Idealistic Words to Teach, Live by

The words of America’s great statesmen are no mere historical relics for Thao Michelle Duong. They are an instruction manual.

“What really stuck with me in studying American history while I was growing up was the words of Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address. He said that this is a government of the people, for the people, by the people,” Duong said. “I want to test that.”

It is a remarkable journey for Lincoln’s pronouncements on democracy, from a Civil War battlefield in southern Pennsylvania to the Vietnamese community of Orange County.

Duong, an idealistic 25-year-old community volunteer, is also the product of a remarkable journey.

In 1979, her family fled from South Vietnam in the bottom of a fishing boat, narrowly avoiding Thai pirates during their escape to a refugee camp in Malaysia. She was 8 years old and her parents were protective. She thought the family was going on a vacation, at first.

Six months later, the family of five arrived in Los Angeles, where they lived in a single room. Her father, a physician in Vietnam, worked to earn medical certification while his wife worked as a maid.

They had sold everything they owned, even their wedding rings, to reach the United States.

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The family moved to Orange County in 1986, where Duong’s father began a medical clinic in Garden Grove to help the poorest members of the Vietnamese community. Duong, who has a degree in political science and plans to go to law school, has been trying to help in a different way.

During her college years, she worked for a Santa Ana law firm that represented the victims of wrongful termination, sexual harassment and racial discrimination in the workplace.

After graduation, she taught English-as-a-second-language and citizenship classes for Catholic Charities of Orange County.

“I taught in the Vietnamese community and the Hispanic community. It opened my eyes in understanding my culture more and the new wave of immigrants that have come over here from Vietnam. My parents always taught us to speak Vietnamese at home, but this forced me to really communicate with them because they didn’t speak very much English.

“These people, even though they were old and some of them were ill and didn’t have very many years left to live, they still wanted to become American citizens. That stereotypical idea of immigrants coming to America just to collect benefits was just not true.

“I saw something different. I saw that they really wanted to become American citizens, because this is a place of freedom.”

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Duong has since done volunteer work with several Orange County church and community organizations, encouraging people to take an active part in the democratic process.

“Our job was to go into the community, identify leaders and empower them to stand up for their communities. They need to know that they are capable, that they are able to make their lives better. If it’s a very low-income family, they often don’t see a way out, especially with the very last wave of refugees from Vietnam who tend to be the hard laborers, people from the rural areas.”

Duong is still wrestling with her own future and how best to serve her community. She plans to return to college in two years and earn a law degree.

But in the meantime, she wants to work for a politician, to see how the system is really working, to see if she might want to follow in Lincoln’s footsteps herself.

“After I graduated from college, the assumption of my parents was that I would continue and either get a graduate degree or go to law school. But I wanted to go out into the community and see what injustice was all about. I always thought the purpose of studying law was to be able to go out there and fight for those who had suffered from injustice. I wanted to understand what that word really meant.”

Duong said she is encouraged by growing numbers of younger Vietnamese Americans like herself who are seeking leadership roles.

“We’ve got more people like myself studying politics; we’ve got more people getting involved in civic organizations; and we’ve got more students really taking part in the democratic process and bringing it home and explaining it to their elders, that this is a land governed by the people, just like President Lincoln said.”

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Profile: Thao Michelle Duong

Age: 25

Hometown: Long Xuyen, South Vietnam

Residence: Anaheim

Family: Two older brothers, one younger sister

Education: Graduated from Canyon High School in Anaheim; bachelor’s degree in political science from Cal Poly Pomona

Background: Escaped from Vietnam with family at age 8; law-firm assistant during college, working with low-income community members; community organizer with Orange County congregation, Community Organization; ESL teacher with Catholic Charities of Orange County; volunteer with Legal Assistance For Vietnamese Asylum Seekers in Santa Ana; homeless program volunteer with San Antonio Church in Anaheim

On democracy: “In studying American history, I saw hope in people’s work, like Martin Luther King and Susan B. Anthony. This country is not just made up of people who are filled with rhetoric. I see hope in the people who really act out what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.”

Source: Thao Michelle Duong; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times

Los Angeles Times