Thoroughly modern Mrs. Webb

Thoroughly modern Mrs. Webb SHIRLINGTON, Va. — A day after the deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history, Hồng Lê Webb walked in to a restaurant for a meeting. Once she settled her sleeping 4-month-old daughter on a chair near the table, she had a chance to glance at the television hanging over the bar.
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Asian American magicians Andrew Ngô and Carlos da Silva II, along with members of multiethnic magic group Prophecies of the Element, wowed the crowd. The joy of dancing Clara in the Nutcracker For more than 100 years, playing the lead in the holiday classic has been a budding ballerina’s first time to shine. The joy of dancing Clara in the Nutcracker For more than 100 years, playing the lead in the holiday classic has been a budding ballerina’s first time to shine. O.C.'s American Gladiator runs the gauntlet Sơn Nguyễn of Huntington Beach got on the show after a bash in the head Successful refugee helps veterans in Vietnam WASHINGTON — CVT the initials of Ca Văn Trần — stand for "courage, valor and tenacity." 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Cựu biên tập viên Người Việt nhận lại huy chương thế chiến II Hình ảnh cựu biên tập viên báo Người Việt, bà Ruth Talovich, vừa nhận lại huy chương thế chiến thứ II	SHIRLINGTON, Va. — A day after the deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history, H?ng Lê Webb walked in to a restaurant for a meeting. Once she settled her sleeping 4-month-old daughter on a chair near the table, she had a chance to glance at the television hanging over the bar. The convocation ceremony to remember the 32 victims of the massacre at Virginia Tech, about 270 miles southwest of here, unfolded onscreen. Was her husband there? “Yes,” she said. “He flew down with Senator Warner this morning.” (That’s Republican Sen. John Warner, the elder statesman serving with her husband.) A matter-of-fact statement. But these are the new realities of her life. Married to the recently elected junior senator from Virginia, she is now living part of America’s history. And just as her husband, U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), is easing into his duties — he defeated incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen by the narrowest of margins last November — so is H?ng Lê Webb. Since they wed in October 2005, it’s been a whirlwind for her. In the span of just over a year, she married, moved from Maryland to Virginia, lived through the death of her mother, took on a job as a securities lawyer in Washington D.C., took part in her husband’s decision to run for office and the subsequent campaign, and then, finally in December, gave birth to their child Georgia LêAnh. It’s a new life for the woman born in the Vietnamese fishing village of Vung Tàu. But it seems to suit her. As she talks, it becomes very apparent that she can handle any situation she encounters. “H?ng is comfortable in a world where a lot is going on,” Sen. Webb wrote in an e-mail response to interview questions. “My perfect image of her is when she returned from the hospital, less than two days after Georgia LêAnh was born. I walked into the house and she was sitting on the bed, nursing Georgia, looking up something on her laptop, and talking on the phone.” * That H?ng Lê Webb should wind up sitting in this suburban Washington, D.C., restaurant as the increasingly high-profile spouse of a U.S. senator was improbable 30 years ago. The sixth of seven children, she left Vi?t Nam with her parents and four siblings in 1975; two older siblings, already married, fled at the same time on a different boat. Their first U.S. destination was Fort Chaffee, Ark., then they moved on to Greensboro, N.C., where a Catholic church sponsored them. Not long after, when her mother thought North Carolina too cold, they settled in New Orleans. By that time, her mom and dad already were elderly but her father found work in the Louisiana fishing industry. And even though he had just a fifth-grade education and her mother no true schooling, they emphasized studying. “Dad always treated the girls similar to my brother,” said H?ng, 39, recalling him telling his six daughters: “You have to be able to count on yourself at all times.” H?ng started her college education at Tulane University in New Orleans but didn’t find the curriculum she was looking for. So the girl from the warm weather packed her suitcase and headed to the frigid north, to the University of Michigan and its East Asian studies program. “It was exciting,” she recalled. “It was my first time away from home. I was always the more curious one in my family.” And it was just the first of what has been a young existence filled with adventures, but at that point, H?ng just wasn’t sure where that adventure would take her. “It was clear I was not going to be able to make a living...based on my degree,” she said. She applied to law school because she saw a need for attorneys who could bridge cultural gaps. Still, something tugged at her. So she accepted a paid internship with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, working in H?ng Kông as a translator for lawyers helping Vietnamese escapees still detained in refugee camps. It was work she liked. “Being in H?ng Kông was great,” she said. “I saw these lawyers working with refugees. It was so noble. I saw it as something so grand, working with the Vietnamese community in a way.” But something else tugged at her: education. With a scholarship offer from Cornell University in upstate New York, she cut her internship short, not knowing if the funding would be there when she returned to the states. She received her law degree, met a young Vietnamese American man there, got engaged, and went to work at a legal clinic in Worcester, Mass. When her father died in 1994, H?ng and her new husband decided to move south, closer to family. They settled in the Washington D.C. area, where her in-laws lived, and she found jobs, through the years, as an attorney with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and also local law firms. “She’s a very good lawyer,” said John Blouch, a colleague and friend for about 10 years. “She’s very broad-based in her background. We have found clients really enjoy working with her.” * H?ng became a part-time lawyer upon the birth of daughter, Emily, now 9. Her marriage to Emily’s father didn’t last, though, but they remain good friends and dedicated co-parents. Along the way, she built a friendship with Jim Webb. They had met in 1994, she impressed by his knowledge of Vi?t Nam and its people, as well as his interest in Vi?t Nam-U.S. relations. Webb, a highly decorated Vi?t Nam War veteran who has made several trips back to the country, had an impressive résumé before