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    Tram Diaries: Soldiers Preserve Writings of Vietnam War

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    Michael Castellon
    As a surgeon, Dang Thuy Tram knew that some wounds heal slowly, and that some never heal at all. Thirty-five years after her death, The Texas Tech Vietnam Center is helping heal her family’s wounds, and mend the broken hearts of two nations saddened by war.

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    Tram Diaries: Soldiers Preserve Writings of Vietnam War

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    Michael Castellon
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    As a surgeon, Dang Thuy Tram knew that some wounds heal slowly, and that some never heal at all. Thirty-five years after her death, The Texas Tech Vietnam Center is helping heal her family’s wounds, and mend the broken hearts of two nations saddened by war.

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    As a surgeon, Dang Thuy Tram knew that some wounds heal slowly, and that some never heal at all. Thirty-five years after her death, The Texas Tech Vietnam Center is helping heal her family’s wounds, and mend the broken hearts of two nations saddened by war.

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    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    106 views3 pages

    Tram Diaries: Soldiers Preserve Writings of Vietnam War

    Uploaded by

    Michael Castellon
    As a surgeon, Dang Thuy Tram knew that some wounds heal slowly, and that some never heal at all. Thirty-five years after her death, The Texas Tech Vietnam Center is helping heal her family’s wounds, and mend the broken hearts of two nations saddened by war.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    October 2005, Texas Tech Today Newsletter

    Tram Diaries: Soldiers Preserve Writings of Vietnam War


    As a surgeon, Dang Thuy Tram knew that some wounds heal slowly, and that some never heal at
    all. Thirty-five years after her death, The Texas Tech Vietnam Center is helping heal her family’s
    wounds, and mend the broken hearts of two nations saddened by war.

    Doan Ngoc Tram left her


    home in Hanoi with her
    three surviving daughters
    the first week of October
    and boarded a 31-hour
    flight to Lubbock. Her
    pilgrimage to West Texas
    was almost 35-years in the
    making.

    Her eldest daughter, Dang


    Thuy Tram, a North
    Vietnamese surgeon, was
    killed during a battle in
    northern South Vietnam in
    1970. She was 27 years
    old.

    On Oct. 6, 81-year-old Doan Ngoc Tram entered a room in the Vietnam


    Archive at Texas Tech and fell to her knees and sobbed at the sight of her
    daughter’s diaries, which sat elegantly at a table beside a picture of a
    smiling Dang Thuy Tram. She clutched her daughter’s diaries to her chest
    and wept as her daughters held her. It was the closest she had come to
    hugging her daughter in almost 40 years.

    “I thought it was her, I wanted to hold her but I couldn’t,” she said through
    an interpreter.

    Dang Thuy Tram’s diaries have captured the hearts of an international


    audience and became a bestselling book. Almost 350,000 copies have
    been sold since being published.

    "It is a very holy story," Dang Thuy Tram's sister, Dang Hien Tram, said
    while holding back tears. "This is my sister's spirit, my sister's soul."
    The story of how Tram’s diaries found their way to the Vietnam Center at
    Texas Tech began on a battlefield in 1970.

    The diaries were first discovered by Fred Whitehurst, an American G.I,


    whose job it was to comb battlefields in search of documents that might be
    of value to military intelligence.

    His Vietnamese translator advised Whitehurst that Tram’s memoirs were


    very special, and that they should not be destroyed alongside piles of other
    documents that had been deemed of no value to military intelligence.

    Whitehurst spent the next 35 years trying to locate members of Tram’s


    family. Last March, Whitehurst turned Tram’s writing’s over to the Vietnam
    Center at Texas Tech. Officials there located Tram’s family within a few
    months, and extended to them an invitation to see the diaries in person.

    Tram’s diaries offer a rare and dramatic look into the life of a young woman
    serving her country.

    In an entry dated 1968, she writes:

    “My dear parents, the daughter that you have loved since she was small
    has not stopped living, but has a very practical life with many aspects:
    love, hatred, faith, and sadness. It's a life filled with blood, tears, sweat,
    and also victory despite the thousands and thousands of hardships. Do
    you believe that I can get through this?"

    “Please come to me and hold my hand when I am so lonely, love me and


    give me strength to travel all the hard sections of the road ahead," she
    writes in her last entry, dated days before her death.

    Tram’s mother says it was a habit of every member of her family to keep
    personal diaries.

    “When we opened the box the diaries were in we recognized Dr. Tram’s
    handwriting right away,” she said. “We knew the diaries existed, but we
    didn’t know where. We couldn’t have imagined we would have gotten them
    back after all this time. We thought they were gone forever.”

    Inviting the family to Texas Tech to hold and view the diaries is a symbol of
    goodwill between the United States and Vietnam, said James Reckner,
    director of the Vietnam Center. It also serves to heal some of the wounds
    suffered by those after the war.
    “We hope that this occasion would bring us closer together,” he said.

    - Michael Castellon

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