrived with a babe-in-arms, her 17-month-old son Le, accompanied by her husband Harold Richardson. Kim Hai Chu returned without her husband, who died soon after the family moved to California in 1976. Also absent was Wright’s husband, Deacon Mike Wright, who died in 2006.
For My Le it was a chance to catch up and reminisce with some of her friends and classmates, who gathered for lunch. They included Susan Wright Sosa and Joyce Kelly, who attended sixth grade at Sacred Heart Catholic School with My Le.
“She became part of our family life,” said Sosa, Wright’s daughter. “Joyce and I were best friends and we lived behind each other. We did everything together. When My Le arrived, we befriended her.”
During their visit, Kelly and Sosa took them on a tour of the old neighborhood, including Sacred Heart Parish.
My Le said the two sort of adopted her.
“Wherever they went, I went,” she said. “I didn’t know English so I just followed –– the good and bad. We were the ‘rat pack.’”
“She followed us everywhere,” Sosa said.
“And if it was bad I just went along because I wasn’t aware what they were doing was bad,” My Le said with a laugh.
It was a struggle to adjust to a new way of life and a new culture. While the youngsters had fun in their new home, the adults struggled with making a new life for the family of 11.
With the help of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the family got an apartment, along with the furniture, pots and pans, utensils and just about everything a family needed. The society paid the family’s rent for a year until they got on their feet.
“We still have the plates we got –– Corning ware,” My Le said. “They’ve been through a lot.”
Volunteers also took them to doctors, dentists and grocery shopping.
Wright, now a parishioner at St. Thomas More Parish in Austin, taught Kim Hai Chu how to use a laundromat, shop for bargains, use coupons and where to get deals such as day-old bread at the bakery.
“I still buy day-old bread,” Kim Hai Chu said.
It wasn’t easy finding a place to live for 11 people. They got kicked out of one place for having too many children. Because the kitchen table had only four chairs, the family ate in shifts.
The family arrived with basically the clothes on their backs. After evacuating from Vietnam they were sent to Guam, then the Philippines and then Fort Chaffee, Kan.
“We had no idea where we were going,” Kim Hai Chu said. “We just knew we were moving away and that we had to get work by the end of the summer.”
Her husband worked as an engineer in Vietnam. Because he didn’t speak English, he couldn’t use his degree here, instead he found work as a surveyor.
She got a job working at a nursing home, but had to quit after the older girls burned the baby while giving her a bath in hot water. So she got creative.
“There were no Vietnamese restaurants here at the time,” Wright said. “So she would cook Vietnamese food and a few people would come and eat.”
The first customers were Vietnamese University of Texas students, who couldn’t return home and were homesick for home-cooked meals, Kim Hai Chu said.
“At first I didn’t charge but people said they couldn’t eat for free,” she said. “So I started charging, but did it quietly. Nine or 10 people would come every night. The girls were dishwashers and the boys were waiters. They even got tips.”
Wright quickly learned how resourceful the family could be. Kim Hai Chu’s husband had a wreck in their car and smashed a door.
“She found a junkyard and got a door,” Wright said. “A few months later I had a wreck and I asked her for the name of the junkyard so I could find a part for my car.”
A year after arriving, the family visited Kim Hai Chu’s parents in Los Angeles, where he lived with one of her sisters, who had sponsored his entry into the U.S.
“My father was 75 and wanted us close,” she said.
After her husband died, Kim Hai Chu realized she needed a marketable skill. So she went to beauty school, worked at a beauty shop to sharpen her skills and eventually opened her own shop. Now she owns two beauty shops that employ 25 people.
She is sharing that success by sponsoring an orphanage in Vietnam, providing them with necessities such as medicine.
Through the years, the Austinites lost touch with Vietnamese family.
Then about a year ago, one of the sons, Dien, came to the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store in Austin asking if Frankie and Mike Wright still worked there. Frankie was at the register.
“I didn’t recognize him,” she said. “The last time I’d seen him he was eight years old. And there he was, a tall, good-looking man with three adult children.”
Through Dien, Wright was able to get in touch with Kim Hai Chu. It just happened that My Le, an engineer with NASA, had a meeting in Houston in April.
All nine siblings have college degrees. The family now includes 16 grandchildren.
Wright, who remains active in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, said the family was also aided by Clint and Jean Butler. He was director of Caritas.
“We are very grateful for how we were welcomed,” My Le said. “It made the experience here like coming into heaven.
“They changed peoples’ lives,” My Le said. “It changed our lives and the lives of the 16 grandchildren.”
In an e-mail after the visit, My Lee said thanks to Society of St. Vincent de Paul, they were able to become productive members of society as business and engineering professionals.
“During our recent visit with Frankie Wright, I also realized that Frankie is still just as sacrificial and loving as she was 35 years ago,” she wrote. “Back then when the Wrights were co-sponsors to a family of 11, they were also parents to four young daughters. That must have been an insurmountable task.”
My Le said that in the heart of the Wrights and Butlers and all who helped house, clothe, feed them and give them social support, “we see the grace and mercy of God.”
Through their love, the family’s faith in God has deepened and “we all hope to extend that grace to those around us … As a family, we cannot fully express in words the impact that the society has in our lives.”
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul generates its funds through special collections in parishes as well as from its thrift stores. They also accept useable items and vehicles to sell. The stores are located at 1327 S. Congress Ave. in Austin, 1601 S. Interstate 35 in Round Rock and 300 N. Main St. in Bryan. For more information, visit www.ssvdp.org or call (512) 251-6995.