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Exploring Insight: Students learn about their dads on trip abroad
Photo Courtesy of Calli Nguyen
Kyle Bridges, a senior at Wake Forest University, helped build a playground for children in Vietnam during his trip there. Bridges’ dad, Tilden, served in the Vietnam War.
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Published: September 21, 2009
Traveling halfway around the world helped Calli Nguyen and Kyle Bridges better understand their fathers.
Nguyen, 20, and Bridges, 22, are students at Wake Forest University. Over the summer, they and 12 other students traveled to Vietnam for a study-abroad program that incorporates service learning with lessons on the country's culture, history, economy and government. Wake Forest students have been traveling to Vietnam since 2002.
Mary Gerardy, the dean of campus life and an associate vice president, sees the trips as a way to mend the relationship between the United States and Vietnam.
"I consider it radical peacemaking," said Gerardy, who has led seven trips to Vietnam.
For Nguyen and Bridges, the trip took on added meaning. Nguyen's father, Bay, served in the South Vietnamese navy until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Fearing for his life, Nguyen fled the country on an overcrowded boat and eventually wound up in a refugee camp in Thailand.
He lived there for seven months before he was granted permission to enter the United States. He arrived in Texas carrying little more than a Vietnamese-English dictionary. Later, he met Calli's mom, a Vietnamese who also settled in Texas, and moved to Cary.
Calli Nguyen, a physics major, grew up with little knowledge of his family's history or the war.
"I didn't have a connection to Vietnam," he said.
On the trip, he saw the tiny house where his father lived and met relatives for the first time. He said he felt a kinship with the Vietnamese that he doesn't often feel with students at Wake Forest.
Upon his return, his parents peppered him with questions about his trip. Nguyen wants to return after graduation and live there for a few years.
"After I came back, I knew I wanted to go back," he said. "I knew Vietnam is where I belonged."
Gerardy said that other students with Vietnamese heritage have had similar desires to return.
"They come back passionate about their roots," she said. "Calli came back saying, ‘I have to learn my language.'"
Bridges' father, Tilden, also has ties to Vietnam. Certain he was about to be drafted, Tilden Bridges joined the Army in 1969 and served for 18 months. His job was to find and identify enemy units.
After he returned, he decided to become a minister. He is now a United Methodist minister in Collinsville, Va.
"I'm sure that was a direct response to the war," he said. "It was wanting to do something a little more constructive with my life. I felt a call beyond myself."
Kyle Bridges, a military-history buff, heard bits and pieces about his dad's service while growing up. He decided to go on the trip to better understand what his dad went through in his 18-month tour.
"I wanted to experience the countryside, smell the same smells, feel the same heat," he said.
While in Vietnam, he saw some of the same areas where his dad served, including the Mekong Delta.
"He knows much more about Vietnam than I did," Tilden Bridges said. "I was focused on a 50-mile radius."
The Bridgeses have talked about how Kyle's trip completes a family circle.
"With me going over there almost 40 years after he did, it's a nice thought that I would go over as an ambassador, to do something good as opposed to destroying," Bridges said.
lodonnell@wsjournal.com.
727-7420
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