Together Again : Man Reunited With Parents Who Couldn’t Escape Vietnam

Ask Hung Le what’s in a name, and the 27-year-old Reseda man can offer a stunning reply.

For the sake of his name, Le escaped alone from his native Vietnam as a child, was shuffled between foster families in the United States (refusing to be adopted), got himself classified as an “incorrigible delinquent,” graduated from Pepperdine University at the top of his class and married his college sweetheart.

All to carry out a sacred charge from his parents when, as an 11-year-old, he boarded a military transport plane out of Saigon. It was April, 1975--only days before the embattled city fell to North Vietnamese Communist forces who imprisoned his father, a South Vietnamese army officer.

“My mission was to continue the family name if anything should happen to them,” Le said. “That’s why the oldest son was sent.”

For 16 years the first-born son wondered if he would ever again see his parents to tell them what happened.

But at an emotional reunion with them Thursday at LAX, Le reported how faithfully he had carried out the mission they gave him as a child.

Just as Le had dared to imagine, his father, Xich, 61, and mother, Hong, 55, stepped from customs and immigration inspections, into his open arms. Two sisters were also on the flight.

His father clutched him and wept. His mother buried her face in his neck and cried, as two of his sisters, now 18 and 30, embraced the brother only the older one could remember. The flowers brought by Le to greet his family went unnoticed.

“I can’t describe the feeling,” he said, his eyes watering behind his black-framed glasses. “We’re just overwhelmed right now.”

Le, who works as an associate director of campus life at Pepperdine, grew up in two foster homes in Seattle before turning 18. To preserve the family name, the straight-A high school student resolved not to allow himself to be adopted--a decision that puzzled social workers who didn’t know how to classify him.

“They didn’t have a box to put me in. So the box they happened to check was ‘incorrigible delinquent,’ ” Le said. “I found out when I was 18 and looked at my records. I said, ‘You have to change this,’ but they were reluctant.”

Only after his principal and teachers wrote letters attesting to his character did the officials relent.

Le went on to college in 1983, majoring in business administration and met his wife, Corinne Sanchez, who became a teacher at Andasol Avenue Elementary School in Northridge. As a freshman he began to campaign for his family to join him, especially after learning that one of his sisters had died after drinking tainted water in an escape attempt from a refugee camp in the Philippines.

His brothers, now 23 and 24, fled Vietnam in 1988. “They spent 2 1/2 years in hell,” shuttling between refugee camps in Thailand before joining him in the United States, Le said.

His parents and sisters received permission to immigrate after U.S. and Vietnamese officials agreed in 1989 that refugees who had been imprisoned by the Communist regime would be eligible to leave immediately--about 100,000 people, according to initial State Department estimates. His father spent five years in a so-called re-education center after the fall of Saigon.

Last week, Le received a telephone call notifying him that the family would arrive Thursday.

“I always hoped this would happen,” he said. “But everyone hopes for miracles.”

His parents hope that soon their son can fulfill his promise to carry on the family name by producing an heir.

“I hate to put a date to it, but hopefully in the next few years,” Le said, smiling as relatives who had participated in the reunion gathered around him. “But now my brothers are here, so they can continue the family name too.”