Post date: Mar 13, 2019 7:22:43 PM
March 11 at 2:56 PM ·
A week ago, a number of Vietnamese newspapers published a grossly misinformed story that included libel on two of my mentors - my dad Hui Ly and anh De Nguyen. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since.
Those of you who know me either from high school, UCLA, work or Scouts know that Scouting is my hobby and religion, that I devote more time to the Scouting program than anything else I do in my life. And that is solely because of one person: my father.
My dad is Chinese by ancestry but was born and raised in Phan Rang, Vietnam. He was a Boy Scout in his town from the age of 13 until the fall of Saigon in 1975 when the communist government annulled any youth programs that were not their own, effectively removing the Boy Scouts of Vietnam (Hướng Đạo Việt Nam) from the World Organization of the Scout Movement. My dad also had to flee his motherland with his family of 12 - my grandparents and my 10 uncles and aunties - to a refugee camp, where his Scouting skills helped hundreds of other families to be able to cook rice over an open fire when all they had was wet wood to use. After the family was granted immigration to the US, they settled in Hawaii and what did he do? He started Boy Scout Troop 67 for the Vietnamese refugees.
My dad met my mother Cuc Anh Huynh because her cousin, who she fled Vietnam with, was a taxi driver co-worker with my dad and helping him with the Vietnamese Boy Scout troop. My dad was over at their apartment, planning camp and program with my uncle when my mom reminded my uncle that he had promised to teach her how to drive. My dad offered to teach her instead and through those driving lessons, they fell in love and were married in 1983. I was born a year later.
It’s safe to say Scouting brought my parents together and that it has been a part of my life since before I was born. I know I’m not supposed to really remember anything concrete before the age of two or three, but I swear I know the smell of a campfire and the sound of boys’ laughter from my toddler years on Oahu.
When we moved to the mainland, my brother Anthony Lee was born and for the next decade, my parents worked hard to ensure we would want for nothing and learn to be strong and capable people. We spent summer days practicing our handwriting and reading by copying the words from our children’s books to paper and drawing out our family tree, while my mom took in sewing jobs and my dad worked at his brother’s furniture store. My dad continued to go to various large Scouting events but wasn’t really able to get back to volunteering with a Troop on a weekly basis until I was about 9 or 10 - I joined a couple of months after he started. By that time, he had been reunited with another Scouter and they started in the dry cleaning business together. My parents worked at their dry cleaners from Monday to Saturday and on Sunday, we went to Scouts.
Over the years with our dry cleaning business, I learned customer service from my mom and I learned pretty much everything else there is to know about life from my dad. We started cleaning the clothes for other dry cleaning stores which didn’t have a plant on premises and when my dad would go on the long afternoon drives to deliver the clean clothes and pick up the dirty, I loved nothing more in the world than to have finished enough of my homework to go with him. The stories and talks we had on those trips laid the foundation for the way I problem-solve, my critical thinking, and my self-confidence. He told me stories of his high school years, stories of my grandparents, and of course stories of Scouting.
When we left our Scouting units, LĐ Chi Lăng, in 1997 to form a new Scouting group, I was heart-broken. It was like having my parents get a divorce because their values had diverged and could not be reconciled, and with it came the guilt of thoughts that it was somehow my fault. And it was, in the way that my dad wanted to ensure that the Scouting program was affording me and my brother all of the opportunities it could, especially the advancement programs of our home Scouting programs: the Eagle Scout and the Gold Award. We weren’t getting the support from the troops at that time, so my dad made the hard decision to leave.
He started LĐ Hoa Lư with a group of Scouters in September 1997 and we began to rebuild. We focused on leadership, on family, on advancement, on skills. But over the next couple years, my dad noticed that several of the other Scout leaders, who were parents of Scouts in our troop, were affording opportunities and leadership roles to their own children over others. And after the recognition that their values had diverged and could not be reconciled, we went through another “divorce” in 2001 to start LĐ Chí Linh.
Cuc Anh Huynh and Hui Ly, the author's parents
LĐ Chí Linh was started by parents, but not too many years into it, my dad had the vision of a liên đòan ran by young leaders, leaders who didn’t have kids in the program and therefore had no other agenda than to do right by all the youth in our units. He began to put the decision-making roles on us, các trường trẻ/the young leaders, and soon afterward gave us the title of unit leaders for our respective troops - Tr. Dinh Tran as Advisor for our Venturing Crew, Patrick Nguyen as Scoutmaster for our Boy Scout Troop, myself as Girl Scout Leader for our multi-unit Troop, and Trish Mai as our Cubmaster for our Boy Scout Pack. We were inexperienced and still relied heavily on the advice and support of our elder leaders, but to be empowered by the older generation and to have the respect of the parents of our Scouts made all the difference in whether or not we'd succeed. And with a family of more than 15 Leaders under the age of 40 and over 200 registered Scouts today, I very much think we’ve succeeded.
So if you hear a vicious rumor or read malicious articles claiming that my dad has used Scouting for anything but the benefit of our youth and our community, ask yourself does that really align with a Scouter who has stepped away from titles and limelight for decades so that the next generation could grow and lead? Does that really sound like a Scouter who has guided 66 young men to the rank of Eagle Scout and 38 young women to become Girl Scout Gold Award recipients? Could it really be the same Scouter who earned his Wood Badge beads in 1982, then went on to staff half a dozen Wood Badge courses before leading his own National Wood Badge course with a Vietnamese language emphasis in 2010? My dad doesn’t boast of his accolades because he’s always been a staunch believer in actions over words, deeds over recognition. But I am fiercely proud of this man who has been my best friend and mentor, my role model and biggest fan, the wind beneath my wings and beneath so many others' that I know I’m not the only one to call him “Tr. Daddy”. What’s your favorite memory with my dad?
#ThankYouTrHui #CamOnTrHui #TrDaddy
Source: Alina Lee Santiago Facebook, March 11, 2019. Titled by Scouts Abound.