Linh Murphy visiting her Grandmother in Vietnam - January, 1995 - grinding beans for a Vietnamese dessert. This was their first reunion since Linh left Vietnam in 1988. Photo by Kevin B. Murphy
Linh Luu (now Linh Luu-Murphy) was born during the turbulent Vietnam War in 1971 and raised in the infamous village of My Lai (pronounced “Me Lie”). My Lai is best remembered as the site of the 1968 massacre of over three hundred Vietnamese civilians under the command of U.S. Lieutenant William Calley. My Lai, which meant "White People," was so-named because it was taken from the Vietnamese first by the French, then by the Americans. The village had a name change after the war ended. It's now called Duc My, which translated means "Throw Out White People." In January of 1995, just after then-President Bill Clinton lifted economic sanctions against Vietnam, I accompanied Linh to meet and visit her grandmother in the village of My Lai and collect information that could lead to the discovery of her father. The details in this biography are what we know to date.
Linh’s Grandmother Quanh with her first, French husband, Linh's grandfather. Born in Haiphong, North Vietnam, Quanh Nguyen came from a wealthy family. Her family's fortune would change. She married Linh’s Grandfather, a French military officer, in the 1930’s and lost everything after her family's property was taken over by the French military. He professed his love to her, but the real reason for the marriage was to gain control of the family's fertile rice paddies and land holdings to support the French military in 1930's Vietnam. The couple had one child - Minh - and that's where Linh gets her French ancestry. He died in a military exercise and Quanh remarried a Vietnamese officer named Luu. With Luu she had three more daughters (Binh, Chin, Khanh) and a son (Hung).
Linh's niece Besu in 1995, grinding fresh garlic and pepper using an American military helmet left over from the War as a mortar. Who would have thought of doing that? The Vietnamese people are very resourceful. Photo by Kevin B. Murphy
Linh's mother, Minh Luu, (pronounced “Min” and named after Ho Chi Minh) is half Vietnamese and half French. All Linh knows about her father is he is American and worked for the U.S. military during the War in an intelligence capacity. He met Minh when she was working at the U.S. military base in Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam. His first name is allegedly “Jim,” but he never gave anyone his last name and is American Cherokee Indian. Linh's father was abruptly pulled out of Vietnam after his security was compromised. This happened before he knew Minh was pregnant with his child. One of Jim's military colleagues, who was returning to the States, promised Minh he’d try to get in touch with Jim to let him know, but that’s where the trail ends. We don’t know if this ever happened. If anyone knows Jim or his whereabouts, please let us know. Linh doesn't want anything from him. She just wants to know who he is.
Linh’s mother, while pregnant with Linh, met another American, Wes Alexander, who worked for a private construction firm in Vietnam during the War. Wes married Minh and adopted Linh as his daughter. Linh’s original Vietnamese birth certificate bears his last name. After Linh was born and as the couple was trying to make the best of family life in war-torn Vietnam, Wes was poisoned by a jealous, Vietnamese x-girlfriend. Minh left Vietnam to bring her American husband's body back to Los Angeles, CA for burial, thinking she’s only be gone a few weeks, a month at most. Minh was unable to return to Vietnam because of the ongoing War. She would not see or talk to her children for another sixteen long years.
Linh's mother, Minh Luu, with her American husband Wes Alexander, who adopted Linh and was subsequently poisoned by a jealous x-girlfriend. When Linh returned to her Vietnamese village in 1995, the person hired to kill Wes approached Linh, and in a very emotional scene, begged her forgiveness. Linh immediately forgave him
Linh's mother, Minh, with Minh's stepsisters and stepbrother, holding baby Linh in her arms on the day before she left for the U.S. to bury her husband. Linh's older, half brother, Viet Luu, is standing below right. It's easy to see how different Minh looks from her step brother and sisters, who are all 100% Vietnamese. It's the influence of the French genes, which was passed along to Linh.
