NYC’s Southeast Asian Community Mourns Kathy Nguyen

By Tomio Geron

Over 60 people attended a memorial on Tuesday night at a Southeast Asian community center in the Bronx, N.Y. for Kathy T. Nguyen (case 22), 61, who died suddenly of inhalation narrow anthrax on Oct. 31. The event was organized by the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV) to provide an intimate way for the Vietnamese American and Cambodian American communities to remember Nguyen.

Though not many in the crowd -- spanning children, youth and elderly knew Nguyen personally, the painful impact of her death was evident on their faces, some of who shed tears, as they listened to the speakers in Vietnamese and Cambodian, as well as English. Mourners lined up to pin white ribbons around a flower-adorned photo of Nguyen and held candles for a moment of silence.

The Investigation Continues

After Nguyen died on Oct. 31, medical and criminal investigators painstakingly traced her life to find clues. Before passing away, she spent three days in the hospital sedated and on a ventilator, unable to provide any clues of where she might have encountered the deadly spores.

Environmental tests from Nguyen’s apartment and the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, the outpatient facility where she worked, came back negative, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.

On Monday, federal health officials said they were investigating the possibility that Nguyen had a second job in a restaurant. If she did, it would add to the number of places she might first have encountered the deadly spores, a key clue that has so far eluded medical and criminal detectives.

Dr. Bradley Perkins, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday that among the leads being pursued are “a number of places where she either visited and ate in restaurants, or may have actually been employed.”

All seven of the other anthrax cases counted by the city health department are linked to news outlets and are the easily curable skin type. The CDC, which uses a stricter standard for confirming cases, has confirmed four skin anthrax cases and Nguyen’s inhalation anthrax. Anthrax-tainted letters were found at NBC and The New York Post.

Perkins, the CDC doctor, said that if Nguyen were exposed four to six days before her illness, as were most of the other victims, she was outside “the range that would be expected related to any of the known letters in the New York City area ... So she remains very much enigmatic in terms of the circumstances of her exposure.”

Neighborhood concern

With the source of Nguyen’s contraction of the disease still unknown one week after her death, the fear in the Southeast Asian community also extended to concern for Nguyen’s neighbors in the South Bronx.

“We are also here to support Kathy’s neighbors in East Crotona,” said Tang. “We’re here to put an urgent plea to those in charge of urgent medical care in government to do everything they can to test her neighbors.” Neighbors have voiced anger in recent days over the lack of testing in their building, in contrast to the testing which had been done at Nguyen’s workplace.

She could have been a sister

Back at the CAAAV memorial, Nhan Thanh Ngo, a Vietnamese American activist and performer, sang a Vietnamese folk song which set a tone for the event.

“She was like a mother, a sister to us,” said Binh Ly, a Vietnamese community organizer with CAAAV’s Youth Leadership Project (YLP). “She was part of our community.”

Nguyen’s death, and the Sept. 11 tragedy, brought back deep and upsetting memories for this tightly-knit community, many of whom escaped war and lost family and friends in war before coming to the United States.

“We have arrived here as survivors of war. Our beloved Kathy Nguyen was one such survivor,” Ly said.

Ly added that especially for the Southeast Asian community, war is not a memory, it is a reality that comes back to haunt people.

“Everyone is scared now, but for Cambodian and Vietnamese patients it really re-stimulates war trauma. So their feelings of sadness and fear are heightened,” said Joyce Wong, a mental health worker at the Montefiore Family Health Center in the Bronx, who works with Southeast Asians.

Many speakers at the event called for an end to the current war and the deep damage it can cause to communities such as this one in the Bronx. “The best way we can honor the life of Kathy Nguyen is to celebrate life and to work for peace. The message we’re sending is for peace and an end to the loss of all innocent lives,” said Eric Tang, director of YLP, which works with Southeast Asians in the Bronx.

Ngo recalled the war in Vietnam and hoped that similar things would not occur today. “The life of the Vietnamese was difficult for many years. Normal Vietnamese became victims.”

Twice the victim

Despite the sorrowful mood, speakers focused on the positives of Nguyen’s life. Said Ly, “Those fortunate enough to have known this beautiful woman have agreed that she celebrated life by giving to others, by being there for those who needed her.”

Some were disturbed by the heavy national media portrayals of Nguyen, who did not have family in the U.S. “She’s portrayed as a loner or an orphan. But family means many things. She had many friends who cared for her,” said Tang.

Nguyen, well liked at her job at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, became good friends with her neighbors in the Crotona Park East section of the Bronx. She cooked Vietnamese food for her neighbors, who cooked Spanish dishes for her.

Many of the young people at the memorial felt a visceral connection to Nguyen, who lived close to them and shared many common experiences, said Tang. Tuyen Ly, 15, a YLP youth organizer, went to Nguyen’s building to invite her friends to the memorial and saw Nguyen’s apartment on 1031 Freeman Street. “I went to her apartment, and ever since I’ve felt a real connection to her,” Ly said.

A multi-ethnic burial

Nguyen was also eulogized Monday in English, Chinese and Vietnamese -- and her pastor threw in a word of Spanish.

“In the midst of her Vietnamese culture she loved the Spanish culture,” said the Rev. Carlos Rodriguez, who leads a heavily Hispanic congregation in the South Bronx. “So, I will say, ‘Adios.’”

More than 300 neighbors, co-workers and fellow union members plus hospital executives and the governor’s wife -- went to the funeral at St. John Chrysostom Roman Catholic Church in the South Bronx, a few blocks from Nguyen’s home.

A choir sang hymns in Vietnamese, and the casket was wrapped, as it left the church, in the old red-and-yellow flag of South Vietnam, the nation Nguyen left in 1975 before it collapsed under a Communist onslaught.

During nine short eulogies, many spoke of Nguyen as a symbol -- Libby Pataki, wife of Gov. George Pataki, called her “brave and heroic” -- but the people who knew her before she fell ill fondly recalled her quiet life.

“Everyone that she touched loved her,” said friend Gina Ramjassingh. “She was an aunt to my children, and she was the best friend I ever had.”

The CAAAV event on Tuesday, held at 2473 Valentine Avenue, in the center of the Southeast Asian community, had a different atmosphere than the large mass held for Nguyen on Monday. Said Binh Ly, who also spoke at the Monday mass, “We wanted something more personal for our community.”