The following article appeared in the Rock Hill Herald on the 25^th anniversary of the evacuation of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

Mary Vu takes an order in 2000      Mary Vu & child in 1975

Life After War

By Karen Bair, The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C., April 30, 2000

Mary Vu, found security in the routine of her kitchen in Can Tho, about 100 miles south of Saigon, South Vietnam.

"I was cooking," she recalled. "I am always in the kitchen. I like to cook."

Last week in her Rock Hill restaurant, Mary's Cafe, Vu, who has adopted the American name Mary, continually clears her throat to remove a lump that will not melt as she recounts events in the ensuing hours, weeks and months.

The Vus were the first South Vietnamese family to settle in Rock Hill following the fall of Saigon in 1975, according to Vu and those who aided the refugees.

They arrived with four cents and the clothes on their backs.

It was 25 years ago today when they fled, but in her heart, it was yesterday. April and May of 1975 still live in her nightmares. On April 30, the United States pulled its troops from Vietnam, marking the end of this nation's longest war. "White Christmas" was playing on the radio in Saigon, the signal for American sympathizers to flee.

"My husband came to me, and he said the president (Big Minh) was surrounded," she remembers of April 30, 1975, when her husband rushed into the kitchen. "He said, 'We have to go.' We didn't know where we were going."

She swooped up her 16-month-old daughter, Lan, a few baby things and a bag containing documents. She was shy, and he was the first man she had ever loved. He was handsome in his South Vietnamese Air Force uniform. They dated for a year before they married.

Vu, then 22, followed him. Somewhere along the way, she lost her shoes. She lost her home, the rest of her family, the only life she had ever known. She fled for her life.

Her husband, Ngoc, flew a helicopter to the island of Con Son, where they spent the night and picked up other South Vietnamese officers.

Thirty-eight terrified people stood like upright sardines in a helicopter designed for 12 passengers. They threw everything else overboard.

At 4 a.m., they flew over the South China Sea in search of a U.S. aircraft carrier. None of them spoke but tears ran down their faces. There was the roar of helicopter blades and water below.

Finally, they spotted a South Vietnamese ship. The pilot attempted to land on the moving ship's deck, already crowded with hundreds of refugees. Passengers hung on as the helicopter tilted and swooped toward the deck.

"Oh, my Lord," Vu said. "I can't explain how scary it was,

trying to land on that ship."

They missed landing in the water by inches.

Other refugees were not so lucky. Many of the tens of thousands who fled did not make it. There were tales of suspected Viet Cong being shot and tossed into the sea. Others fell overboard and were left behind.

They lived with hundreds of others on the ship for a week en route to the Philippines.

"They didn't have water to cook," she said. "We had just a little water to drink to keep you alive. I didn't eat for a week. My daughter was starving. You thought you could die any minute. They could throw me overboard if something happened."

Many refugee ships' passengers died. Bodies were removed and excrement cleaned from decks of ships arriving in the Philippines.

Vu was seasick and lived inside the helicopter with her husband to protect her. When she cried, he smiled and told her they were going to a better life.

Ngoc, who had taken air force training in the United States for a year, interpreted for the Vietnamese in the Philippines. He snared a pair of shoes and a change of clothes for his wife from the Red Cross.

"I didn't know if my family was alive," she said. "I cried all the time."

They were soon on a U.S. ship bound for Guam, where they lived for two weeks in a tent city of refugees. Americans then shipped the family to a refugee camp in Pennsylvania, where they awaited sponsors.

The late James and Jesse Duckworth of Rock Hill took the Vus under their wings, largely due to the efforts of The Oratory's Father Joseph Wahl, who was resettlement director for the Diocese of Charleston for the U.S. Catholic Conference Immigration Service.

"We came to Rock Hill June 23, 1975," she said, the date firmly etched in her memory. "Father Joseph just hugged me and he was so happy to see me. He kept talking to me. I didn't understand a thing he said.

"But when we got to Rock Hill, I felt better."

The Duckworths had no children, and the Vus no longer knew if they had parents, so they called the Duckworths "Momma" and "Poppa."

Ngoc was soon working at the Rock Hill Printing & Finishing Co., and Mary was learning English at York Technical College. She learned English with a southern dialect, and she found a job that felt like home: at Kit Chen's Kitchen on Cherry Road.

Two years after the Vus' arrival here, a friend of the restaurant's owner brought news of the Vus' family in Vietnam. Mary's mother, two sisters and brother were alive, but Ngoc's mother had died the year after the communists took control.

"When my husband's mom passed away, we weren't there," she said. "She died and she didn't know where we were."

Still, Vu said she made the right decision. "I always miss my homeland, but the freedom is important."

The Vus became U.S. citizens in 1983. Ngoc took the American name Van. They call their eldest daughter Lannie and named their second daughter Amy after President Jimmy Carter's daughter.

Lannie is in graduate school to become a nurse practitioner and Amy has a master's degree in business administration. Van works for IBM and the couple owns an electronic printing business in Rock Hill.

In 1987, they bought Terasita's restaurant off Firetower Road. Mary had learned American cooking from the Duckworths, and they renamed the restaurant Mary's Cafe about a year later.

During lunch hour, the parking lot is crammed at Mary's. Truck drivers, families, business people, blue-collar workers listen to country music and order from an all-American menu including cheeseburgers, barbecue and apple pie. Chinese food is listed at the bottom, but it's an afterthought.

Vietnam veterans number among her most loyal customers. Sometimes they drop by between lunch and dinner rush to have a beer, sit at the counter, smoke a cigarette and reminisce about Vietnam.

Mary is still homesick. She has visited her homeland three times and believes conditions have improved there since the United States resumed negotiations with the communist government. Sometimes she thinks she would like to die there.

The Vus still observe Vietnamese holidays and eat rice and stir fry at home, sometimes indulging in the spicy dishes of their homeland.

They have managed to bring Mary's cousin, sister and six of her nine children and another sister to Rock Hill. They all live in the Vus' three-bedroom home, its dining room converted into a dormitory. They all work in the restaurant six days a week, 12 hours a day.

As all-American as Mary's Cafe is, there are vestiges of Mary's homeland. She opens the door for elderly customers and sometimes cuts their meat. Children rush back to the kitchen to find Mary.

"I have a lot of mom and poppas and I have a lot of children here," she said with delight.

Lots of customers walk into her cafe and ask, "Where's Mary?"

The cashier replies, "Mary? Oh, she's in the kitchen."

Contact Karen Bair at (803) 329-4080 or kbair@heraldonline.com.