Vietnamese family celebrates 30 years in city
SILOAM SPRINGS — After spending 30 years in the United States, Huong Pham and her youngest daughter Mai Le are taking time to look back at the impact coming to this country has had on their lives.
Although they moved to Siloam Springs in March 1991, Pham, her husband Thinh Le and their two oldest daughters Lan Le and Phuong Le are technically refugees of the Vietnam War. Mai Le, who has become the family historian, was born a few years after the family arrived in Siloam Springs.
Pham’s mother, Mary Lam Thi Le, stepfather Soo Yang and siblings were among the first Vietnamese families to move to Siloam Springs after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
When the United States evacuated personnel from Vietnam in the spring of 1975, a large Indochinese population, including Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian and Hmong people, who helped the American military and political effort, were left, according to the encyclopedia of Arkansas, encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
The 1975 Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act was one congressional response to the crises, aimed at assisting people in escaping from the danger they faced from the North Vietnamese government and finding them safe residences in the United States, the site states.
Fort Chaffee was one of four main entry points for Indochinese refugees in 1975 and 50,809 refugees were processed through the facility, the Encyclopedia of Arkansas states. Refugees were quickly rotated out of Fort Chaffee as sponsors or host families around the United States were secured, it states.
Mary Lam Thi Le and her family were sponsored by the Siloam Springs Ministerial Alliance and the Siloam Springs Chamber of Commerce, according to an 1975 article in the Rogers Daily News.
As the oldest daughter, Pham was living independently from the rest of the family in another city when the war ended. It would take another 16 years before she could reunite with her family.
“My parents and grandparents were refugees, so the effort to welcome refugees to Arkansas is important to me. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that.” — Mai Le
GROWING UP IN A WAR ZONE
Pham’s family lived in South Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, previously known as Saigon. Growing up during the war was a terrible experience, she said. Pham’s father, who was a citizen rather than a soldier, died in the fighting when she was just 7 and her uncle also died in the war, she said.
After her father died, Pham had to quit school to help her mother take care of her younger siblings and earn money to survive, she said. Fifty years ago, there were no conveniences and everything had to be done by hand. The family had to raise a garden to sell produce to earn money, she said.
“When you live in the hard times, you have to do what you can to survive, to protect your family,” Pham said.
During the war, everyone was very aware that they could die at any time, day or night, she said.
“If you see and hear the sounds of a bomb, you have to run and hide in a basement to avoid the war,” Pham said. “That is how we lived. In 1975 it stopped. It took a while for things to get better.”
Pham’s stepfather Soo Yang was a business manager for an oxygen and acetylene plant in Saigon, according to the Rogers Daily News article. Pham’s parents and siblings spent three months in Guam and two months in Fort Chaffee before coming to Siloam Springs, the article states.
By that time, Pham was 17 and living independently in another city, separate from her family. In the chaos of war, her family wasn’t able to come and find her before they left, she said. She didn’t hear from her mother until five years after the war ended, she said.
“I was left behind and I didn’t know anything about my family until (my mom) sent a letter home,” she said.
In the years after the war, Pham made a living selling chicken soup at a booth in the corner of the market and also did housekeeping, she said.
Pham met her husband Thinh Le, who was a neighbor, about three years after her mom left and the couple married in 1978.
For the first 15 or 16 years after the war stopped, things were very difficult and some people went hungry or didn’t have a job, Pham said. Sometimes people had money but couldn’t use it because the government changed the currency multiple times and only allowed each household a limited amount each time, she said.
COMING TO THE UNITED STATES
Mary Lam Thi Le worked for many years at Woodland Manor Nursing Home in Siloam Springs and earned her U.S. citizenship in 1983, according to a January 1984 article in The Herald-Democrat. She sponsored Pham, her husband Thinh Le and their two daughters, Lan Le and Phuong Le, to come to the United States in 1991.
Dorothy Woodland, a prominent professor at John Brown University, wrote letters and was helpful in getting the family here, Mai Le said. Pham’s sister helped her with the money to buy tickets to the United States, she said.
When she left Vietnam, Pham sold her soup business to an aunt, and it is still being operated by a relative with the same recipe and cooking pot today.
Pham said it was very different and scary to come to the United States. She didn’t know any English, didn’t have an occupation or job, and didn’t have any money. In addition, her mother was not in good health when she arrived. Pham and her family stayed with her mother for three or four months before they rented their own apartment.
Grace and Ethan Dodgen, a retired Methodist minister, were very supportive of the family.
Pham assimilated quickly, Mai Le said. She found a job at Simmons Foods just a month after arriving in the United States. She first bought a bicycle, which she had to learn to ride, to get to work. By September of the same year, she saved enough money to buy her own car. Grace Dodgen taught Pham how to drive in her backyard every evening after work and took Pham to get her license in January, less than a year after she arrived, she said.
During those early years, Pham said she didn’t have time to feel homesick. She was busy all the time, getting the children to school and working the night shift.
Pham’s journey to learn English began in Vietnam when she bought an English dictionary and took one class. When she came to the United States, she continued to learned on her own and at work.
Paul Elliot, a tutor with the Dogwood Literacy Council, also played a large role in helping Pham learn English, although it was difficult finding time to study with a job and young children, she said. Now, Pham uses an app on her phone for a dictionary when she needs one.
“My mom is a very strong and independent lady and I credit her a lot of teaching me to be the same,” said Mai Le. “Sometimes she wants me to be less independent, but I think I learned a lot from her in terms of being able to hold my own. My mom has been a really great inspiration to be strong.”
CONNECTING WITH HER CULTURE
Growing up in Siloam Springs, Mai Le was the only Vietnamese kid in her class until fourth grade. She remembers feeling like there was no one who looked like her. Once another Vietnamese girl came to her class, they were very different from each other, she said.
“It just never felt like I had a sense of belonging with other people,” she said.
After graduating from Siloam Springs High School, where she was among the first students to participate in the film and television program, Mai Le went on to graduate from the University of Arkansas and become a teacher at the Arkansas Arts Academy in Rogers.
She became interested in her family history after doing a lot of self reflection about appreciating her past and what she has now.
“I could be living a totally different life now,” she said “I could be in Vietnam now or born there and my life could be completely different.”
As an adult, Mai Le has traveled to Vietnam twice, once with her mother and again on her own. She got to spend time with her relatives and visit the booth where her mother sold chicken soup. She also got a chance to learn to ride motorcycles, the main transportation in the country. She now has her own Honda Super Cub she rides around Northwest Arkansas, the same model her grandfather had in Vietnam.
“It made me feel close, my aunts and uncles taught me how to ride a motorcycle there,” she said.
Looking back 30 years later, Pham said her move to the United States was well worth the sacrifices she made. Now she has her family, her job and her kids, and life is much better, she said. Pham said she appreciates her mom for sponsoring her family to come to the United States and her sister for helping pay for the ticket to come.
Mai Le said she is grateful that the community was so accepting of refugees and supportive of her family as they started a new life in the United States.
A few years ago, she saw people saying terribly cruel things about refugees on social media and it inspired her to make a video about how she contributes to society as an Arkansas teacher.
“My parents and grandparents were refugees, so the effort to welcome refugees to Arkansas is important to me,” she said, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that.”