Mai-Lan Brown discovers her home in Kansas

Editor’s Note: The Fall of Saigon in spring 1975 ended the Vietnam War, and 50 years later, the Diocese of Wichita has become home to numerous Vietnamese Catholics who fled communist control. Many of them have become integral parts of the diocese’s collective spiritual life. This article is the third in a series about some of their varied experiences.

Some of the story is wrenching, such as the time Mai-Lan Brown arrived at the hospital, took one look at her husband, Julian, and instantly knew that their infant son was gone.

Some memories are more comical, such as the time Brown’s older brother, Khue, showed his friend, Julian, the pair of ducks standing at the bottom of the storm shelter stairs and explained that Mom had caught them in the park and planned to butcher and serve them for dinner.

A lot of the tale looks back at childhood memories through greater maturity and better cultural understanding, such as the time Brown entered a bowling alley and felt a sense of déjà vu, realizing that her family had once slept in the lanes of a bowling alley like this one.

So much of the story – including the narrow escape from Vietnam shortly before the communist takeover, a staggeringly quick job offer after many years out of the workforce, and particularly the kindnesses shown to Brown and her family throughout their American journey – bears the marks of providence.

“God provides,” she said. “God may allow you to face much difficulty, but never more than you can handle. And if you say, ‘Yes, Lord,’ there’s so much grace.”

In the old country

Brown’s father, Dang Van Nguyen, her mother Chieu Thi, had already had four children when the devoutly Catholic family fled communist-controlled North Vietnam for South Vietnam. There, Chieu’s shrewd business sense, tireless work ethic, and commanding spirit piloted the family’s flourishing meat distribution enterprise. The whole family was involved, although the responsibilities for Brown and her brother Sam, the two youngest of nine children, were comparably few.  

“He’s only a year older, so you might call us Irish twins,” Brown said. “I call us two peas in a pod.”

As those two spent many carefree hours playing in the streets, Chieu spent much of her time selecting livestock at nearby farms so Brown’s father and brothers could herd them to Brown’s aunt’s place for butchering. 

“Mom never went to school, but she was brilliant. She had to know her math or they’d rip her off, and she was out there without a calculator, wheeling and dealing with everybody,” Brown said. “Years later in America, we would take a cartful of groceries to the register, and she knew the total in her head down to the dollar.”

Brown’s father died when she was eight, and his passing helped reinforce the Catholic faith that animated their family’s culture. “We were immersed in our faith,” she said. “Mom lived by the line, ‘It doesn’t matter what you have. If you have God, you’ve got everything.’”

One of the main memories Brown retains from her father’s passing deals with a large statue of the Blessed Mother. “To observe someone’s passing, people would carry a big statue of Mary on pillars from one family to another and pray the rosary to honor the dead,” she said. “We believe that the day you die is your birthday in Heaven.”

Brown’s family was relatively affluent, with an automobile, flushing toilet, and even a television. Living as they did in the midst of a hospitable culture meant the TV was an attraction for many.

“The whole neighborhood came over to watch ‘Bonanza’” she said.

But it was more than entertainment that her family provided. “Mom took care of families and neighbors that were down on their luck,” Brown said. “She would temporarily house those needing a roof over their heads or butcher meat, package it up neatly, and deliver it.” 

She goes on to indicate “When you look after your neighbors, God looks after you. We owe our freedom in coming to America to Benny Hill.” 

The relevant Benny Hill is not the British actor and comedian, but an American and close friend of Brown’s brother, who met him because they both worked at the U.S. Embassy. “Benny told us, ‘We are going to lose the war; the country is going to fold,’” Brown said. “Three of my brothers were in the South Vietnamese army, and we knew they would be persecuted, so Benny offered to help by handling the paperwork so that our family could come to America.

Getting out

Chieu knew if Hill was wrong and the country held, they could return, but still insisted she would go nowhere without all her children, even the grown ones. That meant some of Brown’s siblings’ romantic relationships had to be ended or formalized. Spouses could come, but not boyfriends. 

“My sisters secretly went to the church and got married,” Brown said. “Mom was fine with that.” 

Brown did not learn of the impending departure until the plan was underway. “One morning, my mother told me not to go anywhere after school,” she said. “That afternoon I was told to bring one change of clothes because we were going to America. I was excited because I thought I would get to see ‘Bonanza.’”

