Early in my the pen-pal relationship between my dad and I (as a CIA official he was gone a lot), he asked me to “tell the other kids I would like to have letters from them just like yours.”
It just occurred to me today, that it was my brothers, and not I, who wrote to him shortly after we arrived in the U.S. after fleeing Saigon on April 3, 1975.
Perhaps I did write to him, but my letter was lost along the way. In any case, these two letters offer a rare glimpse into the difficult and heartfelt emotions that came after the separation from our father, just 10 months after our hopeful reunion in July 1974 after two years of living apart.
Click the recording to hear an audio version of the letters.
To be displayed . . .
These letters will be on display at the New York State Museum beginning on May 15, 2025 as part the NYS Vietnam Memorial Gallery Exhibition - Letters From/To Home, featuring wartime correspondence between Vietnam-era Veterans and their family, friends, and loved ones in honor of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.
About that mini-bike . . . sadly, it never got out
A little bit about me:
In addition to curating “Stories of Vietnam” I am the author of For the Love of Vietnam: a war, a family, a CIA official, and the best evacuation story never heard.
how my father ended up in Vietnam running a propaganda radio station beginning in 1972,
our family life blended with historical context from July 1974-April 1975, and
the incredible evacuation of 1000 South Vietnamese that my father orchestrated in late April 1975.
Share this post