Tran Van Dinh

Up until six years old he lived a pleasant life in Hanoi with his sister, mother, and father who was a wealthy contractor. Then the Communists came to his home, killed his father, and confiscated their property. His mother died a year later due to grief. After the takeover, his surviving sisters and he had to move to their ancestral rice growing, peanut oil lantern, mud house village in the Thai Binh province where life would humble any homeless person in America.

At 15 years old he joined the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and received special US intelligence and language training which led him to become a Captain in the US Marine Unit. After the fall of Saigon he was imprisoned along with US Soldiers in “re-education camp," sarcastically called the Hanoi Hilton, which consisted mostly of torture, disease, etc. Definitely not one of Hilton’s recommended hotels.

After being released he escaped with my mother and her family, who lost everything to the communists, by small boats where most refugees would not even survive the journey to reach land. Luckily, they ended up at a refugee camp in the Indonesian islands where they made him the representative leader of over 100,000 refugees.

Recent: (Words from Richard)

My dad just passed after fighting for a week from and traumatic brain injury he sustained when he had a mini-stroke right next to me.

His wife, my mother, passed in October 2020 from cancer. He was so depressed after my mom passed but he would say and act likes he’s fine but it was obvious. He planned for us to take care of my mother when his time came but yet he outlived his wife and one of his sons. He stopped caring about things he used to like. He was already anti-social but he got even more so. Never wanted to go anywhere when I visited. Didn’t crave to eat anything. He was living alone in San Jose at 82 years old so I would have to check the cameras every day to make sure he was breathing when he was sleeping. So I moved him down here permanently for the past four months. Huge change. Ever since he’s been living with me he was so happy making plans for the future. He came home and excitedly told me “oh the senior center has a thing on this day I’m gonna go to it.” He then got into the texting for the first time, which he said he would never do, and he would text Memes and emojis--like a kid. I had to tell him to stop at the dinner table because I would be having a full conversation with him and then he would look up at me and go “huh? What!!?”

He suffered a subdermal hematoma and the ER showed no signs of urgency even though they agreed that every minute that goes by is crucial. When he showed an altered mental state and lost consciousness we argued that he needed to do that second CT scan to get him Into surgery immediately. The nurse taking care of him decided to go on break in the middle of this and never came back so another nurse was assigned and admitted they forgot to check his blood to give him platelets to slow the bleeding. Took 4 hours until he went to surgery but at that point the survival rate was slim. After surgery, his intracranial pressure was in the 60’s. The next day it went to 40’s. Then for some reason, it climbed to 80-90 overnight and stayed there for over 24 hours which compressed the brainstem that controls consciousness and breathing. He had reached the point of no return at that point.

SERVICE:

Dinh Van Tran

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Peek funeral home, chapel 5

7801 Bolsa Ave, Westminster, CA 92683

9 am prayer ceremony

10 am -1:30 pm viewing

1 pm final service

1:30 pm - 2:30 pm Buddhist cremation ceremony

3 pm Final goodbyes and cremation

AFTER SERVICE RECEPTION:

TBA