LE-THI BACH-THUY

Le-Thi Bach-Thuy worked in Viet Nam as a social worker for Partners Aiding Children Today, which helped bring pediatric heart patients to the United States for surgery. She also worked with Friends of Children of Vietnam (FCVN) helping prepare orphans for transition to their new homes. She left Viet Nam one week before the end of the war in April 1975. She resettled in Denver, Colorado, with her two children, her sister, and her sister’s three children. She continued to work for FCVN to help place orphans with new adoptive families. In 1977, at age 37, she returned to school to study at the Colorado Women’s College. She earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in June 1979.

 

After graduation she continued her education at the University of Denver and earned a master’s degree in social work. While in school, she met and married a fellow Vietnamese refugee, Tran Nhu Chuong, who had a doctorate of philosophy in psychology and worked as a consultant for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in Tampa, Florida. After her graduation in June 1981, she and her children joined her new husband in Tampa. There she took a job as an interpreter for the Vietnamese refugees learning new trades at the Pinellas Vocational Technical Institute in Clearwater, Florida. It was not easy to translate the technical terms, so she attended classes with the trainees, took notes, read the textbooks, and was present in the shops every day. Within a few months her notebook was filled. She knew that her translations and explanations would help more refugees in the future, so in 1982 she published The Technical Terms of Welding, and in 1984 she published a second booklet, Manual for Auto Mechanics. She and her husband later started a business helping immigrants obtain the necessary documents to work and live in America. She was also a member of the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association, which worked for the release of prisoners in North Viet Nam. 

 

Her husband Tran Nhu Chuong passed away suddenly in 1994, and she maintains their business to this day. Her children are both married, and she is grandmother to seven granddaughters and one on the way.