Editor Remembered as ‘Quiet, Gentle Man’

About 75 friends and associates of Tap Van Pham, the Vietnamese editor killed in an arson fire last week, gathered Sunday for a quiet funeral service in Westminster after a larger tribute was canceled in reaction to a terrorist communique.

In a letter dated Aug. 9 and postmarked from San Jose, a group calling itself the Vietnamese Party to Exterminate the Communists and Restore the Nation claimed responsibility for the Aug. 9 fire and strongly criticized Pham’s publication of three ads for companies that the group alleges are linked with the Communist government in Hanoi.

Letter Prompted Cancellation

After the letter was made public, fellow Vietnamese editors who had planned an elaborate memorial service in Orange County’s Little Saigon area canceled their plans.

“He was a quiet man, a gentle man, who was so committed to his loved ones (still) in Vietnam,” said Ba Nga Truong, the wife of one of Pham’s best friends and one of the mourners.

“Please, tell everyone he was not a Communist. I know. I left Vietnam in the same boat as he did. He was not a Communist.”

During the brief Buddhist service at the Peek Family Colonial Funeral Home, friends of the 45-year-old editor and publisher of Mai magazine filed past his bronze casket, and a loudspeaker played a dirge written by a friend for the occasion.

A group of Vietnamese writers handed out statements condemning the violence that took Pham’s life and promising to resist any efforts to inhibit them.

“The tragic death of author Hoai Diep Tu (Pham’s pen name) certainly will not intimidate Vietnamese authors into yielding to threats of violence; rather, it will serve to clarify the path which they must follow to serve the cause of freedom, and encourage all Vietnamese authors to continuously use their pens in the struggle for freedom and for human rights oppressed under all Communist regimes,” the communique declared.

Bui Vinh Phuc, one of the 27 writers whose name appeared on the communique, said the document was drafted as a message of solidarity among Vietnamese writers.

Bui and other writers also urged that members of the Vietnamese community wait until Garden Grove police conclude their investigation before speculating on whether Pham was the victim of a political assassination.

Police have not ruled out the possibility that Pham could have been murdered by extortionists or because of a personal grudge.

On Sunday, a spokesman for Garden Grove police said there were no new announcements in the case.

Truong said three families who had befriended Pham made arrangements for the service, which ended with cremation of his remains.

Permission to release the body was received from Pham’s widow in Ho Chi Minh City after she was told of her husband’s death in a telegram sent last week, Truong said.

“Hopefully some day we will be able to take his urn to his wife in Vietnam. That’s our goal,” Truong said.

“He loved his wife and three children. In fact, he had plans to bring them to the United States to be with him in 1988. That was his dream. He wanted to make enough money to bring them to this country to live with him.”