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- <text id=91TT0936>
- <title>
- Apr. 29, 1991: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Apr. 29, 1991 Nuclear Power
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
- </hdr><body>
- <p> TIME is a magazine of lines--not only headlines but also
- bylines, story lines and hairlines (those on us, which
- sometimes recede, and those in the magazine, which separate the
- columns). The magazine's great lineman is Trang Ba Chuong, who
- every week helps supervise the delicate work of assembling on
- the page all its elements. The job takes great patience and an
- attention to detail, but some of us haven't realized how he has
- applied these same virtues over the past 10 years to the
- enormous job of getting his family out of Saigon. Two weeks ago,
- eight of his relatives, including his 78-year-old father and
- 67-year-old mother, landed in New York City to begin a new life
- in the U.S. They joined another eight relatives who had arrived
- six months before--a total of 16.
- </p>
- <p> Trang's journey to this country began in chaos. He was
- hired as a part-time telex operator in the Saigon bureau in
- 1971, and volunteered to stay behind with correspondent Bill
- Stewart after most of his colleagues were evacuated. Saigon fell
- apart quickly, and so did Stewart's plans for getting himself
- and Trang out of town. Despite a curfew and checkpoints manned
- by nervous soldiers, he and Trang trekked across the city in a
- yellow mini Moke to retrieve Trang's wife and two-year-old
- daughter. "It was the dumbest thing any of us had ever done in
- Vietnam," Stewart says. Stewart returned from this successful
- mission only to learn that he could not bring any Vietnamese out
- with him.
- </p>
- <p> Trang made his own way to the U.S. and landed a job as a
- mailroom clerk at Time Inc. Today, at 43, he is a supervisor of
- production at TIME.
- </p>
- <p> Trang became an American citizen in 1981, and began the
- bureaucratic process of bringing his relatives here from Saigon.
- It took forms on the American side, and it took more forms on
- the Vietnamese side. But the family finally arrived. "The fact
- that my parents wanted to leave their country after spending
- their whole lives there because they wanted to be with me really
- moved me," says Trang. And another thing: Trang's eight-year-old
- son, who was born here and speaks only English, has announced
- that he wants to learn Vietnamese. "So he can talk to his
- grandparents," says Trang.
- </p>
- <p>-- Robert L. Miller
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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