Dinh Gia Nguyen's Obituary
Dinh Gia Nguyen passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of 94 on Thursday December 15, 2022 at home with his family. He was born on March 7, 1928 in Hanoi, Vietnam as the second child of four children to Tuong Gia Nguyen and Yen Thi Luong.
Dinh spent his childhood in Hanoi and studied for a degree in mathematics at the University of Hanoi. He was one of a very few selected in Vietnam to study at the French Naval Academy in Brest, France where he graduated in 1955 with a degree in Marine Engineering. During this time, he was commissioned as an Ensign in the newly established Navy of South Vietnam. He went on to serve twenty years in the Vietnamese Navy in various roles with the last four years as the Commanding Officer of the central Vietnamese Navy Supply Center.
In Saigon he met and married Van Le Nguyen with whom he had four children. After the fall of Saigon, the family resettled in Hayward California. Dinh worked as a materials analyst at Pacific Gas & Electric Company in San Francisco until his retirement in 1993. In retirement, he enjoyed his home life and his grandchildren. He is survived by:
*Van Le Nguyen - wife
*Tam Minh Nguyen (daughter), Stephen Michael Strout (son-in-law), Elizabeth Lucia Minh Thu Strout and Emily Theresa Minh Chau Strout (granddaughters)
*Scott Hien Gia Nguyen (son), Tiphanie Tuyet-Anh Tran (daughter-in-law), Gabrielle Dan-Anh Nguyen and Samantha Minh-Anh Nguyen (granddaughters)
*James Phong Gia Nguyen (son), "Cyndi" Phuong Linh Nguyen (daughter-in-law), Caitlin Phuong Nhi Nguyen (granddaughter) and Conner James Gia Minh Nguyen (grandson)
*Brian Bao Gia Nguyen (son)
Dinh was a loving husband, father, grandfather and will be dearly missed by all of his family and friends.
Retired Rear Admiral Jim Eckelberger, Dinh’s family US sponsor and friend from their time together in Saigon, wrote the following tribute:
Dai Ta or Captain Dinh was the Commanding Officer of the Vietnamese Naval Supply Center, the Trung Tam Tiep Lieu. He had a workforce of 900 including officers, sailors, and civil servants. The American assistance team had 30 members, of which I became the leader; 10 officers, 18 sailors and 2 civil servants. I arrived in Saigon and met Dinh on 10 May 1972.
The United States Military Assistance Command had been trying for seven years to turn management of the Supply Center to total Vietnamese management. Dinh was chosen to make a new start. The Vietnamese Navy Chief, Admiral Chon and the American Admiral in charge of logistics in Vietnam, Rear Admiral Dowd, chose the most professional Vietnamese leader with no adverse connections that might lead to graft and corruption to set a course to take charge after seven years of failure. The leadership of the American team at the Supply Center was similarly changed to try to get a fresh start at success. I was the leader of that revised American team.
The Supply Center had its headquarters just yards from the Saigon River in the Navy Shipyard in Saigon. Many of the warehouses were in the shipyard. In addition, on the outskirts of the city, the Americans had built a huge warehouse complex which was known as Newport, an adjunct to the Supply Center, and was the last base in Vietnam still commanded by Americans.
The job of the Supply Center was a central source of supply to support 27 Navy bases throughout the country and 900 ships and boats that were operated by the Vietnamese Navy. When I arrived the level of support was about 40% of the needs of the bases and fleets were being filled when required. The objective was a minimum of 85%.
Dinh was a graduate of the French Naval Academy and a Naval Architect by experience. He had been working with the shipyard to build cement boats prior to becoming the Commander of the Supply Center. His home was a Navy house just a few blocks from the Shipyard Entrance.
The Vietnamese staff had no experience in running a Supply Center whereas myself and the entire American team had experience in similar facilities in the United States. My job was to document standard procedures for the work of the Supply Center and then teach the Vietnamese personnel how to implement those procedures in very timely and accurate way. Dinh’s personal staff translated the American procedures and he led the effort to upgrade the work effort. After a year of working together, the Supply Center was fulfilling 80% of the requirements of the ships and bases and before the government fell, Dinh and his crew had the percentage of fills up to 90%. This is an extraordinary fill rate and exceeded the operational success of many of the Supply Centers in the United States.
Militarily, the subordinate Officers and Sailors attended formations in the courtyard in front of the headquarters building every Monday morning. Dinh led the ceremonies and provided the instructions. Since anything spoken was unknown to me, his staff put X’s on the pavement for where I was to stand. When given a nod, I moved to the next X. The American officers and enlisted in formation remained in place; only myself moved in accordance with the drill led by Dinh.
We operated as a very cohesive team. Dinh and his leadership team met with me and my leadership team weekly in the main conference room in the headquarters building. We reviewed performance and set priorities on the new actions needed to accelerate progress. There were probably 30 officers in the room. The discussions would commence in English. When we ran into a “cannot get there from here” kind of problem, the discussion would ensue in Vietnamese. After resolution, Dinh would tell the Americans how we would proceed. It was a wonderful, collaborative effort at teamwork that Dinh led and it became our method for insuring needed actions occurred.
The American team worked seven days a week, commencing about 0800 and leaving work about 1830 in the afternoon. There was a curfew in Saigon so we had to get dinner and be off the streets by 2200. One Monday morning after the weekly formation had concluded, I accosted Dinh about the Vietnamese commitment. It turned out to be a quite a lesson for me.
