Romantic exhibition of the Heritage Museum

Dang-Giao/Vietnamese

GARDEN GROVE, California (NV) – The Vietnamese Heritage Museum (VHM) has a reception and exhibition of “Love in the Fall” which is a priceless collection, including love letters from the late Warrant Officer Vo Ba Co to his wife, Mrs. Pham Thi. Tuyet Phung, at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 4, at 13962 Seaboard Circle, Garden Grove, CA 92843.

“This collection includes hundreds of love letters sent from the hot battlefield to the home front to soothe the longing of the sister back home. And from a peaceful place, with anxious anticipation, the younger sister sent her to the battlefield to visit her brother who held a gun to defend his homeland, from 1963 to 1972, from when they were still lovers until they became husband and wife. ” Mr. Chau Thuy, CEO of VHM, said.

He continued: “That day, Ms. Tuyet Phung will personally present these letters so that VHM will have the honor of preserving the specific evidence of a typical love affair during the fierce war in Vietnam.”

Although she knew this was a family heirloom and was priceless for her and her descendants, Ms. Tuyet Phung thought this was also the common property of the refugee community, so she kindly donated it and asked VHM to preserve it, according to Mr. Chau Thuy.

Wartime love affairs are like fragile flowers blooming on a devastated motherland, even though they are crushed by bullets and bombs.

The letters exchanged between them, packed into so many lines, are filled with so many feelings of sympathy and anxious anticipation in an uncertain context.

Their letters are evidence of an eternal love affair, recording the passionate love of a couple that war, no matter how cruel, could not stop.

Since 1963, young man Vo Ba Co, then 18 years old, knew female student Pham Thi Tuyet Phung, 17 years old, in Tam Quan, Bong Son, Binh Dinh.

Their love was nurtured through initial dates and blossomed through letters full of romantic poems promising reunion when their homeland would no longer have smoke and fire.

During the nine years of longing and longing, there were hundreds of letters he wrote to her from the time they hesitantly met each other as schoolchildren until he left to join the army following the call of the mountains and rivers, and they continued. continue to come together through letters. After the couple established a family, the battlefield always separated them, each person went their separate ways in the lands filled with smoke and fire.

The last letter he sent, scheduled a date to return home to hold his second daughter who had just been born.

Then, like Huu Loan’s poem, his letter arrived slowly, and “bad news went quickly…”

Since then, the love story through letters between the late Warrant Officer Vo Ba Co and Mrs. Pham Thi Tuyet Phung still lives on in the history of the heroic war and in the gentle breeze caressing the golden rice fields in the afternoon of the countryside.

The exhibition includes a reading of selected letter pages and meaningful entertainment.

All exhibitions are completely free.

In order to preserve the human evidence that flourished in the midst of the devastating war for the future, Mr. Chau Thuy said: “We earnestly appeal to you, if there are any letters, diaries, or pictures related to the war.” related to the battlefield, to the evacuations…, please donate to VHM, so that we have the opportunity to store and preserve part of our nation’s heritage. These specific documents are very precious, so that future generations can understand the sacrifices and loss of family affection, as well as encapsulate the content that partly represents the responsibility of each citizen towards the country and its people. nation.”

For further information, contact (714) 846-8438 or [email protected]. [đ.d.]

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Author contact: ngo,[email protected]