The Vietnam Oral History Project: Opening of Tiếng Nói Lưu Vong: Moving Voices From Vietnam

The day began early with the humming of foot traffic about the Crane House and the rhythmic taps of keyboards as project members were busy finalizing details for the night's opening. After more than half a year, nine interviews, countless pizza boxes, and a few very late nights scribbling sessions, the 10 member team finally reached a milestone in the project. On August 6th, 1244 South Third Street was abuzz with an enthused audience of Americans and Vietnamese for Tieng Noi Luu Vong: Moving Voices From Vietnam.

Dede Tran and Quang Le gave the introductory address to the demographically diverse crowd in both English and Vietnamese.

While Van Tran and Bryan Warren followed with their words of acknowledgements to the project's supporters and to give a special gift to Helen Lang. But the night's most moving voice was that of Tam Duong in her short bi-lingual speech about her reasoning for participating in the project. After the rapturous attention and applause for Tam's speech, the audience began their ascend to the second part of the exhibit which was of the presentations led by Morehead State University professor, John Ernst, of the short sound-slides of the interviewees thus far. Unfortunately, technical problems with audio arose immediately but were eventually bandaged.

Thanks to Thao Tran's resourcefulness and enthusiasm, the audience's attention was diverted away from the technical issue and towards her charm and experience with the project. Following the presentation were some interesting questions and participation from the audience, including a Vietnamese refugee's own story of going back to Vietnam. While the presentation was taking place upstair, members of the project were busy in the photo portion of the exhibit accommodating and engaging the guests. Much of the people who attended the night's opening milled about the floor of the exhibit, as did the project members, until 10pm when the team celebrated their accomplishment with a late night dinner at Vietnam Kitchen thanks to Van Tran and her husband.

Though with the departure of two of the project members who have now gone on to amazing new ventures of their own--Dede Tran, the project lead, is currently pursuing her law degree at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, while Thao Tran will be exploring much of Southeast Asia for the next three months--the team hopes to regather and continue on ahead after a much needed hiatus.

Photos by photographer Andrew Thai: