Tuan Anh Pham risked everything to escape communism at age 30, trading most of his assets for a spot aboard a fishing boat leaving Vietnam with his young family.
That daring decision would become the first chapter in an American success story. Among the first wave of Vietnamese immigrants in Minnesota, Pham launched a business — Tuan Auto Repair — that has become a staple of St. Paul's Midway area for more than three decades.
Pham, a pillar of the local Vietnamese community, died of cancer at United Hospital in St. Paul on July 22. He was 72.
"He just had this mastery of … building connections and maintaining connections with people," said his daughter Sophia of St. Paul.
Raised in a rural part of South Vietnam, Pham served alongside U.S. troops during the Vietnam War as a mechanic in the special forces of the People's Army of Vietnam. The Communist government killed several of his siblings, fueling Pham's lifelong passion as a vocal anti-communist, his daughter said.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Pham operated a transportation service. But oppression by the Communists became too much to bear. Pham and his wife, Net, bartered their family's valuables to secure passage to a refugee camp in Malaysia for themselves and their two young daughters.
"It was a classic case of starting literally from nothing," Sophia Pham said.
A Vietnamese refugee in Minnesota sponsored the Phams' move to the United States. They arrived in late 1979, and got settled thanks to the help of a local family affiliated with a Catholic church in St. Paul. Tuan Pham never forgot the generosity of Frank and Lois Wethern, and the families remained close until the Wetherns died.