Scope and Contents

Book and DVD commemorate the Family of Vietnam Political Prisoners Association's (FVPPA) convention in Dallas on 3-5 October 2008.

Biographical / Historical

Khúc Minh Thơ was born in 1939 in Sadec, Vietnam. Khuc witnessed numerous traumatic events and lost many loved ones to the violence of the Vietnam War, including her father, step-mother, and first husband. A young widow with three young children, she helped other widows and the family members of fallen South Vietnamese soldiers, assisting them in obtaining funding for their funerals, which neither the families nor the government could afford. In 1972 she got a job at the Republic of Viet Nam's embassy in the Philippines and married her second husband, Colonel Nguyen Van Be. In 1975, with her second husband incarcerated in the Vietnamese reeducation camps and separated from her children, Khuc immigrated to the United States.

In 1977, in order to win the release of her husband and all Vietnamese political prisoners, Khuc, along with a group of women (wives, daughters, sisters, and friends of Vietnamese political prisoners) cofounded the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association (FVPPA) in Arlington, Virginia. Khuc also served as founder and president of the FVPPA and successfully assisted approximately 12,000 Vietnamese political prisoners with all their family members emigrate from Vietnam through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee's Orderly Departure Program (ODP) which was established in 1979. The FVPPA organization was sunset in 2012.

Khúc Minh Thơ is the recipient of the 2005 Humanitarian Award given by the National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies.