Our dad valued education second only to his family. His own father died when he was 8 and his mother, a school teacher, died when he was just 14. Though he yearned to complete higher education, without parents, he was forced to toil at odd jobs in order to take care of himself and his siblings. Our dad was a tinkerer and possessed an intuitive knowledge of all things mechanical. Had circumstances been different, he would have excelled as an engineer. Despite years of working long hours and often at more than one job, he carved out time to take many courses including English, jewelry making, carpentry, computer aided design (CAD) and CNC machinist training. He became accustomed to being the oldest student in these classes. He was extremely proud of all of his children's and grandchildren's many accomplishments and would always say " I just want to live long enough to see at least one of my grandchildren graduate from high school". Unfortunately, he passed on with this wish unfulfilled.

We hope to be able to fulfill a different wish of his. Our parents have never been wealthy, but what money they were able to scrimp and save, they invested in our education. Moreover, they managed to sponsor several students from Vietnam who excelled in school but did not have the means to pursue higher education. With financial assistance from our parents, these students were able to obtain their college degrees to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Just before our dad fell ill, he and our mom were making plans to help more students. However, we regret that even with all of their savings, the funds are insufficient to establish a foundation in our dad's name. We are thus opting to fund as well as gather donations that would go into a money market account which we hope will grow and be perpetuated in order to continue to support deserving students from Vietnam for as long as we are able. In this way, at least one of our dad's wishes will be fulfilled and his legacy will live on.

With gratitude, Phil, Ha, Kaylie, Joe, Luan, Lam, Emi, Carmela, Austin and Asher.