NEW ORLEANS - He started out in a small boat, making his way through swirling floodwaters to help rescue his frightened parishioners from their homes.
Then he drove from Louisiana to Texas to Arkansas, twice, to check on them. He knew they were resilient; he and they had survived a war and fled Vietnam long ago....f his parishioners could endure all that, the priest was sure they would endure Katrina....
"Twenty-four years ago, I came here with $20, only $20," Nguyen said in a halting voice, holding back tears. "Today, I have two children, two graduates from college. They have an education. I still have a home. And I have the store. The building is empty. It is damaged. But it's there."
She pauses, clasps her hands tightly in her lap as she sits on a church stage.
"I work very hard," she said, "and I can work very hard again."
Nguyen is staying with family in nearby Metairie and hopes to move into her garage soon while she repairs her home.
"When we run from the storm, we feel so lonely," she explained. "When we come back here, there's such a warm feeling. We need each other. Even when we clean up, we feel like family."
Duc Dang, a building contractor, agrees.
"It's important for us to come back," he said. "We have a school for the little kids who learn our language and our culture. I feel that when we're living here, it's like being in Vietnam."
Vien says that since Katrina, he senses his parishioners have a deeper attachment to their neighborhood and the city. He says there is a Vietnamese expression,
que huong, that's used to describe homeland or ancestral birthplace.
"In the pre-Katrina days, when we say
que huong we mean Vietnam," he says. "Now when they say it, they mean New Orleans......
The MSM forgets the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, probably because most of the reporters are still living in the "glory" of their youth...they ignore that terrorists who blow up civilians and who torture and kill "collaberators" will do the same if they get to power, except on a much larger scale...Here is another story of those who fled tyranny and found a life in the Southern US LINKAgain, a long story of hurricane survival, slow government help, and widespread private help...but also at the end the story of why they are in Mississippi in the first place..."....A vast majority of the Vietnamese in America immigrated here between 1975 and 1980. The immigrants were almost all Southern Vietnamese fleeing the Communist takeover.
Many were the famous "boat people."
After the Vietnam War, more than one million refugees desperate to get out of the country took to overcrowded and leaky fishing boats and set out into the seas around Southeast Asia. It became the largest mass departure of asylum seekers by sea in modern history."
So, Mr. Murtha, remember history: One million boat people, many of whom died on the sea or languised in camps for years...not to mention those in "reeducation camps", or the Hmong refugees (who fled to Thailand), or the murder of a million Cambodians...
nahh, the MSM would rather remember their glory days of smoking pot and protesting...
It's all about ME ME ME.....
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Addendum....
While googling about the Vietnamese in Mississippi, I ran across
THIS HEADLINE....
Veteran faces new charge in Vietnam protest
Seems that some protesters are more equal than others, and that if your protest is not PC, and you are declared not guilty, they will recharge you for the crime until the jury gets it right....
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