Viet Group Wants Official Recalled : Members Upset Over Westminster Councilman’s Remark

A leader of Orange County’s Vietnamese community announced plans Thursday to recall Westminster City Councilman Frank Fry Jr., who voted to deny a parade permit sought by a group of South Vietnamese military veterans while telling them, “If you want to be South Vietnamese, go back to South Vietnam.”

“The Vietnamese community will not sit still for this,” said Arthur Suchesk, a spokesman for the South Vietnamese Armed Forces Day Committee who pledged to start the recall drive.

Fry’s statement, made at a Westminster City Council meeting earlier in the week, was racially insensitive, Suchesk and Vietnamese veterans have charged. The armed forces day committee sought a parade permit and approval to block traffic on busy Bolsa Avenue in Westminster’s Little Saigon.

Fry, who joined three other council members who voted against the request, told the group’s representatives that they should commemorate their war dead on a U.S. holiday, such as Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day.

“It’s my opinion that you’re all Americans and you’d better be Americans. If you want to be South Vietnamese, go back to South Vietnam,” Fry said. “That may be unfair, but that’s my opinion, and I’m sure that is the opinion of a lot of people around here.”

Fry made the controversial statement during the city’s first council meeting to be broadcast on cable television.

“His statements were uncalled for,” said Tony Lam, a Vietnamese community and business leader. “It’s an insult. He’s so naive to make that kind of a statement. We’re trying to be in the mainstream of America, yet, on the other hand, we’re trying to maintain our cultural heritage. That’s why we work in harmony. But that kind of a statement really breaks up the harmony.”

The Orange County Human Relations Commission on Thursday condemned Fry’s comments and called for both an apology and a reconsideration of the parade request after hearing from three representatives of the Vietnamese veterans’ group.

“The Orange County Human Relations Commission deplores the comments attributed to Councilman Fry as an affront to the Vietnamese community and to the general community,” Commission Chairman Daniel Ninburg said in a statement issued after the regular commission meeting.

“These remarks caused the issue before the council to be clouded by emotionalism. We therefore urge Councilman Fry to apologize . . . and we call on the City Council to reconsider its denial in an atmosphere free of prejudiced comments,” the statement continued.

The Westminster City Council voted 4 to 1 late Tuesday to reject the proposal, which would have honored all soldiers who fought the Communists in Vietnam. Only Mayor Charles V. Smith, a Korean War veteran, supported the parade.

Tien Nguyen, another committee member and former officer in South Vietnam’s air force, said the parade would have commemorated all Vietnam veteran “comrades in arms,” including those from New Zealand, the Philippines, Canada, Thailand, the United States and South Vietnam.

“This has nothing to do with the issue of assimilation; it’s just to honor their dead and our dead. That’s the issue here,” Suchesk said.

The veterans’ group plans to mobilize the Vietnamese community and mount an “anti-Fry” campaign with demonstrations, stories in the Vietnamese-language media and posters publicizing Fry’s statement, Suchesk said.

On Thursday, Fry, whose brash, off-the-cuff statements in the past have landed him in similar embarrassing situations, denied that he is a bigot.

“I’m not a racist. My vote was a protest against some of the divisiveness we now have in the city,” Fry said, alluding to Westminster’s growing Vietnamese community, which has established its own aggressive business base but still retains its cultural identity.

“I hate to see two of everything like we got going in this city,” Fry said. “We have two chambers of commerce, and we even have two Lions clubs.”

Since 1975, when Vietnamese refugees left their homeland, thousands were relocated to Orange County, where an estimated 100,000 Vietnamese residents live. Vietnamese living in Westminster, a city of 75,000 people, make up almost 15% of the population.