his election to the Senate. He has served as an assistant secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy. He has written eight books, among them six best-selling novels, and has worked as a screenwriter and producer in Hollywood. As a journalist, he won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the U.S. Marines in Lebanon, and in 2004, according to his official Senate Web site, was embedded with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Despite the difference in their ages and backgrounds — he’s Scotch-Irish and at 61, he’s 22 years her senior — they share common interests. “He has a real understanding of working with the Vietnamese people and a real love for it, too,” she said. They started dating in 2002 and after Hurricane Katrina struck in summer 2005, they decided to make their commitment permanent. H?ng’s family had been uprooted by the disaster; she and Webb decided, basically, that life was too short to waste any time. They married in October, just weeks after the storm hit. H?ng is his third wife. In hearing her talk about him, the love and devotion shine through. “Jim and I have known each other for a long time,” she said. “We’ve been through some painful things. “He’s independent. Vietnamese woman tend to be very driven. On a cultural level, we appreciate that in each other.” “We often talk across cultural lines,” Sen. Webb said. “My understanding of Vietnamese culture helps me also to understand her. And she has always worked hard to understand my culture.” * The decision for Webb to seek the Senate seat came while on a trip to Asia soon after their marriage. A former Republican, Webb won the Democratic nomination, largely on an anti-Iraq war stance. But no one gave him much of a chance to beat Allen, the well-financed senator who once served as Virginia’s governor and the son of the late George Allen, the popular former coach of the Washington Redskins. Republicans even were talking about Allen as a potential nominee for president in 2008. But between a growing frustration with the war on the part of the voters and some gaffes by Allen, Webb rode the Democratic tide to victory, his win sealing his party’s control of the senate. He emerged ahead by just 9,329 ballots out of the nearly 2.37 million cast, gathering less than 50 percent of the vote. For H?ng, the campaign was tough, listening to the naysayers. “You’re going to always have people who disagree,” she said. “Especially in a campaign when everything is reduced to sound bytes. It’s taken out of context so easily.” H?ng is fiercely protective of her husband, often tempted to correct misinformation that is said or printed about him. She has decided to keep quiet. “I get real angry,” she said. “I’m probably a typical Vietnamese woman, being very strong, but you can’t do anything about it. Once you start correcting facts, you become a target.” And that’s not a role she has grown fully comfortable with yet. It is still strange to her that she has a growing presence on Internet search engines. Day-to-day living has changed. “It’s changed on a couple of fronts,” she said. “Our privacy certainly has all but basically disappeared. It’s hard to go out without him being recognized or approached. ... I’m not complaining. It’s just a reality. And things that happen to you, you don’t know how it’s going to wind up on the front page.” Recently, now with Georgia a little older, they are trying to squeeze in some time as a couple. After all, the Webbs still are newlyweds. “We try to have date nights,” she said. “When it works out, we go to dinner and a movie. We haven’t had any real time off.” “H?ng is very strong, very organized, and — as a congressman friend of mine pointed out just the other day —very elegant,” Webb said of his wife. “She also is a professional in her own right, and she understands the demands of a tight schedule.” That schedule will be even more hectic as H?ng prepares to return to her law firm part-time. Another new mother is going to babysit Georgia in a nanny-share arrangement. Finding child care “probably was one of the most stressful experiences of my life,” she said. “The bar exam wasn’t so bad.” She debates with her husband about the demands families today face. “Jim is a very progressive guy despite his age,” she said. “He does understand the dilemma of the affordability of child care” as well as housing costs in the northern Virginia area. “We do talk about things. We share. I learned a lot from him over the years. He’s learned a lot from me.” After Webb’s election, H?ng went through a sort of orientation for new Senate spouses. “They brought in existing senators’ wives to talk about what to expect, to make sure we understand everyone is kind of in it together,” she said. “It transcends parties. I’m surprised how much there is of a collegiality.” Knowing she has a backup system helps, as does her job. “If I didn’t have my own career, I’d be a little more stressed out,” she said. “She’s just as pleasant as she’s always been,” Blouch said. But the bottom line is, she knows her place in the world. “I’m not defined by who Jim Webb is,” she said. “I’m H?ng.” * Family time is the most important time of the day in the Webb household. H?ng tries to provide stability for her husband, Emily and Georgia. They make it a priority to share dinner together each night, even though the dinner hour isn’t always consistent. She does have an advantage some wives don’t: If she wants to get a clue as to what time her husband might be home, she can tune in to C-Span to check on the progress of his work day. Like many spouses, he sometimes brings his work home with him. “He brings it home because he’s Jim Webb,” H?ng said. “It’s not like he goes to work and at 6 p.m., he hangs up his senator’s hat.” Unwinding away from the public eye helps. “When he walks in the door, he sees us and he’s happy,” she said. Georgia, H?ng said, has “brought a great joy into our lives. She’s been a great surprise.” They are raising both the baby and Emily to know their Vietnamese roots. “Jim has a real appreciation for the culture,” she said. “He loves it. I think it’s something we’ll impart to both our children living at home. He’s a great stepfather to Emily. So in many ways, the Webbs are your typical American family. Children from more than one marriage; Webb has four of his own, plus three grandchildren. Folks who face the same issues as everyone else, such as day care, such as finding that right balance in the every day. As H?ng, on this recent afternoon, prepares to leave, her phone rang. It was her husband. “How did it go?” she asked him as he traveled back from the Virginia Tech service. “What time are you coming home?” Just another day in the life of a senator’s wife.
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