..TRAN poised to make history = 1st Viet-Amer/State Legislature..

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A contrasting story about the American Dream & Nightmare =

..'Violence, Hope and American Dreams'..

...by longtime Los Angeles Times Columnist Dana Parsons, 3-5-2004

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/orange/la-me-parsons5mar05,1,2756246.column?coll=la-editions-orange

How we all have hope & opportunity
How fragile life is......

In 1975 I was in Washington, as I am now. I had the good fortune to meet Nguyen Ngoc Linh, and to become a friend of his. Linh had been the spokesman for the South Vietnamese at the Paris Peace talks, and his family was legendary. The Washington Post had called them, "The Rockefellers of Vietnam." Linh's father had been governor of North Vietnam, but they had fled to South Vietnam in the face of the communists take over.

Linh founded an organization called "The National Center For Vietnamese Resettlement" and with the noblest of motives, he served as it's Executive Director without pay. I suspect that he funded it as well from his personal funds.

Linh also opened a fashionable Vietnamese restaurant in Washington named "Top of Georgetown" on Wisconsin Avenue, just a few blocks away from the Soviet Embassy. I had the good fortune of being invited by him to taste new dishes being introduced to the restaurant. I learned there to love the cusine of Vietnam, and began my love of it's people there as well.

I will be embarassed if I have mispelled any of the names, but fear that I may have. Linh and his wife moved to Houston in the late 70's and I have not been in touch with them since then. I believe that Bich, his younger brother, has had a career in education in Northern Virginia over the past three decades.

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...In my experience with them...

...Vietnamese-Americans do love their FREEDOM so, an example for all of the rest of America to follow in a new Time of War with our own FREEDOM now at stake.

See:

"HATE War, LOVE the Warrior" = 1st Amer & Viet War Memorial

http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/902879/posts

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