Ba Doan thi Lien was born the seventh of eight children in a small village 17 km outside of Hanoi in November 1926. She wrote her memoir back in 2002. The following are excerpts from them:
“I always thought that I was really blessed with good parents and good teachers who, since my childhood, had taught me the real values of self-respect, brotherhood, work, and true modesty. To all of them, I owed discipline, sobriety, and self-support. From my parents, I received just what I needed: good food, sufficient good clothes, and few toys that were meant to teach me something of other: not plain or expensive ones. That was it, yet I had had many a happy memory. I learned to value what was provided for me and what I had or what I was, and not what I did not have nor what I was not.”
Ba Lien had a hard childhood. Her father was a public servant or “functionnaire” for the French authorities when Vietnam was still a French colony because he could read and write Vietnamese, Chinese, and French. He would travel around to many villages and cities, as far as Yunan, China, because there were people who could barely sign their names on all letters and reports readily prepared for them by local officials. Because her father was away from home often, her mother was the main provider for the family, selling dry foods, sewing kits, school supplies, and other small home items at the small neighborhood bazaar. Sometimes, people would purchase items but not be able to pay them back fully.
“As soon as I started school at the age of seven, I had learned how hard it was to make the poor souls pay off their debts. When it turned out that there was no way they could pay off, Mother philosophically and stoically declared: “They will pay me sometime, somehow.” From time to time, when she saw a good opportunity to stock goods, at more reasonable prices than usual, she had to borrow money from her young, childless but quite rich sister who owned a boutique and a coffee plantation. On many occasions, my elder sister and I took turns to go and see our aunt and ask her to give mother more time to collect enough funds to repay her with interest. That was when we learned what humiliation meant. Sometimes Mother could not pay her sister on time. There were nights when I was already in bed, but not yet asleep, when Aunty came to collect her money. My aunt then raised her voice and insisted that mother pay her debts within one week, or else. Somehow, Mother promised to do so and [somehow] managed to keep her word. I made a promise to myself then that I would work hard and would not borrow anything from anybody, unless I knew I could pay it back.”
Her elementary education consisted of learning both Vietnamese and French, and her school was rather unique.
“I do not recall how many tables and benches we had at all, but each class occupied a certain number of them. Second grade students taught first grade pupils how to read and write. Then they learned from their third grade schoolmates who in turn reported to their elders in the fourth class, all under the smooth guidance and diligent supervision of the principal. The fourth grade learned almost everything directly from her, “Almost” because we actually learned to develop responsibility and teaching skills. In other words, we had to learn well what we were going to teach before we could do our job effectively.”
Aside from the usual education, boys learned woodwork, and girls learned cooking, sewing, and knitting. Her teacher was so impressed with her work that she was taught enough knitting and sewing skills that by the age of eight, she could sell knitted booties and hats at her mother’s little shop.
“Until the Communists took over the North, I had attended three different private schools. In my last year of high school, our [school] institution had to move to Hadong Province because of bombings by the French and because of Communist propaganda and tactics aimed at spreading confusion and stripping the population of whatever it owned. We had to remove roofs and doors and leave houses vacant and uncultivated land to French invaders. I had to quit school.”
Ba Lien never finished high school, but it never stopped her from continuing her education whenever she had the opportunity. The first opportunity came when she “was offered on-the-job-training at the Cancer Institute of Hanoi. At the same time, the University of Hanoi gave me classroom training in X-ray technology.” She completed a year of training coursework, and was there for between 1950-1954 as the sole x-ray technician/therapist, Electrocardiograph Operator, and Physical Therapist. When the Viet Cong was given the North region of Vietnam , her family, including her married brother, Doan Van Thiep and his family, her married sister and her family, and her parents, left for the South. She worked as a translator-interpreter for the Health Division/Sanitation Staff of the United States Operations Mission from 1954-1959. She loved this job, which allowed her to travel throughout VN and Laos. Her communications skills with the nursing staff and her open bedside manners with the patients for the USOM led to her recommendation and acceptance at New York University-Bellevue, where she studied physical therapy for a year. She was offered a scholarship program at Stanford, but unfortunately, she could not continue with her education there because of turmoil in VN and her parents requested her homecoming. When she got back to Saigon, she knew she had to help support her family, so she took a new translator/interpreter job with the Saigon Chamber of Commerce.
In 1964, she went to Melbourne, Australia to work as a radio announcer for Australian Broadcast Communications company. She lived there until 1969 when her three-year contract ended, and she was unable to continue her education in Physical Therapy. She returned to VN and worked with the Americans again for a short time before switching her talents to the Vietnam Council on Foreign Relations. There, she oversaw the publication of a weekly magazine dedicated to “covering Vietnamese educational, economic, political, and also social structures. Our publications were mostly in English and French. Some were in Spanish and German as well. As a routine, our organization also helped international visitors in their fact-finding in Vietnam. These were journalists, educators, businessmen, industrialists, and globetrotters. On their behalf and upon their requests, we arranged field trips or meetings with local government officials, business people and industrialists, politicians, and war victims’ families.
“When needed, our staff accompanied them to serve as interpreters. I felt we did something real good for our country. Our publications neither overlooked our weakness, nor provided too rosy an image of our nation or people. As a fact, I can say that even the Communist factors of the International Commission in Vietnam were our regular customers. Some journalists even asked to be helped in finding a modest hotel in town, in meeting people of their choice, whether these people were Nationalists of Communists.”
It was at this job where she was friends with so many journalists and interested people in the outcome of the Vietnam War that she found out about the Viet Cong coming into Saigon in 1975. With a few months’ notice, she informed the rest of her family, and found passage for everyone on an oil tanker just before Viet Cong arrived in Saigon. The family left Vietnam for the last time on April 30, 1975. With her many contacts and her family’s other relations already living in the United States, it was decided that they move to the East Coast as opposed to the West Coast. Even though she and her brother’s family did not want to separate once they got to the States, it was decided that it would be easier for everyone if they broke the family into smaller units. It took her several moves and several jobs with non-profit organizations from Maryland to New Jersey to Wisconsin before she realized that she hated the snow, and driving in the snow even more. That was when she decided to move to California where her friends lived and insisted that there was plenty of opportunity for work. Throughout it all, she saved whenever she could and in short time, she was reunited with her brother and his wife when they finally came to California from Florida. For the rest of her working career, she became a social worker for the State of California, a job that melded all her skills in communication and compassion. She retired in 1995.
A part of her memoir that she did not expand well was her love of travel. She had gone to Alaska, Japan, Australia, France, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Belgium, and many other places of adventure within the United States. She had camped in the Australian Outback, mined opals, and skiied in the mountains, gone on several cruises up and down the West Coast and Mexico. In 1995, she returned to Vietnam for a visit and found it so overwhelming changed that she felt she could never see it again without sadness, so she never went back after that. She also attended the World Scout Jamboree that same year in Melbourne, Australia. She was never able to go Scouting as a young girl, so in her seventies decided it was time to start. She became a member of Lien Doan Hung Vuong, and later Gia Dinh Bach Hop within Huong Dao Viet Nam in Southern California region, and was an active Scout until the day she passed away.