December 8, 2005

Worlds Apart

Well-loved Bret Harte janitor, well-respected Vietnamese author

By Kymberli W. Brady
Staff Writer

In his native land of Vietnam, Banh, a high-profile reporter and successful radio show host lived the good life until 20 years ago, when he braved over a week of unforgiving seas in a small fishing boat before seeking asylum in the United States and taking a job as the janitor for Bret Harte Middle School.

Banh is flanked by family and friends at a signing for his first book at the Paloma Café on Story Road in March, 2004. Shown from L-R, daughter Madison, Banh, his wife Tho, Truc Mai, a Vietnamese publicist, Jim and Denise DeLong, and Truc Mai, a friend.

Twenty years later, Banh has decided to hang up the broom and devote the remainder of his days to the one thing he loves to do—write.

What most people don’t know is that the familiar face doesn’t just belong to the school janitor. It is also a very recognized face in Vietnamese literary circles, only using the pen name Hai Gang, which is Vietnamese for Sea Bird. He has authored two books and just finished a third.

His love for writing began with poetry when he was no older than the kids he has surrounded himself with every day for two decades. It soon turned to sneaking under the bedcovers at night to read detective stories, while he dreamed of becoming a reporter. Determination paid off when he later landed a job as a reporter for the Saigon Media Corps.

In 1966, the Vietnam War had escalated, prompting Banh to enlist. He spent the next ten years working as a war reporter for the newspaper “War Front,” where he also discovered the world of radio broadcasting and began hosting his own show—laced with comedy and political satire that eventually led to his imprisonment after the collapse of South Vietnam. Everything he owned, including three homes and all his worldly possessions were confiscated.

Somehow Banh managed to escape and flee with his wife, two small children, and 70 others in a small fishing boat that floated at the mercy of the Pacific for seven days, many of which he spent caring for his two-year-old daughter Mad-ison, who grew violently ill and nearly died during the perilous journey that given the odds, would probably have killed them all if it were not for a passing oil ship.

“We were lucky,” he remembers. “They let us board after I showed them my press credentials. I kept thinking my daughter was going to die. She was really sick and had diarrhea, so they took us to Malaysia to be treated. Looking back, I don’t know how I’m still alive.”

Through the years, Banh’s undying passion for writing has never wavered and he has never been bitter about his misfortune—focusing instead on the riches of freedom that embraced his family.

Banh’s books, Gia Dình Bac Tám and Gia Dình Bac Tám II are now in their fourth and second printings respectively.

Although his janitorial duties kept him busy most of the time, he managed to earn extra money for his family by writing love letters. He remembers one man who paid him $30 each to compose more than 30 letters, which he would then rewrite in his own hand and send to his girlfriend back east.

“Every time she wrote back, he would bring it to me to write another one. Once he needed one right away and had to send it express mail. Shortly after that, he had me write the letter that proposed to her. Today, they are still married and living out here in a million dollar home,” he laughs.

His undying passion for writing has also yielded two books that are widely read and respected by the Vietnamese community, especially those whose suffering and triumphs are depicted within the pages.

On March 8, 2004, hundreds of admirers turned out for his first signing after the release of Gia Dình Bac Tám, now in it’s fourth printing at the Paloma Café on Story Road. Among them, Bret Harte eighth-grade Language Arts teacher Jim DeLong.

“He is an inspiration because of everything he’s been through,” says DeLong. “Life is so difficult just to deal with the language alone. Here he has a full time job and still manages to write. I remember all the friends he introduced me to at his book signing. Almost everyone had been imprisoned and understood all too well that the words in his book were about them. It was a healing.”

Even at work, Banh could be inspired by the most unlikely sources, including a school dumpster, which he says reminded him of the terrible hardships the children of his country had to endure compared to the laughter and unbridled play he witnessed every day on the Bret Harte playground. Later, during his break Banh wrote about America, a “paradise for children” and he realized, for him too.

Whether he knows it or not, he already is in paradise. Over the past 20 years, Banh—despite a life fraught with suffrage and sacrifice, continues to live every day inspired by the next; an inner strength, according to DeLong that defines a hero.

“I am very fortunate to have met Banh,” he explains. “He truly has become one of my heroes. He lives his life in a way that inspires others and gives them strength. Like Anne Frank, his continual act of writing shows the will of the human spirit to rise above suffering.

DeLong considers Banh a living version of Anne Frank, the 15-year-old girl who wrote, “I want to go on living, even after my death” in her diary while imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during WWII. She died from typhus just three weeks before the Allies arrived to liberate those who had survived the Holocaust.

In an effort to demonstrate how powerful the written word can be, DeLong designed a “living wall” project a few years ago on paper that soon wrapped around the entire classroom, filed with photos of people from all over the world holding her book. The seemingly endless wall now lives in cyberspace and has garnered worldwide attention, not to mention the admiration of National Semiconductor representatives, who presented DeLong with the 2004 Suneil Parulekar Internet Innovator Award and a check for $10,000.

“We sometimes hear that, as we age, we find it harder and harder to find heroes in our lives,” he says. “Yet, as we move towards our end we need this strength, this in-spiration to realize our dreams. This is why I believe we are called to be heroes for each other. I am very fortunate to have met Banh. “

“I also teach students the screenwriting guru Rob-ert McKee’s max-im,” DeLong adds. “How they choose is who they are.” Each day, Banh makes the choice to write down that which he sees to be true about life and, in this way, he celebrates that which lives in us and makes us alive. And when I see him during the small moments of each day, I see him choose, moment by moment to live his life as a hero does: with dignity, humility, with humor and at peace. He lives his life as he writes—through the act of living, as through the act of writing, he lets us see his heart. We are called to be heroes for each other. For me, Banh has more than answered this call.”

Although his career as a prominent reporter and radio show host ended too soon and raising a family with three kids on a janitor’s salary has been far from easy, Banh says his freedom—especially to write, has been worth it. I’d do it all again tomorrow,” Banh adds. I have my books and people like them because they are about them.”

He says his next book will be a love story and based on his success writing love letters, it should be pretty good.

“The good life isn’t about the money,” Banh says. “It’s about having the freedom to be able to write—to present my heart to people. Besides, I don’t like to brag,” he jokes. “But I do write very good love letters.”