SAN ANTONIO – If you grew up in the 1990s watching college football, you may remember when Texas A&M linebacker great Dat Nguyen dominated headlines, not just for his play on the field but for being the son of Vietnamese refugees. He was living the American Dream.
That storyline followed him from College Station to Arlington, where he played for the Dallas Cowboys from 1999 to 2005.
He even wrote a book about his parents fleeing from South Vietnam on the final days of April 1975 before the country’s collapse to communism.
His book, “Dat, Tackling Life and the NFL,” has several early chapters depicting his f amily’s journey from Vietnam while his mother was still pregnant with him.
His story is just one among the thousands of Vietnamese who left their homeland before it was too late.
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These refugees left everything behind and had to start a new life on the other side of the world, learning a new language, new foods and a new climate in the United States.
“We were the first Vietnamese family to land in Anchorage, Alaska,” said Trinh Warner, who escaped with her siblings through the U.S. Embassy in Saigon on the final day of the Vietnam conflict. “I thought all of the United States had snow and caribou.”
On April 30, 1975, Warner and her four other siblings were rushed after school by their grandmother to the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon to get out of the country before the North Vietnamese Army arrived.
“It was crushing crowds, I think that was the scariest thing I remember being small, ‘was I going to get crushed in this crowd?’” explained Warner. “We were all holding hands, making sure that we all had contact with each other.”
Their grandmother had kept their passports safe so she could hand her family over to the soldiers at the gates of the U.S. Embassy.
It was the final time Warner saw her grandmother.
“I left my grandmother and aunt. I never saw my grandmother again, she died in a re-education camp,” Warner said. “She was the person who took care of me. It was hard knowing I wasn’t going to see her again.”
Warner joined the United States Air Force when she grew up, inspired by the soldiers who saved her and her family during the final evacuations from Saigon.
“I wouldn’t be here but for the service members who went to Vietnam,” she said. “I want to thank all the folks who served in Vietnam. I don’t think they realize the legacy that they left in Vietnam, to this day.”
Warner retired from the Air Force after 25 years of service and is now a lawyer in San Antonio.
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