From Vietnam to Worthington

• Tsuy Nguyen and Duc Tran

Tsuy Nguyen and her husband, Duc Tran, hold their five-month-old son, Kevin Tran, in their home in Worthington.

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WORTHINGTON — Abandoned by his Vietnamese mother as a baby and never knowing who his American soldier father was, Duc Tran was treated like an outcast among his peers in Vietnam. They knew he was different, and they treated him horribly because of it.

Tran lived with an older woman he fondly refers to as Grandma for about a decade before hitting the streets of Saigon. Homeless and penniless, he spent the next four years scrounging for food and living in fear.

“My country’s poor. I don’t have family, no food,” said Tran. “They could put me in jail anytime because I didn’t have a plan to live — I lived on the street.”

At age 14, the Vietnam government handed him an application and asked if he wanted a free pass to America.

The choice for Tran was simple.

He was flown to Washington, D.C., where he was placed with foster families of Vietnamese heritage and attended school. With no knowledge of the English language, however, school proved to be a major challenge.

Tran dropped out of high school and worked his way to Iowa, where he found work at Iowa Beef Processors (IBP), in Sioux City. In 1994, he moved north to Worthington, for a job at then-Monfort Pork. He would eventually return to Sioux City, working to save enough money to make twice-a-year trips back to Vietnam. Those trips were to visit the girl he’d met on his first visit back to the country after leaving it behind.

Tran and Tsuy Nguyen eventually married in Vietnam in 2001, and then returned to Iowa before moving to Worthington in 2006, when Tran took a job on the night shift at JBS.

“Everything is good in the United States — I’ve got money, I’ve got a house, I’ve got everything better (here) than in my country,” said Tran.

He also has a son. The couple gave birth to little Kevin Tran five months ago.

Though Tran is living in the United States with a permanent resident card, he is proud that his son is an American citizen.

They would like to one day return to Vietnam for a visit to Nguyen’s family, but with Tran the sole wage earner in the family, that trip will be on hold for a while.

“I’ve got to take care of my wife, my kid,” Tran said with a smile.

As for life in the United States, Tran wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

“I like it — the United States got freedom, you know. You got a job to do, you got a car, you got a house. In Vietnam, a job was hard to get. If you don’t have a job, you’re poor — no food, no nothing,” he said.

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