Anh-Thu Thi Truong

Story of Anh Thư’s Life

1934-2023

Anh-Thư was born in Vientiane Laos, into the family of Trương Văn Xuân, an official of the French Indochina government, and Nguyễn Thị Kiều Khoan. It was a family of 4 siblings including two older brother and sister who ultimately gave their lives for the patriotic cause of the Vietnamese resistance during the final phase of the French colonial government. She also has many wonderful little brothers from her father's second marriage to Hồ Thị Vinh. It was unfortunate that Anh-Thư spent her younger years of childhood life away from her own mother. Thankfully, she had the companionship and warm protectiveness of her elder sister Liên Hương, well into their adulthood. Their innocent lives during this period was marked with having to take refuge from war to Hanoi, then back to Vientiane, and at times across the border to Thailand.

After the French colonial war ended, her father and the whole family moved back to Saigon, South Vietnam. A year later, her beauty caught the eyes of a South Vietnamese officer, Nguyễn Văn Hồng. They married soon after. All the while following his deployments across South Vietnam they have four children: Nam, Hạnh, Tuấn and Dzĩnh. It was during one of the deployments in Nha Trang, they had started a friendship with the family of another officer, Lữ Mộng Chi, who nearly three decades later became Hạnh’s in-laws in the America. In one of the assignments in the early 60s, Hồng and family moved and lived in Taiwan, working in the South Vietnamese embassy for a couple years.

After getting back from the Taiwan assignment, Hồng served as head of many offices within the Defense Ministry, until the North Communist took over the South. It was already a strenuous period for Anh-Thư to manage all by herself the household of four young children, their future and their education. In the years towards the end of the war, she also worked as a businesswoman to earn a supplemental income for the family. During this period, she ẹnjoyed the friendship and support of her older half-sister Nguyễn Thị Lựu, brother in-law Mai Văn Sinh and their family.

After the war ended, Anh-Thư was reuniting with her mother and younger half-sister Lê Thị Huyền Cơ from the North. Ironically, she got separated from Hồng, who was sent by the communist Vietnamese government to prison camps to the far northern border regions with China. Anh-Thư now faced even tougher tasks as a mother working odd jobs, one-by-one selling off the house furniture and appliances, merely to bring food on the table and struggling to keep the family staying together, against Communist government brutal forced-relocation policy to the countryside. During this time, Anh-Thư got support and friendship from sister Huyền Cơ and younger brother Trương Hùng and sister in-law Băng Tâm.

She often made long treacherous trips via railroad from the South farther into Northern Vietnam, followed by short bicycle trips to the camps to visit and supply her imprisoned, malnourished and forced-labored husband. Through a series of imprisonment, Hồng finally got released in 1982. But then it was just the beginning. She tirelessly strove to get him and the boys out of Vietnam to the free-world with all the money she had managed to save and then hiding, putting away during all these years before and since the Communist took power in the South.

Following a near-death boat escape out of Vietnam, Hồng resettled in the US in the early 1980s, working mainly as a social worker in Virginia, then Sunnyvale California. Anh Thư eventually reunited with Hồng in 1985. Unfortunately, Hồng passed away in 1993, Anh Thư had some stints working as an assembler and a mail sorter mainly to get herself busy and make friends, until she retired a few years later. She very much enjoyed cooking for her grandchildren, gardening and making friends.

Finally, Anh-Thu relocated to Minnesota under the extremely good care of her loving daughter and son-in-law. Here she enjoyed golden-age time: good foods, laughter with her adorable grand and great grandchildren, Lyra and Jovi. Here she was always surrounded with love from her broader closely-knitted in-laws and Laotian nieces and nephews as extended families.

Looking back we can say, her children's successes today are thanks to her unyielding life-long struggle and guidance. Anh Thư left an indelible, deep-loving symbolic image of a hen feeding her chicks and, at times, fiercely pulling them into her wings for protection against swooping down predator birds.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.oakhillfuneral.com for the Truong family.