A 40-year-old Vietnamese man opened wide for the doctor, who gently placed a silver spoon in his mouth.
They were recreating the image from a vintage photo showing a young American medical officer examining a 5-year-old Vietnam refugee. The boy in the 1979 photo is Doan Ha, now a cardiac sonographer living in Southern California. The doctor is Lake County plastic surgeon Richard Bosshardt, 62.
Doan Ha, his wife Lien Nguyen, and Richard Bosshardt go for a run around Silver Lake on Tuesday, February 10, 2015. Ha, a 40-year-old cardiac sonographer living in Southern California, knew he wanted to reconnect with the American troops who helped him and his family as they were fleeing… (Tom Benitez, Orlando Sentinel)
Nearly 36 years after the pair first met on the USS Wabash in the South China Sea, they reunited for the first time in Leesburg last week. They had fun looking at the photo taken by a Navy photographer after Ha and 27 other family members were rescued after fleeing the Communist country in a large fishing boat.
“It’s so surreal to look at the picture and know this is the kid,” Bosshardt said at his Leesburg home, where the pair, along with their wives, spent hours visiting.
Last year, Ha decided he wanted to thank the American troops aboard the Wabash for saving him and his family from their sinking boat. He discovered the photo of him and Bosshardt, then a four-year Navy veteran, while searching online. He found Bosshardt on Facebook and they had been talking on the phone and through email.
They pledged to meet this year when Ha, who speaks Vietnamese, and his wife, Lien Nguyen, would be in Florida for a business conference.
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