Viet Student Colors Mural With Gratitude for Freedom

Grant High School senior Hong Hoang said he hasn’t talked much about those last few terrible days in Vietnam, before his family fled Saigon in 1975.

But this week, as his 15-by-24-foot mural of many cultures was presented at Grant, Hoang took a few moments for a personal dedication to a half-brother who didn’t get out.

“I am especially proud to live in a country where freedom is cherished,” the 17-year-old Hoang told the group of about 40 students, administrators and teachers. “To me, freedom is the most precious gift in life, and when anyone looks at this I would like them to think of those who sacrificed their lives to preserve it.”

School’s Logo

Hoang designed the mural, which is a patriotic tribute to the multicultural enrollment at Grant, and supervised its painting on the side of one of the school’s bungalows. It portrays Grant’s logo--the school cradled by two hands--as well as symbols and images of people and animals from Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America. All are superimposed on a huge American flag.

Hoang has changed the logo slightly so that the hands, instead of being wrapped around the school, are open “as a symbol of open arms to every race and every culture.”

Grant Principal Robert Collins, who was among those who attended the mural’s dedication, said 800 of the Van Nuys school’s 3,600 students have been in the United States less than two years.

Distrusted Americans

Hoang said there was a time when he distrusted Americans.

“The Viet Cong used propaganda to make us think that Americans were bad. Only when we were rescued by Americans did I realize that they weren’t,” said Hoang, who was 7 years old in April of 1975, when the Communists overran Saigon.

As a witness to the melee in his village at that time, Hoang said he saw people drowning themselves while trying to board the last American battleships fleeing South Vietnam.

“I saw this lady, she had a 2-month-old baby, going up the steps to get on the battleship,” Hoang said. “There were lots of people rushing up the small staircase, which was about five stories high. Someone pushed her, she dropped the baby and it was crushed between the ship and the dock.”

Hoang said his family did not know whether they would be able to leave until the last few days of the war. He said the American Embassy helped his father, An Hoang, his mother, Thon Nguyen, and nine other family members get out of the country.

The half brother and his family who were left behind send letters occasionally asking for medicine and other necessities they cannot get in Vietnam.

Although Hoang has not decided whether he will study art or engineering next year when he enters California State University, Northridge, he said that, if he ever becomes a celebrated artist, he will try to promote world peace.

“I’ve seen what war can do to a person physically and mentally,” he said. “Can you imagine someone’s head being blown off right next to you, and his leg is 10 feet away? We lived in constant fear that the bombs would drop on our house. Everyone would sit in the bomb shelter and stay there, just sitting and praying.”