Many new lives started (and continue to start) here in 56572

Tiffany Nguyen helps customer Paul Kamara with okra at FM International Food in Fargo.
Darren Gibbins-The Forum

A fresh start
New lives grew out of war chaos
By Dave Olson dolson@forumcomm.com

......Another Fargo woman, Tiffany Nguyen, was a 16-year-old girl living in a coastal area 60 miles from Saigon when the capital fell to communist forces. As soldiers from the north overran the south, Nguyen’s family followed the invasion by listening to the radio, their terror mounting as rumors of atrocities spread. One story held that soldiers were pulling out the fingernails of girls with fancy manicures. When North Vietnamese soldiers eventually showed up, the worst of their fears abated, Nguyen recalled. “They are just human, like us,” she said.

Risking all to learn

But the south’s defeat brought change. Because one of her five brothers had died serving in the military, Nguyen was forced to drop out of school. It was a blow to a family that placed a premium on education and Nguyen’s parents began looking for ways to leave the country. After several failed escape attempts, including one in which her father was caught and jailed, Nguyen made it out in 1980 with two brothers and a sister. Her parents and two brothers stayed behind. Eventually, one of those brothers and her mother made it out, leaving her father and one brother in Vietnam. When Nguyen’s father was on his deathbed several years ago, one of Nguyen’s brothers who had settled in the United States received official permission to return to Vietnam. The brother, by then a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, kept his uniform under wraps until he reached the hospital where his father was. Once there, he donned the regalia “just to sparkle my dad’s life at the end,” said Nguyen, who runs the FM International Food store in Fargo with her husband, Brian. Nguyen said she rarely thinks of the war years and shares little about them with her five children. She prefers to focus on the present and more positive things, like the education she received at Pelican Rapids Minnesota High School and North Dakota State University. But sometimes she dreams she is back in Vietnam, again making her way through the jungle to the boat that will take her to freedom. Only in her dreams, she gets caught. “Suddenly, I wake up and I’m still living in America. I’m so happy,” she said.