Words MEGAN MICHELSON U.S. Air Force cargo plane from Saigon was packed with row after row of refugees. It was April 1975 and the South Vietnamese capi-tal was about to fall to the North Vietnamese Army, largely ending the Vietnam War. On the plane, sisters Cúc Kim Hùynh, then 16, and Liên Kim Hùynh, then 18, their parents and four more siblings were fleeing for fear of persecu-tion, leaving behind most of their extended family and the only home they’d ever known. Cúc clutched a family photo album, her only personal possession. “We were overwhelmed with sadness and the thought of having no country,” Liên says. “This feeling was indescribable; it was like losing a family member.” Upon arriving in the United States, the Hùynhs spent three months in tents at a makeshift refugee camp at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego. The family moved to Inglewood, in southwestern Los Angeles, where they learned English and got whatever jobs they could—taxi driver, busboy, typist. Cúc and Liên finished school— Cúc went on to study engineering, while Liên learned computer programming. Growing up in Vietnam, a tropical country, Cúc and Liên would pore over picture books that showed a season they didn’t know: winter. They became fascinated with stories showing children sled-ding, skiing and ice-skating. “I thought, wouldn’t that be cool? To live in a place where it’s not hot and have snow falling down?” Cúc says. “That’s how it all started, from something I dreamed about.” They wondered what it would feel like to touch snow, to see it falling from the sky. “For someone who has never seen snow, it is impossible to describe it,” Liên says. “Snow is beautiful and has always been a curiosity of mine. I always wanted to experience it.” Little did they know that years later, the two sisters would raise daughters of their own, two girls who would grow up to become skiers, sharing their passion for snow in a way their mothers could never have dreamed. THE 060 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 4: Page 60
