Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 4, 1995 TAG: 9507050062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Few Americans this July 4th have Lapthe Flora's vantage point on the freedom and opportunity this country has to offer.
Fifteen years ago, Flora - then known as Lapthe Chau - escaped the stifling totalitarianism of his native Vietnam.
He fled Saigon to avoid the communists after the end of the Vietnam War. He went to the jungle first, then became a boat person, then lived nearly a year in a harsh Indonesian refugee camp. He finally arrived on U.S. soil not speaking a word of English. He earned a degree from Virginia Military Institute and now holds a good job at Roanoke's ITT Electro-Optical Products plant.
And this year, Flora, a captain in the Army National Guard, was recognized by the U.S. Army as one of its top young officers with an award named after Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the World War II legend.
"I got my American dream 10 times over," Flora, who lives in Roanoke, said in a recent interview in which he talked about life since arriving in this country in 1980 at the age of 18.
Flora's Vietnamese father worked for the South Vietnamese government in the merchant marine. He was killed when Lapthe was 2, leaving his wife with six children and another on the way. In 1973, when he was 11, Lapthe took a job in a factory to help feed himself.
With the fall of Saigon to the communist North in 1975, he fled to the jungle with some of his siblings, leaving his mother behind. Food staples during his four years in the jungle included snakes, rats and porcupines.
"Life was pretty unbearable," he recalled. "In this country, you can dream; in Vietnam you have nightmares. You worry about where your next meal is coming from every single day."
When he decided to get out in 1979, the South China Sea provided the only sensible, if not desirable, alternative. Eight of 10 Vietnamese who were trying to leave through Cambodia were dying in the "killing fields" there. Lapthe borrowed money with which to bribe communist officials from his sister and brother-in-law and joined them and another brother on a boat headed for freedom.
Lapthe and 528 others spent five days packed in the small wooden vessel in 100-degree weather without food or drink. Young people such as Lapthe sat on the boat's lowest deck where there was no room to stretch out. Near the end of the trip, he said, everybody was dehydrated and hallucinating: Their lips cracked; they couldn't focus their eyes.
Three or four days out they came upon an oil rig, where they were given water and directions. As they approached an Indonesian island, helicopters and gunships tried to keep them away, but the refugees found out later that these people, too, were just looking for a bribe. After sleeping on a beach for days, surviving on coconuts and fish, the refugees were taken to a camp where Lapthe spent the next 11 months and 26 days.
Lapthe had no relatives in the United States, so he had to wait for a sponsor. Life in the camp was dispiriting, he said; with its guards, it was like a concentration camp. Refugees spent eight hours a day trying to come up with a couple of gallons of water so they could cook and wash.
Finally, a U.S. official told Lapthe and his relatives that a church in California had agreed to sponsor them. When the Vietnamese arrived, though, nobody came to the airport to pick them up. The church said the refugees had taken too long to get to the states, and the church had found someone else to sponsor.
That's when the Greene Memorial and Raleigh Court United Methodist churches in Roanoke entered the picture.
Lapthe's family flew from Los Angeles to Roanoke, where they were housed in an apartment near Roanoke Memorial Hospital. "At the time, there were not a whole lot of orientals in Roanoke. We were very scared," he said.
John Lewis and Agnes Flora were members of the Raleigh Court church. Lapthe got to know the couple when they hired first his brother and then him to cut their grass. Lapthe thought this was crazy: In Vietnam, you grew food; in Roanoke, people grew grass and would pay you to cut it.
When Lapthe's brother-in-law decided to move back to California where more Asians lived, the Floras told Lapthe that if he didn't like it there, they always had a home for him in Roanoke.
Lapthe moved to Long Beach where he worked and attended high school, but he wasn't happy. Robbers cleaned out his apartment twice in less than a year. He called Agnes Flora, and she told him to come home.
The Floras adopted Lapthe and gave him "tons of love and support," Lapthe said. When Agnes Flora died in 1991 at age 75, Lapthe Flora said, he felt insecure for the first time since coming to this country.
When people in Vietnam help you, they expect something in return, and he thought it was the same here, Flora said. When he told the Floras he would pay them back for their kindness, they laughed and told him all they wanted was for him to be successful and a productive member of society, he recalled.
He finished high school at Cave Spring High School in Roanoke County and enrolled at VMI, from where his adoptive father had graduated in 1937. John Flora, a retired realtor, had been a battalion staff officer with the 116th Infantry Regiment when it landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day.
VMI, with its discipline, appealed to Lapthe Flora. It reminded him of the strict elementary schools he knew in Vietnam and seemed like a good learning environment. He majored in pre-med and planned to become a doctor, but he didn't do well on his medical school entrance exam. A newspaper advertisement for someone with laboratory experience drew him to ITT.
"I liked it better than the medical field," he said. "I find I'm not very good with blood. You can beat me with a two-by-four but don't chase me with a needle."
Today, Lapthe Flora is a manufacturing engineer with ITT and, in his spare time, Capt. Flora serves his country as commander of Bedford's Co. A of the National Guard's 116th regiment.
Flora sees his military service as payback to a country that gave him a life he wouldn't have had otherwise. "It's not because I like war," he said. "I hate war just like anybody else. Hopefully, we can prevent war. If we have a strong military, nobody will come knocking on our door."
He was among 24 officers receiving the MacArthur awards at the Pentagon in May; 12 officers were from the active Army, six from the National Guard, and six from the Army Reserve. Gen. Gordon Sullivan, the Army chief of staff, presented the 23-pound bronze bust of MacArthur to Flora.
The traits that make Flora a good military leader carry over to his job, said Neil Gallagher, president of ITT Electro-Optical. "Determination, enthusiasm, discipline - these are the traits that Lapthe exhibits daily and these are the traits that have earned him the respect of co-workers and supervisors alike," Gallagher said.
Although it's not perfect, the United States is the best country in the world in terms of freedom, wealth and opportunity, Flora said. "I know the other side of the fence, what it's like without freedom, without liberty," he said.
In his 15 years in the United States, Flora said he has never run into a situation that he would characterize as discrimination.
"Sometimes, people fail and try to blame other people for their problems," he said. "In this country, the opportunity is there. If you're willing to work, you can move as high as you want."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***