Before joining 130,000 others in a desperate flight to the United States almost a year ago, Tung Van Nguyen had a bright Military future as a captain in the Vietnamese navy.

Now he’s in New Ulm with his family of six, working at Kraft Foods Co., and thinking about what he’s going to be doing with the rest of his life.

“KRAFT IS A GOOD place to work,” he says. “The employees are all very friendly. But I think I will someday go to school to get a better occupation. Maybe I’ll stay here for all my life, and I must prepare for the future.”

In the eyes of some people, New Ulm has become a model for helping the Vietnamese and Cambodians.

“The New Ulm program,” says Maj. Robert O’Connell, with the U.S. Army and stationed in New Ulm, “has just been so good. They (refugees here) are doing quite well.”

MAJ. O’CONNELL is sponsoring five refugees in New Ulm. One will be starting at Mankato State University in June, two are at Mankato Vocational-Technical Institute and the other two will be starting vocational school later this year or early in 1977.

“Within a two-and-a-half-year framework,” says O’Connell, “I hope to see them all with a usable occupations as gainfully-employed individuals.”

MOST OF THE refugees in New Ulm have sought to quickly improve themselves.

Otto Werner, language instructor at the High school, has long conducted English classes for refugees, even at a time when other communities are still only talking about providing such classes.

The refugees also hunger for news about their native countries.

Says Mrs. Thomas Kuster, 317 Hollywood in New Ulm:

“They gobble up any in-formation at all on Vietnam.

They get papers and magazines in Vietnamese. But they realize they could never go back and live under Communism.”

PROFESSOR THOMAS Kuster, 317 Hollywood in New Ulm, who also has sponsored some refugees here, says it’s been fun to watch the refugees “gain confidence in themselves and in the future they can make for themselves.”

Refugees have shown great confidence and have developed great independence by obtaining their jobs, by learning how to drive and by feeling free to travel around the countryside-something they didn’t dare do in Vietnam.

Staying with Kuster is the Khuu Binh Hue family.

Hue’s brother lives in Canada and often asks the New Ulm Hue family to move there.”He wants us to come with him, but my wife says no, she likes New Ulm,”Hue says.

CHILDREN OF the refugees seem to be getting along best of all in New Ulm.

“The children,”‘ O’Connell says, “are adapting so fast the parents are having trouble keeping up with them.”

Tung Van Nguyen, who arrived here June 30, says his children are feeling at home. They enjoy going out and playing here. They’re not at all scared.”

GERHARD CHRIST of Restaurant Eibner, who has provided jobs for some of the refugees, says a lot of other communities and refugees “are looking over the fence (at New Ulm) which is healthy. I think they should better themselves if they can.”

“The people in New Ulm don’t have to go through the personal cruelty I’m sure they go through in bigger cities.”

New Ulm Daily Journal

April 25, 1976