Because of Linh’s striking mixture of Vietnamese, French and Cherokee Indian, she definitely doesn’t look Vietnamese. This caused her life to be at risk during the War when the Viet Cong swept through many villages, including My Lai, looking to kill children mixed with American blood. They assassinated several mixed children in My Lai, but were unable to find Linh, despite a targeted hunt for her. Linh’s grandmother, guided by a premonition in a dream, hid Linh before they arrived and until the Viet Cong left the village. She also cut Linh's hair very short and dyed it black so she'd look more Asian. Although the War concluded at the end of 1975, personal safety was still a problem for Linh. Only the face of the enemy changed. She was beaten black and blue on a daily basis by schoolmates and others in her village because she looked and was American. Only by secretly taking martial arts lessons, (she traded baby sitting with a local Vietnamese martial arts master who'd lost his wife during the War) and becoming a formidable fighter - one of the best in her village - did she overcome this obstacle, one of many in post-war Vietnam. There are many other fascinating stories about Linh's life in Vietnam during and following the War. The many bombing raids, when the ground trembled like a gigantic earthquake, and her family rushed into an underground cellar stocked with water, rice, and potatoes, living there sometimes for weeks at a time, until the raids subsided. When the war ended, her village, dependent on the soil to produce crops and food for livestock, as well as the river for fish, was literally starving to death due to the repeated sprayings of Agent Orange. Young children, including Linh, had to organize in small groups and take extreme, life-threatening risks to provide food for their families. These are not events you’ll find in any history book, and will be revealed for the first time in Linh’s forthcoming book.
Linh would not see her mother again until 1988, when she and her half brother, Viet, were finally able to come to the U.S. after many years of paperwork and red tape. They flew out of Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon) airport, and eventually landed at San Francisco International airport. There, they were finally reunited with their mother and met their new stepfather, David Termer.
From San Francisco airport, the family drove north to the upper end of the Napa Valley Wine Country, to reside in the little resort town of Calistoga. David was in the construction trade and quickly put his two stepchildren to work installing roofs. Linh's job experiences and accomplishments in the U.S. soon expanded to include helping run a Napa Valley vineyard, owning a pizza-pasta restaurant, a foot reflexology masssage business and an interior door home improvement franchise. She is currently studying and completing her apprenticeship requirements with Franchise Foundations to take the California Bar Exam. I happened to live in Calistoga, and in June of 1992 was blessed with the privilege of meeting Linh. When I learned of her martial arts background, and being an amateur martial arts enthusiast in college, I asked her to "show me some moves." One quick blow she landed near my shoulder left it sore for three weeks. After that experience, she became my companion . . . and bodyguard. Now you’d think I would have learned my lesson, but in the summer of 2006 I asked for trouble again. Linh was practicing her roundhouse kick up in our Napa Valley property. It was so fluid and balanced, a work of art, and I couldn’t resist asking how to defend against it. She showed me and I was fine as long as her kicks were relatively slow. After asking if I was ready, she spun around fast and I wasn’t quick enough on the defense. Although they didn’t break, a couple of my ribs were fractured by her kick and took over a month to heal.
Pasadena, CA newspaper article published at the end of the Vietnam War about Linh and her half brother Viet. The "red tape" preventing their release would continue another thirteen years.
Kevin B. Murphy and Linh Murphy on a business trip in Singapore. Photo by R. Fletcher. All pictures and biography copyright 1995-2008, Kevin and Linh Murphy, all rights reserved
Franchise Foundations® - franchise attorney and franchise expert help in how to franchise a business, franchising a business, buying a franchise, franchise disclosure documents and franchise expert consulting by a leading franchise attorney - franchise lawyer
Copyright 1981-2008, Franchise Foundations, a professional law corporation. Our franchise attorney, franchise lawyer and franchise expert assists you with how to franchise and franchising a business, buying a franchise business opportunity and franchise expert consulting to avoid the scars of franchise litigation. The information you obtain at this site is not, nor is it intended to be, legal advice. You should consult a franchise attorney or franchise lawyer for individual advice regarding your own situation and franchise disclosure documents.
