Children of Hope: The Story of Le Minh Dao
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My father shared with me the miracle of the cross. I had to give my father time when it came to sharing the story about the cross. The cross was originally given to my dad by his Aunt Ngo Marie Helene, who was his mother’s younger sister. She was a very well-educated woman, a supervisor at a very large hospital. She lived in France and always did a lot of charity work, to help the poor and less fortunate people. This aunt gave my father a wooden cross from a shrine of St. Bernadette in France. This was one of the Catholic Churches that his Aunt Marie Helene faithfully attended. (Interestingly, my baptized name is Bernadette, from St. Bernadette.) My father mentioned it was his baby sister, Anh Tuyet, who snuck this cross in to him, during one of her visits. My father always kept this cross close to him, and he prayed to God every day. Because the communists would not allow us to worship God, or our Lord Jesus, we had to be very discreet. One afternoon, I forgot I was wearing the cross that my aunt had given me. I was taking a bath in the river and this bastard communist guard came over to me. He saw that I had a cross around my neck and beat me with the back of his gun, while ripping the cross off my neck and throwing it down, into the water. The flow of the water told me that this was the end of the cross. But when I got back home that night, I did not lose hope. I continued to have faith and kept praying to God. After a few weeks, I was back doing the same work in the same location where that guard had beaten me and thrown my cross into the flowing river. As I was working and looking down in this muddy river, I kept seeing this shiny reflection from the water. The water was a little bit muddy and the sun was very hot, so I thought it was just the reflection from the sun. But, then I saw the shiny reflection from the water even clearer, so I decided to slowly sit down and put my hand in the water, where the shiny light was. I moved some little pebbles to the side, then the bigger pieces of rocks and dirt. For some reason, my hand was being pushed by a gush of water. After a few minutes, the shiny object caught my eyes again and I was able to grab that shiny object along with the dirt. I silently said to myself, “Oh my God, it’s my cross.” I felt there was hope again, because I knew God did not abandon me. He wanted to let me know that he was always with me and not to give up hope. After that, I kept the cross in a safe place where I slept, because I was afraid if the communist guards inspected the place, they might find it and throw it away again. Mr. Than helped me repair this beautiful cross, made out of old wood and scrap metal, which had been damaged when I lost it. This is heart breaking to think about now.
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About the Book
Major General Le Minh Dao was the Commander of the 18th Infantry Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). At Xuan Loc, he became the ground commander during the final Battle for Saigon. A highly respected officer, known for his dogged determination, he held off the North Vietnamese for three weeks in April of 1975, before the ultimate fall of Saigon on April 30th. Dao was captured and spent 17 years in so-called “re-education” camps, before being released in 1992 and then given political asylum in the United States in 1993. In Children of Hope, The Story of Le Minh Dao, Michelle Chen, one of Major General Dao’s nine children, tells her father’s tale, through audio tapes recorded with him in his later years. In addition, the story of the rest of her family’s escape to freedom, through her own recollections and those of her mother and her oldest sister, is relived. The thoughts of two American military colleagues of her father conclude a moving firsthand account of life in Vietnam before, during and after the Fall of Saigon, a world event that touched so many lives.
About the Author
Michelle Le Chen was 7 years old when her father was incarcerated in 1975. Her mother spent the next 17 years working for her husband’s escape or release. The rest of Michelle’s family escaped from Vietnam in 1979-80, with most of them settling in Virginia, where she would live for the next 25 years, before moving to Florida in 2014.