VCF Updates: The Struggle to Forgive
TEARFUL REUNION: Kieu Chinh's return to Vietnam was filled with emotional meetings. Here, she cries after visiting an uncle she had not seen since fleeing Vietnam.
"There's no place like home, especially for old people. Our memories are in Vietnam"
--Nhuan K. Do, Little Saigon travel agent.
CHAPTER II: ROLE OF A LIFETIME
KIEU CHINH CARRIES SIX SUITCASSES ON HER TRIP TO VIETNAM, BUT HEAVIEST BAGGAGE IS IN HER HEART.
Kieu Chinh fled Vietnam in April 1975, boarding a plane as Saigon collapsed. She traveled alone with nothing but $20,000 in worthless South Vietnamese cash and an address book.
She landed in Toronto, where a refugee agency assigned her to a job hosing out chicken coops for $2 an hour.
She tried to phone Hollywood friends. William Holden was away on a hunting trip in Europe. Calls to Glenn Ford, Danny Kaye and Burt Reynolds, her co-star in “Operation CIA,” never got past their agents.
Finally, she reached Tippi Hedren, star of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
“She picked up the phone,” Kieu Chinh recalled. “And she said, ‘Stop crying. I’ll help you.’ ”
Today, Kieu Chinh is known as a star of “The Joy Luck Club,” as a motivational speaker and as a spokeswoman for corporations. She drives a black 1995 Mercedes and owns a four-bedroom Newport Beach home near her three grown children and five grandchildren.
Her life is a model of success in the refugee community. But she has not forgotten her homeland.
“I lived in war, now there’s peace,” she said. “I raised my children, now they’re grown. I live alone. I need to make my life meaningful, to find peace of mind, to know my past and to do something for those who need help: children.”
In 1993, she helped found the Vietnam Children’s Fund with two prominent American veterans. Lewis B. Puller had lost both legs and both hands to a mine as a Marine in the war. Journalist Terry Anderson, a former Marine, had spent six years as a hostage in Beirut. Like Kieu Chinh, they wanted to promote reconciliation with Vietnam as a way to heal their personal pain.
This year, the charity planned to begin building its eighth school on land near Hanoi that once belonged to Kieu Chinh’s grandfather. She was excited about returning for the groundbreaking ceremony.
And there were old feelings she wanted to put to rest: guilt over her father’s death in poverty; resentment of her brother, who betrayed the family by joining the nationalists who took over the North.
For her two-week trip, Kieu Chinh loaded six suitcases with more than 200 pounds of gifts and clothing.
In one bag, she packed a cashmere overcoat, scarves and sweaters. They would warm her against the chill of Hanoi, the city of her youth.
In another suitcase, she folded her traditional ao dai pantsuits, breezy outfits to keep cool on the steamy streets of Saigon, the city where she married, became a movie star, bore her children.
She felt confident that she could accomplish all of her missions. “I want to focus on the people, on the charity,” she said. “This is not about politics.”