Getting out was no sure thing, though. Entering the U.S. Embassy was no problem for the brother who worked as a guard there, but the family knew the other enlisted brothers had to avoid certain people, lest they be sent back to their units. “We tried to drive into the embassy with them in the trunk, but several times my brother turned around before the checkpoint because of a gut feeling,” she said. “On April 27, we all got through the U.S. Embassy gate. It took three harrowing trips in a little Honda to get all of us. Mom trembled with fear the whole time.”

Since bank withdrawals might be suspicious, her family left with only the single change of clothes, some pocket money, and a few small keepsakes. They left everything behind, she notes, including their home and could not even say goodbye to family and friends.

“My sister, Mimi, – bless her – grabbed a few photos, otherwise we wouldn’t even have pictures of Dad,” she said. “Then we got on a C-130 cargo airplane and flew out.”

The first leg of the journey took them to the Philippines. During their three days there, they were crushed to learn that the Vietcong had taken over. “Great sadness came over us because we thought it was going to be a temporary trip,” Brown said. “When we left, we didn’t realize we would never see our cousins, extended family, friends, or home again. My in-laws realized they would probably never see their families again. It felt like we got off the ship right before it sank. Even so, we were grateful for having each other and for America embracing us as legal immigrants. The USA is the greatest country in the world.”

It was on a U.S. airbase in the Philippines where the family stayed in a peculiar building with long rows of open space. “I thought they were giant beds. We used the long bumper railings as pillows,” Brown said. “Years later, I realized it was a bowling alley, but I actually loved it, because it was cool and comfortable.”

Next came a few sweltering weeks in Guam, where they slept in large tents, and her brother-in-law, John, helped make sure the family got enough to eat by working in the mess hall. It was also there that Brown recalls learning her first English phrase.

“‘One line!’” she said, referring to the instruction they heard frequently. “There are no lines in Vietnam. You just try to move fast and elbow your way through. We learned to get in a line for our food, toiletries, and everything else.”

Adapting to America

Since Hill’s siblings in Michigan needed to prepare for their long-term guests, Brown says, the family first landed in Florida and stayed roughly two months with sponsors who introduced them to American life, first with fried chicken and salad.

“It was the most delicious thing in the world,” she said. 

When Hill’s siblings were ready, he brought Brown’s family to his hometown of Negaunee in northern Michigan. Even though it was late spring and early summer during those first few weeks, the family was unaccustomed to the cold. “There is a picture of me in a skirt and Sam in short sleeves, and we were freezing,” she said. “Sometimes it snowed in June.”

That first snow experience was quite a wonder, Brown acknowledges, “We loved it, and the whole family went outside and tried to catch the snow on our tongues,” she said. “But that eventually wore off because there are times in Michigan where it never seems to stop snowing, and you shovel several feet of snow every day. Sometimes, Sam and I had to walk backwards to school in blizzard conditions.”

At first, the family was split into three segments, but Brown was happy to be paired with Sam. It was also during that interval that Sam became Sam, since everyone was given unofficial American names to help the hosts.

“They were so nice, but can you imagine learning 13 Vietnamese names at once?” Brown said. “I was named Teresa, but it never stuck. Sam’s Vietnamese name is Son, so that’s pretty close.”

Eventually, Hill even purchased a house in which the whole family could live together. 

Brown and Sam started school in the autumn. Their siblings found jobs in which language was not too tall a barrier. “It was a lot of mundane labor,” she said. “One was a grocery sacker, one was a janitor at the mall, and my sisters cleaned houses.” 

Language was a bigger deal at school, such that Brown and Sam were placed in the same grades – fourth and fifth – they had just completed in Vietnam. Brown barely spoke a word during that entire school year. A local Catholic parish arranged for English tutoring three times a week. That tutor spoke no Vietnamese, but she began by teaching them the alphabet song and built from there.

As Brown recalls, the family gradually adapted to the language and culture; kids went to school and adults found higher paying manufacturing and welding jobs. “Mom stayed home and took care of us and my siblings went to work to take care of her,” Brown said. “She never drove and she walked everywhere, made her own clothes, grew her own vegetables, and butchered her own meat just like she used to in our old country. Thank God, because I grew up retaining my Vietnamese language and roots, yet I excelled in my English and was fully immersed in the American life.”

Chieu also was overjoyed to learn that decent rice could be found in America. As for what to serve with it? “That first year, our staple was chicken necks,” Brown said. “It was the cheapest meat at the grocery store. We had chicken necks every which way. Mom lived very frugally and saved wherever she could.”

