Trung Vuong school - reunion
20817
Dreams, Interrupted
Their Lives Rebuilt, Classmates From Elite Vietnamese High School
Reunite and Reminisce in D.C. Area
Saturday, October 20, 2007; B01
Remember when, KieuThu Nguyen is saying, scooping green papaya salad
with chili beef jerky onto her lunch plate, we used to buy this on the
sidewalk, in front of our school?
Her face is pure reverie. She is 50 years old. This memory, dredged up
in a Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church, is more than 32 years old.
It reminds her of the days when, as she puts it, she and her
classmates shared "a lot of big dreams." When they all expected "to
become someone." When she and the others imagined that the success
they had achieved by getting into and graduating or nearing graduation
from Vietnam's vaunted Trung Vuong school -- the Radcliffe of
Vietnamese high schools -- was only the start.
They never imagined that, for many of them in Vietnam, especially as
the fall of Saigon neared, the scholastic success would be the
pinnacle.
Remember? she is now asking of TrucMai Nguyen and PhuongNga Nguyen,
her two friends and fellow alumnae, as they all scoop into escargot
soup and crispy noodles.
For months, the three women and others have been planning this
weekend's grand reunion for Trung Vuong alumnae -- an event that
allows these "sisters" to relive some of their shared experiences and
that holds an even deeper appeal because 2007 marks the 90th
anniversary of the school's founding.
Nearly 800 have descended on Washington, the host city this time, with
a few dozen even coming from Vietnam, and still others traveling from
across the country and from Europe, Canada and Australia.
Ranging in age from their early 50s to their 70s, they are, for three
days, sharing dinner, brunch, live performances, elaborate dances and
songs, and a trip to Luray Caverns in Virginia with a tour of the
changing foliage along Skyline Drive.
All are part of a Vietnamese elite, both educational and otherwise.
Once upon a time, when the girls were small and nearing sixth grade,
they had to pass rigorous tests and compete with thousands across the
country to gain admittance. After they were accepted, many of their
families relocated from other parts of Vietnam to live near the school
-- that's the kind of reputation Trung Vuong enjoyed. At least one of
KieuThu's classmates was descended from Vietnamese royalty. Another
was the daughter of the military's top official.
Built by the French, the school -- which started in Hanoi but moved to
Saigon in the 1950s -- was once used as a government building,
complete with high walls and a huge wooden front gate. It was
permeated by a strict air of discipline, and the walls seemed designed
to keep out the prying eyes of boys, so that sometimes, it could seem
like a convent. It sat at the end of a dead-end street, across from
the zoo, and was surrounded, KieuThu says, by "trees, flowers and
monkeys. We had the luxury of a lot of nature."
And yet, as the North Vietnamese marched south, taking control of much
of the country, many of the girls watched all of that, as well as
their lives, collapse. Many found themselves trying to escape and
start over again elsewhere. Things were worse for those who didn't get
out immediately.
And though many have since rebuilt beautifully here -- and though some
now wear Chanel and St. John Knits and diamonds the size of miniature
grape tomatoes, and their homes are expansive and sunny, with altars
bearing fresh fruit to the Buddha and flowering gardens in front and
back -- their faces turn once again girlish and giggly when they
recall the green papaya with chili beef jerky they would buy on the
sidewalk in front of the school, back when they wore school uniforms
and vied to become the teacher's pet.
This is what they'll talk about at the reunion, KieuThu is saying.
Both the small memories and gigantic hopes. They are products, after
all, of a school named for the country's first two female kings who
had led the Vietnamese, about A.D. 40, to a successful overthrow of
Chinese invaders.
"Both of them became kings," TrucMai says, sitting, at this point in
the day's conversation and memories, on the sectional of her Falls
Church home, overlooking the gardens where, later in the afternoon,
she and KieuThu and PhuongNga will pick green Chinese apples from a
tree.
"They are not queens," KieuThu clarifies. "They are kings."
Such lessons of perseverance, of doing what women weren't expected to
do, of enduring an occupying force and finagling a way to overcome it
were lessons that would, for these three friends from Trung Vuong,
become inspirational.
They will not say much about what Vietnam is like today, or what they
think about it, except to marvel that even simple word problems in the
schools now carry political overtones, as in, they say: "There were 5
U.S. airplanes. We shot down 4. How many U.S. airplanes are left?"
KieuThu, whose supervisor would rename her "Theresa" after she arrived
in the United States, and PhuongNga, whose American boss would someday
christen her "Nancy," both came from the central area of Hu¿ in
Vietnam. They were in the same class of about 40 girls.
Two months before her 1975 graduation, KieuThu left Vietnam. It was
March, one month before the fall of Saigon.
"April 30th, that's our black day," she says. "I was here" -- in the
United States -- "and I looked at our TV screen, and I saw the
communist tanks through the gates of the president's mansion. The
whole sky collapsed in front of me. I said, 'I will never see Vietnam
again.' It was a very terrible feeling."
The girl who had been studying at one of her country's finest schools
now found herself stashed in the back room at a Washington area Kmart.
On weekends, she woke at 4:30 a.m. to work at a doughnut shop, then
went to work at Roy Rogers. She studied English, was promoted to
cashier at Kmart, and "when I was old enough to serve liquor, I worked
as a waitress." She earned a scholarship to George Washington
University, she says, and studied finance. She is now a CPA for a K
Street law firm.
PhuongNga, now 52, was stuck in Vietnam for nine more years. "Even
though I graduated from high school," she says, "I could not go to
college because of my family." Eventually, 30 extended family members
were living in their Saigon house. She remembers believing the rumors
that if girls didn't marry fast, they would become "a prize for the
soldiers" -- "a sex slave," KieuThu says -- so PhuongNga married her
next-door neighbor. They didn't make it out until 1984.
TrucMai, 51, comes from a family that held an exalted position in
Vietnam. She got married 23 days before she and her eight sisters and
their parents fled the country. Eight days before the fall of Saigon,
they left, first going to a refugee camp in Fort Jeffrey, Ark., and
then, three months later, to Washington. She got a job working full
time at American University and studied business administration there
part time.
"It was 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. for how many years?" she asks
rhetorically.
Yet this weekend's reunion provides a chance for all of them to go
back in time. To become girls again. To let their youth overtake them.
To remember.