Date published: Thursday, August 26, 2004
By Scott Beveridge, Staff writer

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam – The Communist official rushed into a hotel lobby in July, eager to find an unassuming woman with the power to get him to Pittsburgh.

With an entourage at his side, Ngo Quang Vinh was in a hurry to meet Thanh Armagost, who left this city for America before it fell to Communist forces in 1975.

The foreign affairs director of the People's Committee of Danang smiled when their eyes met before sinking into an overstuffed armchair at Armagost's side. He wasted no time discussing his need for a letter of invitation from her friends in Washington County in order to visit them in America. Without this courtesy, immigration officials might doubt he would be welcomed in the United States.

Armagost, a petite woman from Reynoldsville, reassured Vinh she would deliver his request to the Friends of Danang of McMurray, a humanitarian organization dedicated to helping children in Central Vietnam. A month later, the invitation was sent to Danang after the group's founder, Anthony W. Accamando Jr., received a telephone call from the Vietnamese embassy, confirming Vinh's October travel plans.

When Vinh breezed into the four-star Majestic Hotel last month, he was wearing a dark three-button suit and nondescript necktie, standard attire for U.S. senators or congressmen.

He said he was sorry he and Armagost had not met a week earlier when she was in Danang on business and pleasure. Tracking her down was his first order of business after his flight landed at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, where party officials were set to hold a conference on improving Vietnam's academic relationship with other nations.

Armagost, raised in the same city once named Saigon, did not allow herself to think she was negotiating with a man representing the enemy of her former neighbors during the Vietnam War.

"I just think about how we can help the children," said Armagost, who was vacationing at the time with her husband.

She and Neal Armagost, a Vietnam veteran, left Saigon 32 years earlier, knowing there would be no future for them and their two children as U.S. troops were pulling out of the war-torn country.

Thanh Armagost since has built a small business assisting her many contacts in Vietnam in navigating the complicated task of obtaining visas to visit family and friends in America. She initially became involved with the Friends of Danang in 1999 as an interpreter, hoping to maybe help one child in her impoverished homeland.

"Now we have touched so many families," she said.

The nonprofit organization since has raised enough money to build eight schools and a medical clinic in Danang, and launched the Let Them Walk Again project. It has a goal to raise $192,600 to provide surgery to 1,284 children in Danang who have crippling birth defects or other injuries.

A two-story yellow stucco school the group funded in the city's Hoa Son district has become the center of attention in the industrial village. Children here used to drink water polluted by factories but now they enjoy treated water at school because of the veterans, teacher Tran Thi Truoc said.

"The old school was very bad," Truoc said July 19, while her school was bustling with activity.

A youth soccer game was under way in the school yard before a crowd of nearly 200 cheering fans. Boys were pounding on drums to celebrate their teams, while girls learned to operate sewing machines in a classroom, stitching straight lines across spaces between newspaper columns. A farmer grazed cattle on the lawn while construction workers stacked terra-cotta bricks for a new wing to the school.

"We thought helping to build a school would help build them out of poverty," said Accamando, 60, of Eighty Four, who served as an Army lieutenant in Danang in the 1960s. "Where there's misery and suffering, you sense the hopelessness."

The nearby medical clinic his pals made possible was purposely placed alongside the Reunification Express Railroad because at least 125 accidents take place there each month between motorbikes and trains, said its physician, Dr. Tran Van Than.

"People are killed daily," Than said.

The two cities on opposite ends of the globe have had a Sister Cities agreement pending for nearly a decade. The nonprofit citizen diplomacy network has bonds in 124 different countries that foster economic development, cultural links or humanitarian work.

Vinh said he was willing to set aside talks on finalizing the Sister Cities agreement when he visits Pittsburgh. He said he would like to focus on opportunities to attract foreign experts on Vietnamese history and culture to his city to work as visiting teachers.

His delegation is expected to meet Oct. 14 with Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and Oct. 15 with administrators at Duquesne University.

There is a major stumbling block in bringing Danang and Pittsburgh together under a Sister Cities agreement, said Linda Campbell, the nonprofit agency's executive director in Pittsburgh.

Vietnam remains "a sore spot" for many, she said. "If it was any other war; so many people, rightfully so, feel we should not have been there."

On the Net:

www.sister-cities.org