UCSC
The Last Father’s Day of the Twentieth Century
June 20, 1999
The memory of that Father’s Day’s graduation at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has never gone away. 1996. Your alumnus, Thao Vo, graduated from your college. On Father’s Day.
We, his family, are forever indebted to you for the precious education which Thao was bestowed upon. The future was opened to him; it’s now in his hands. My youngest son, Trung-Joseph, just turned eight years old last month. I looked at him, and he is the splitting image of my younger brother Thao when he freshly got out of the cramped boat people refugee camp. I took him in under my wing. No one asked. I did it. Thao Vo is now on his own. But my heart of gratitude to UCSC has and will always be heavy. No one asked. I just feel it. I sponsored him to America.
To America...
May the UC Santa Cruz Class of 1999 remember this Father’s Day as a day of Gratitude to those educators who made them succeed, holding the degree in hand. May their hearts "see" a father’s figure in those who taught them in many ways. May these graduates turn not their backs on those who have given up everything for them to be where they are today. They are their parents, foster parents, or relatives, who sacrificed much of themselves so that these students will have all that they possibly can have. They, though, are not their fathers, but father figure.
Happy Father’s Day 1999.
Linh Duy Vo
© Copyright by Linh Duy Vo. All rights reserved.