A Family’s Mission : After Guarding His Name for 16 Years, the Eldest Son Is Reunited With His Vietnamese Parents

Ask Hung Le what’s in a name, and the 27-year-old Reseda man will rattle off a listof stunning replies:

For the sake of his name, Le escaped alone from his native Vietnam as a child, was shuffled between foster families in the United States, refused to be adopted, got himself classified as an “incorrigible delinquent,” graduated from Pepperdine University at the top of his class and married his college sweetheart.

All to carry out a sacred charge laid on him by his parents when, as a wide-eyed 11-year-old, he boarded a military transport plane out of Saigon.

It was April, 1975--days before the embattled city fell to North Vietnamese Communist forces who imprisoned his father, a South Vietnamese army officer.

“My mission was to continue the family name if anything should happen to them,” Le said. “That’s why the oldest son was sent.”

But for 16 years the firstborn son wondered if he would ever again see his parents to tell them what happened.

Until an emotional reunion with them Thursday at Los Angeles International Airport, when the man he became reported how faithfully he had clung to the mission they gave him as a child.

Just as Le had imagined in his mind’s eye, his father, Xich, and mother, Hong, 61 and 55, stepped from customs and immigration inspections, into his open arms.

But his mental rehearsals didn’t prepare him for the moment when it actually came.

His father clutched him and wept.

His mother buried her face in his neck and cried, as two of his sisters, now 18 and 30, embraced the brother only the older one could remember. The fragrant sprays of flowers brought by Le to greet his family went unnoticed.

“I can’t describe the feeling,” he said, his eyes watering behind the lenses of his black-framed glasses. “We’re just overwhelmed right now.”

A gentle-spoken man who now works as an associate director of campus life at Pepperdine, Le grew up in two foster homes in Seattle before turning 18.

To preserve the family name, the straight-A high school student resolved not to allow himself to be adopted--a decision that puzzled social workers who didn’t know how to classify him.

“They didn’t have a box to put me in. So the box they happened to check was ‘incorrigible delinquent,’ ” said Le with a chuckle. “I found out when I was 18 and looked at my records. I said, ‘You have to change this,’ but they were reluctant.”

Only after his principal and teachers wrote letters attesting to his character did the officials relent.

Le went on to college in 1983, majoring in business administration and met his future wife, Corinne Sanchez, who became a teacher at Andasol Avenue Elementary School in Northridge.

As a freshman he began in earnest to campaign for his family to join him, especially after learning that one of his sisters had died after drinking tainted water in an escape attempt from a refugee camp in the Philippines.

His two brothers, now 23 and 24, fled Vietnam in 1988. “They spent 2 1/2 years in hell,” shuttling between refugee camps in Thailand before joining him in the United States, Le said.

His parents and sisters received permission to immigrate after U.S. and Vietnamese officials agreed in 1989 that refugees who had been imprisoned by the Communist regime would be eligible to leave immediately--about 100,000 people, according to initial State Department estimates.

His father spent five years in a so-called re-education center after the fall of Saigon.

Last week, Le received a telephone call notifying him that the family would arrive Thursday.

“I always hoped this would happen,” he said. “But everyone hopes for miracles.”

And his newly arrived parents hope that soon their firstborn son can fulfill his promise to carry on the family name.

“I hate to put a date to it, but hopefully in the next few years,” Le said, smiling as relatives who had come to participate in the reunion ranged around him.

“But now my brothers are here, so they can continue the family name too.”