Coming to Kansas

Although Hill and his family had provided so much help, they understood and supported their guests’ desire for a warmer climate and larger Vietnamese population. After about a year, they received word that a pair of siblings in Newton, Kansas, wanted to sponsor Brown’s family through the Diocese of Wichita. Although some of Brown’s older siblings stayed in Michigan because of work or logistical considerations, the rest of the family was eager for a warmer climate. She was 11 when they arrived.

“Terrance and Flo Hanna were a Catholic brother and sister who were probably in their 50s or 60s, and their parents’ furnished home in Newton was vacant,” Brown said. “They allowed us to live there in what was basically a rent-to-own arrangement. My mom eventually owned it. The whole place was less than 1,000 square feet for seven of us. And compared to our relatively affluent home in Vietnam, it was still grander.”

Did the Hannas’ assistance originate in any sort of personal connection to or interest in Vietnamese refugees?

“I don’t think so,” Brown said. “They were just doing the stewardship thing by helping people in need. In retrospect, I am so thankful for their generosity.”

Something else nice about the new place? It was close to Newton’s St. Mary Parish. “The walk to church was not even three blocks,” she said. “Newton is small enough to walk everywhere, which is one reason my mom never really learned to drive. She walked to the grocery store, other shops, and church.”

Of course, Brown’s family soon learned that Kansas weather was subject to extremes on both ends of the temperature bell curve. “My mom was so tight with money, she wouldn’t let us turn the heat up above 62, so, being in an old poorly insulated home, we often went to sleep in jackets and stocking caps,” she said. “Sometimes it got almost unbearably hot. She would go in the kitchen, shut the door and cook in the heat like it was no big deal.”

During the summer, Brown continues, most in the household practically lived on the large, L-shaped front porch when they weren’t helping in Chieu’s garden that teemed with tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and more. “She didn’t have a sprinkler or any other kind of irrigation system and would water it all by hand,” Brown said. “The garden covered most of the yard, and we really lived off the land a lot.”

In fact, with her extensive experience in meat distribution, Brown’s mother was not remotely queasy about going to a farm and buying a pig to butcher and process. She also had no qualms about obtaining other types of meat in less conventional ways.

Once, her teenage brother, Khue, took his friend, Julian Brown, to the storm shelter door, opened it, and told him to check out what was at the bottom of the steps.

“There were two ducks down there,” Brown said. “Julian asked where we got them and learned my mom caught them in the park and was getting ready to butcher them. Julian warned that we could get in trouble with the police, but we had a nice meal.”

Khue wasn’t the only one making American friends. By the time they settled in Newton, Brown said, she and Sam had gotten sufficiently fluent in English as to skip a grade and begin classes with kids their own age. Before long, Brown became friends with Gina Kruse, whose parents’ spacious property included a swimming pool.

“She had the most beautiful bed I had seen in my life,” she said. “I realized we must be really poor, but I never felt that way because my mom’s love was enough.”

Brown’s family was full of hard workers, she notes, but she and Sam’s English proficiency began to open doors that had been unavailable to the others. Even without familial role models, the two of them excelled academically and decided to pursue a college track.

Meanwhile, she notes, on her 17th birthday, Khue wanted to decorate the house for a celebration, so he urged the same friend who had warned against duck abduction to get her out of the house for a bit. 

“He asked Julian to take me out for pizza,” Brown said. “Neither of us thought of it as a date, but it planted a seed so that, from then on, we started dating.”

Times of tragedy

By the time she was 24, Brown and Julian were married and she had graduated from Wichita State University with an engineering degree. By the time she was 28, they were new parents living in Kansas City, where she worked as an engineer and he as a welder.

“I stayed home with our son, Mario, for the first two months,” she said. “He was a perfect little baby, so smart and strong.”

Her family had endured recent heartbreak when Chieu, Brown’s brother, Bong, and sister-in-law, Gam, were sideswiped by a drunk driver. Bong bore the brunt of it and spent the last couple of months of his life in the hospital before passing away. 

Two weeks later, a phone call sent Brown rushing away from work to the hospital.

“I didn’t even know it was my son, but as I walked into the hospital room, I saw my husband sitting next to a hole in the wall where he had put his fist,” she said. “I just broke down because I knew.”

Investigators determined Mario died of sudden infant death syndrome, then known as “crib death.” Both parents accepted the tragedy and did not blame the caregiver who had been watching him for two weeks.

