Khiem Thanh Nguyen looked forward to his annual trip to Carthage, Mo. Before leaving Thursday afternoon, he called his daughter, Chantal Nguyen.

"He called me at 4:08," she said, recalling his last words to her. " 'I'm fixing to go to Missouri soon.' Suddenly, he said, 'I love you.' "

That was unusual, she said, because while the two were close, Nguyen was rarely so expressive. "Asian families, they don't say that very much," she said.

Chantal described her father as a "happy" and "goofy" man, devoted to Our Lady of Lavang church in northwest Houston.

Nguyen and his wife, Tinh Le, had four daughters and two sons in Vietnam before moving to the United States in 1977. They lived in Virginia before settling in Houston in 1980. The couple owns Alliance Automotive Inc., an auto body parts store with two locations in Houston and and one in Dallas.

Le had planned to follow her husband to Carthage in a car with two daughters and a daughter-in-law Friday. Instead, her children took her to North Texas to identify her husband's body.

At the Alliance Automotive in northwest Houston on Thursday morning, Ken Fujii said his employer spent more time at Our Lady of Lavang than he did at the store. He led the church's Legion of Mary group and visited hospitals and retirement homes, reading the Bible to patients and residents.

"Everybody loves him," Fujii said. "He never hurt nobody. He was so happy all the time. You could just feel the energy."

"He was a good man," added employee Reina Blanco.

Nguyen's parents died when he was a child, son-in-law Paul Ngo said.

"He had a rough life," Ngo said. But his sunny disposition never hinted at any hardships.

Nguyen, whose family said he was about 74, also leaves behind 18 grandchildren.

* Retrieved from chron.com