Dick Hughes, to date, has made four postwar trips to Viet Nam, 2001, 2007, 2016 and 2024, to track down & reunite with some of the Pham Ngu Lao “bui doi”, and their families, who survived the war. In 2001 Dick was accompanied by Rev. Luong Tan Hoang, a former director of the Co Quan Bao Tro Tre Bo Vo Project, and Brigitte Bazillion, both living in Paris at the time. In 2007 he was joined by donors Francis & Erin Collins, Ginny Hughes, John Dunn and their adult children Noah & Lily, and Sherry Hall and her & Hughes’ daughter Tara Hughes-Hall.
In 2016, former CQBTTBV staffer & retired IBM employee living in Georgia, Nguyen The Quang and Hughes spent several weeks visiting Agent Orange relief centers throughout VN. [Some details of the 2016 trip are below.] And finally, in 2024, Dick spent six weeks, in Oct. & Nov., visiting AO-relief centers, with Nguyen thi Minh Ha, also a former CQBTTBV volunteer, in Saigon, Da Nang, Dong Ha, Quang Tri, Hue and Hanoi. The highlight of that trip was an evening at Fulbright University [Saigon], Dick Hughes sharing the stage with AO survivors Tran Thi Hoan [TPHCM] and Nguyen Ngoc Phuoc [Da Nang], a VTV8 new story of that trip [“A Singular Journey”] in the NEWS section of this LCI website.
In 2016, former CQBTTBV staffer & retired IBM employee living in Georgia, Nguyen The Quang and Hughes spent several weeks visiting Agent Orange relief centers throughout VN. [Some details of the 2016 trip are below.] And finally, in 2024, Dick spent six weeks, in Oct. & Nov., visiting AO-relief centers, with Nguyen thi Minh Ha, also a former CQBTTBV volunteer, in Saigon, Da Nang, Dong Ha, Quang Tri, Hue and Hanoi. The highlight of that trip was an evening at Fulbright University [Saigon], Dick Hughes sharing the stage with AO survivors Tran Thi Hoan [TPHCM] and Nguyen Ngoc Phuoc [Da Nang], a VTV8 new story of that trip [“A Singular Journey”] in the NEWS section of this LCI website.