The wound cut deep and their lives are forever changed, but Brown says God has brought them through it. “Without faith, I see how people can go into despair and depression,” she said. “From day one, I focused on the gain: I knew there was a reason he was now in Heaven.”

Even meaningful suffering remains painful, but as she and Julian grieved, they also longed for another child. Mario passed in April 1994. Julian Michael – nicknamed Juju – was born in February 1995. Dominic was born April 1997. As she continued to take her grief to prayer, Brown gained insight.

“I appreciate the subsequent children more,” she said. “I still tear up about Mario, but most of the time, I’m happy.”

And her husband is constantly motivated to strive to be a better man and remain close to God so he can see Mario in Heaven. “He told our sons, ‘Your big brother is watching after you, and you want to be with him someday.”

A vocational perspective

Although Brown did not fault Mario’s caregiver, she also realized that she could not bring herself to put either of her sons in childcare. At first, that meant Julian worked the night shift so they could pass the childcare baton back and forth. Later, it meant placing Juju with a close friend. But as Dom came along, the family decided Brown would step back from paid work, and they would return to Wichita. 

“Our household income went from about $110,000 to $35,000,” she said. “We didn’t care. My girlfriends thought I was throwing my career away, but our family had the best time being together. We took a little money out of retirement as a loan to subsidize our income, but we don’t spend much. I think we were the last family in Wichita to get a cell phone. That was 2011.”

Other examples of their penny-pinching included not eating out, driving older vehicles, and a general minimalism. “The neighbor came over and said, ‘You guys moved in two years ago, where’s the furniture?’” Brown said. “There’s a line from my all-time favorite movie ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ that they’re so happy, they don’t know how miserable they are. That was us.”

After all, she acknowledges, even if engineering was a difficult field from which to step away, she knew it is not her foremost calling. “My vocation is to be the wife and mother for my family,” Brown said. “I answered that call and it was the best decision for us.”

After Dom began school, she had some trepidation about the extent to which she was professionally up to snuff to resume work. 

“Technology is changing constantly, and I didn’t keep up with my continuing education,” she said. “After seven years of not going to work, I made my resume public at 10 p.m. on a Saturday and went to bed. On Sunday we got home from 11 a.m. Mass at our parish of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton to find the answering machine light blinking. The message was ‘We saw your resume and would really like you to come in.’”

Brown was hired that Monday and now she laughs at the fittingness of the new situation – a small consulting firm three blocks from her home – even though she was so behind the curve that she didn’t even know how to turn on the laptop issued to her. Once again, Brown relates, the sense of divine providence felt undeniable. “I know that Jesus has my back, because who gets a job in less than a day of searching?” she said.

Nevertheless, that position, and subsequent ones, proved she remained highly capable. By 2020, Brown found herself before a panel with Northrop Grumman Corp., the aerospace manufacturer active in military and space contracts, interviewing for a job so secret she wasn’t even told its title. 

After 45 uncomfortable minutes of telling several unfamiliar men about her career and life, she decided to turn the tables. She looked the lead interviewer in the eye. “I said, ‘Before I leave, I’d like to know how I rank from one to 10,’” she said. “You should have seen the looks. Everyone else was squirming, because who does that? But when the guy nodded and smiled, I knew I got the offer.”

Although she accepted the job, it required a move to Melbourne, Florida. Her husband was on the verge of completing 30 years with his employer, which would boost his pension considerably, so he planned to join her in about a year. “I prayed all the time during that year. Being alone was extra difficult because of the pandemic, I was totally alone and God became my rock,” she said. “It was a fantastic job and the ocean was only five miles to the east, but I was so sad without my family. I tried to convince my children to come to Florida, telling them, ‘You guys are just starting your careers. Find jobs in Florida.’”

Despite their demurrals about leaving family and friends, Brown kept lobbying until her youngest son said something that helped her realize that they would not join her, but that she would rejoin them. “Dom told me, ‘Mom, I want my kids to grow up in the Diocese of Wichita and go through Bishop Carroll like I did,’ she said. “I was like, ‘Okay, God. I heard it loud and clear: Pack up, go home.’ And I did.

“Because I retired at 56, people often ask me what I do with my time,” she added. “I tell them I love my community and my faith. I love that I am in Wichita and that I am in ‘Catholic country.’

“I now have the best job in the world. I work for God, and he pays 10 times better than anyone else.”