Finding Father

There were only a few things that I knew about my father growing up: one is a grainy black and white picture w my grand father sitting in a sparsely furnished living room somewhere in Hà Nội Vietnam probably taken around 1975 w my three uncles my father was the oldest. His other four younger sisters were not included. The other is the name Lý Đông A an anti-communist intellectual who was killed by the Communists in 1947.

My father and my mother w my sister and brother who were two and one year old had moved South to Saigon along w one million Northern Vietnames in 1954 after the French were defeated at the battle of Diện Biên Phủ. The Vietnam war started soon after with the involvement of America until 1975 when Saigon failed to the Communists.

Between 1947 and 1954 My father had married my mother studied Dentistry in Hà Nội university and became a certified French Oral Surgeon had two kids while the rest of his family followed Hồ Chí Minh preparing for the war of resistance against the French.

50 years after Vietnam was reunited my cousin the son of one of my aunt not showing in the picture had married Phan Anh who was one of the most brilliant lawyer Vietnam had produced and later helped to create the country post war constitution sent me a picture of him sitting in Washington DC in 2025 at a table among a group of American Vietnam war veterans and invited me to join a reconciliation project sponsored by his father’s NGO foundation to preserve war memories between Vietnam and America using block chain technology.

I was hesitant at first because the Vietnam war was not just between America and Vietnam but a civil war between brothers and sisters who were Communists in the North and anti-Communists in the South just like my own family.

This past summer I was able to paint beyond not only of what my eyes could see but also feel and breathe.

Beyond the countless pains and sufferings for those who had died and survived because of the War I agree to participate in this project because I can help heal the wounds of the past and to honor my father memories and the idealism that had once inspired him to form an evolutionary personal path away from his own family so he could be true to himself which then became my own inspiration to create a more hopeful future for my own children.