Outside of the teaching at the University, I found new friends of my own age. \u00a0Mr. Phan Cu owned a small caf\u00e9 dedicated to serving tourists – the Mandarin Caf\u00e9 became my haunt after I found that Mr. Cu loved photography as much as I did. I learned much about the culture of Vi\u1ec7t Nam from this English-speaking man who had worked for the Americans during the war. \u00a0He and his wife Thanh\u2019s first child was born just days after the fall of Hu\u1ebf in 1975 – in a hospital with no doctors or nurses, just abandoned birthing rooms. \u00a0Life was hard for Cu during the decade of despair after the war, but today, this member of the new Vietnamese middle class freely tells any questioner that the war is long over and the Vietnamese have moved on.<\/p>\n
It was Cu who showed me there were a few artifacts around from the war – but they weren\u2019t obvious. \u00a0I usually ate western food at his Mandarin Caf\u00e9 and when eating western food, I used western eating utensils. \u00a0The spoons and knives at the Mandarin were the usual tinny items found in most backpacker cafes, but the forks were solid. Cu had bought them in a village market years before. \u00a0They were from an old American Army mess hall. The spoons and knives had been sold out, but since the Vietnamese don\u2019t eat with forks, there were lots of these left in the vendor\u2019s shop. \u00a0Sure enough, many of the forks at the cafe were stamped \u201cUS Army\u201d on the back.<\/p>\n
And Cindy began to use her medical knowledge to teach English medical terminology classes to the physicians and nurses of the Hu\u1ebf Hospital. More friends were made – deeper roots were grown. I grew my own roots by photographing the wonderful people of the area – city folk and countryside peasants alike.<\/p>\n
Time caught up with Cindy and me, and I knew I had to return home to care for my elderly mother, who was in the early throes of Alzheimer\u2019s disease. But before we left, we got to know a young couple in Hu\u1ebf. \u00a0James Sullivan and his Vietnamese wife Thuy (pronounced Twee) split their time between Hu\u1ebf and the US. We occasionally accepted dinner invitations to their home. Though far too young to be a veteran himself, Jim was fascinated that two American war veterans would actually live and work in the land where they had almost died. A professional journalist, Jim offered to edit my writing if only I would tell the story.<\/p>\n
I protested – \u201cJim, I\u2019m a photographer, not a writer.\u201d \u00a0But during many visits back to Hu\u1ebf, we kept meeting – and he kept pestering. \u00a0On still another visit when the women were in the kitchen and the men in the living room, I agreed to write \u201cSame River, Different Water: \u00a0A Veteran\u2019s Journey from Vietnam to Vi\u1ec7t Nam.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the book has not been the only product of our time in Vi\u1ec7t Nam. Remembering those bright students we had and thinking that I didn\u2019t want those remarkable young minds to go to waste in the backwards Vietnamese higher education system, Cindy and I began bringing them to America for graduate work. Trang was the first – and she became the daughter I never knew I needed. Our love story with these remarkable Vietnamese young people continues in the next posting.<\/p>\n