It began with a nun’s prayer. Certainly, neither Sister Patricia Sullivan DC nor the Vietnamese priests and postulants who escaped from their country in the middle of the night in small boats back in 1975 thought it would lead to this.
But three decades later, the small Ozarks community of Carthage is like home for more than 40,000 people of Vietnamese descent each August when they come from all over the country for the annual Marian Days events.
They arrive today toting sleeping bags and folding chairs, looking forward to a weekend of socializing, eating ancestral foods and joining in religious events.
It was a different story in 1975 when tens of thousands escaped their homeland as South Vietnam fell to the communists. Many of the refugees flocked to the United States to find a new home.
Sullivan remembers the sight of that chaotic exodus.
“I was watching on TV — the war and people escaping,” she said from her home in St. Louis. “I prayed to God. I keep a journal and I put in there that I asked God to let me help those people.”
About a year later, the Daughter of Charity was working in Louisiana when she got a call from her superior. She was asked to consider going to Bolivar to teach the Vietnamese refugees English.
“She said I didn’t have to say yes. I could think about it and pray about it,” Sullivan recalled. “I said I would think about it and pray about it, but I knew I was going.”
She wasted no time thanking God for answering her prayer, and then she headed to the former Our Lady of the Ozarks seminary in Bolivar, where the Congregation of Mother Co-Redemptrix would make its new home.
“I remember standing in front on the sidewalk, watching the buses pulling up,” said Sullivan.
She soon discovered the 170 priests and postulants were filled with “mixed feelings.” Many were young, maybe 20 years old, and they never even had an opportunity to tell their families they were leaving.
“They had some angry feelings,” she said. “They asked me how America could lose that war.”
The nun whose prayer was answered had plenty of work ahead of her. She worked with the 170 members of the congregation for a year, but came back later to spend 15 years working with hundreds more
Vietnamese refugees through the diocesan resettlement office in Springfield.
‘She’s like my mother’
Many of them will never forget what she did for them.
“Sister Patricia, she’s like my mother,” said Michael Tham of Monett.
“Everything I learned from her.”
Tham was 21 years old when he and his 19-year-old pregnant wife and three of his siblings, ages 7 to 14, arrived in Springfield after fleeing Vietnam. Today, he is a successful business owner. His brothers and sisters, as well as his two daughters, were able to
finish school. Three years ago, he was able to bring his father to the
United States, and he hopes his mother will be here by December.
In March 1986, stranded on the South China Sea with 51 people in a 15-foot-by-8-foot boat with an engine that wouldn’t run and no food or water left after eight days, Tham thought his life was over.
“We were just waiting to die,” he said.
Just as the future seemed doomed, five Dutch ships came into view. They were rescued just hours before a big storm came up.
“If they had not saved us, we would have drowned that night,” he said.
Stopping first in Singapore, the family was granted asylum in the
United States and was sent to Springfield. There, Sister Patricia found them a place to live and jobs, got the kids in school and taught the family English.
After a brief stay in California, the family returned to the Ozarks and now have a successful restaurant, aptly named Happy House, in Monett.
This weekend, they will reunite with family and friends in Carthage.
“When we go up there we feel like we are close to God,” said Tham, a lifelong Catholic. “And we get to see so many Vietnamese people.”
He admitted one of his favorite things about Marian Days is the food, recommending the pho.
Her best phone call
Barbara Nixon of Springfield looks forward to Marian Days. There’s always a chance she could run into some of the hundreds of students she taught English during the 20 years she volunteered through the church.
“One Sunday I was driving home from church and saw in the bulletin that they were looking for volunteers to teach English,” said Nixon, 72.
Her children were all in school and she was looking for something to do, so she called the number as soon as she got home.
“It was the best phone call I ever made in my life,” she said.
She went to the Literacy Council to learn the basics of teaching
English to non-English speakers. She discovered that empathy was the most important part of her job. She always tried to put herself in their place, imagining what it would be like if she had to leave her country with only her husband.
“I think that’s the reason I took to that so well,” she said. “I became a mother and a grandmother to those who didn’t have anybody.”
She went on to teach droves of Vietnamese students until the resettlement office closed in 1995. She still works with many of those former students to help them prepare for citizenship tests.
Event grows
Marian Days began in 1977, the same year John Nghi arrived in Carthage.
He left Vietnam with his family in 1975 when he was only 10 years old. Two years later, he began living at the congregation’s school in Carthage.
Today he is a priest in the community and serves as secretary for the four-day event.
Marian Days is primarily a religious event, a way to celebrate the escape of the 170 members of the congregation from Vietnam, as well as all the other Vietnamese refugees.
Over the years, the event has also taken on a secular significance, with booths that sell food and other Vietnamese treats, families camping out on the grounds and around the area, visiting with old friends and making new ones.
“Young people are growing up in America and they are pretty much
American,” said Nghi, who added that the congregation has had a shortage of members as the Vietnamese community members become more comfortable in their new homeland.
This weekend, however, religious devotion will draw many people to Carthage.
“It is both a religious and a social event,” said John Leibrecht, bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese, which includes Carthage.
“But the whole religious aspect infuses the social aspect.”
Leibrecht has led the opening Mass each year since he became bishop 21 years ago. One year, about 10 years ago, he discovered the depth of the religious faith of those attending.
It was raining but the outdoor Mass went on as scheduled. The priests celebrating were protected by umbrellas held over their heads, but the tens of thousands of people participating sat on the grass in the rain.
“I looked out at the massive crowd,” he recalled. “I didn’t think this could happen in this country. There was silence.”
Then things got even worse. The power went out. For about 10 minutes, the sound system didn’t work. The lights were dark.
“They remained absolutely quiet and reverent,” said Leibrecht.
“They had to have some kind of truly deep devotion and an especially strong sense of reverence not to have something like that break up the crowd. Under those trying circumstances, I learned how really deep their faith is. It made a lifelong impression on me.”
Tags: Vietnam