I said to him, we Americans were at work all day Sunday. You and the Vietnamese team were not at work. We are working in a crisis mode and I wonder if your team is as committed as it needs to be? He normally called me Jim, but I was about to get a dressing down. He called me Commander---junior to his rank of Captain. And then he told me a story. He said when he was a boy, the Japanese were trying to subjugate his country, which at that point would have been French Indo China. He said we fled to the jungle and he lived in the trees and we beat the Japanese. Then I went to the French Naval Academy and when I returned home, we were trying to overcome French rule. Again we went to the jungle and lived in the trees and we beat the French. Back in Hanoi the Communists took command and we lost our properties; we ended up in the jails. Then the American ships came to transport us to the South. For 17 years now in the South, I have been working to make our nation a democracy where capitalism works. I have a wife and four children at home. Do you think I should have Sunday each week to be with my family? WOW! What a lesson in listening he gave me. I had only the perspective of a guy assigned for one year to work immense hours and achieve a goal. His story made me realize I had not learned to understand the broader perspective of those we were trying to help.
My office and his shared the front of the headquarters lobby. I came to respect him immensely. My job was easy compared to his. He had to orchestrate rapid change across an unskilled workforce working in 30 different buildings. We had to argue about every new procedure, every change, so that it was capable of being implemented. His insight and imagination were key to every new procedure that affected some part of his 900 man team. The best bottom line emerged---we did it, we had success.
As success became assured, the American leader in Vietnam, my boss’s boss, gave direction to take down the American Flag at Newport and raise the Flag of the Republic of Vietnam. We had a big ceremony at Newport and Dinh gave me that American Flag in remembrance of the day. That was 1972. Years later when I was completing a tour as Commanding Officer of the Naval Supply Center in San Diego in 1984, Dinh was in the audience for the Change of Command. I called him to the podium, told the crowd of hundreds what had happened at Newport 12 years heretofore, and awarded the Flag that had been flying over the Supply Center to Dinh, by then an American citizen with children attending the University of California.
We did not socialize with the Vietnamese much in Saigon. But one night Dinh hosted a dinner for all the Vietnamese and American officers at the Club at the Supply Center. It was there, around the cooking pots that he educated me about the various herb and vegetable leaves that were going into the stew and how they could enhance my health. The camaraderie was superb.
I left Saigon on the initial tour on the 29th of March of 1973, on the last planeload of American military leaving Vietnam. The Kissinger accords allowed a small number of American military to remain at Tan Son Nhut, the headquarters of the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam. I returned for the entire month of February 1974. For me to be in Vietnam, one of the 60 authorized military had to exit the country. That was a terrific visit for me because the progress had been so great under Dinh’s leadership.
In 1975 when Danang fell to the Communists, Dinh was there and had to escape once more to the South. I wrote and told him that Kathleen would welcome him and his family at our home in California. The day before Saigon fell, the American officer who was the liaison to the Vietnamese Naval Supply Center, put Van and the four children on a plane to Guam. As the oldest son, Dinh stayed behind to make sure his father was re-settled with his brother. The Americans would not permit his aged father to be on the refugee flight to Guam and the home your family vacated was immediately ransacked by crowds as the downfall occurred. Dinh’s father’s brother was a famous artist in Vietnam and his house was safe for his Dinh’s father to move in. A month later, when it became evident that former officers of the Republic were being sent to re-education camps, Dinh left Vietnam on a boat out of Vung Tau.
When I went to Camp Pendleton to meet Van and family in the spring of 1975, I thought we might never see Dinh again. Even after the family arrived at our house in Pleasanton, I thought Van was a widow. But she did not concur, and she was right. The boat Dinh took out of Vung Tau floundered at sea after just a couple of days. Dinh was an engineer but he could not fix the broken engines. A Danish freighter on its way to Bangkok took the people on the floundering boat on board the freighter. But there was no history of how to handle boat people, so when the ship arrived in Bangkok, the Captain of the freighter lost his nerve. He would not let Dinh and the others leave the freighter. So Dinh found a crew member of the freighter who spoke English and paid him to go to the American Embassy in Bangkok. There a US Navy officer, a friend, on the Embassy staff, called me in California. I called a friend at the Pentagon and told him of Dinh. Because there had been no other officers escaping as boat persons, the Pentagon had an interest in hearing from Dinh. His bribing the sailor on the freighter got Dinh and the others off the freighter. Between the officer I knew at the Embassy and the officer I knew at the Pentagon, we got Dinh to California. We held a welcoming ceremony at the Flagpole in the front yard of our Pleasanton house to celebrate the family being back together.
I thought getting Dinh a job in the USA would be easy. Eventually, Kathleen’s cousin did the trick. He was the pro golfer at the Claremont Country Club in Oakland. One of his clients was the CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric. The first job offer was a laboring job in a warehouse. Dinh tried it but it was obviously the wrong job for a man of great talent and experience. That is when Kathleen’s cousin landed a better job for Dinh with the CEO, this one running the logistics for Pacific Gas and Electric, which did become permanent.
This story probably does not fit into an obituary, but it does illustrate how Van led the Americanization of her family. At dinner that first night after Dinh arrived, maybe two months after Van and the family arrived, Kathleen asked Dinh if he would like seconds. She started to get up to serve Dinh and Van grabbed her arm, suggesting Dinh could help himself. He did, and that was a good thing since we had 12 for dinner every night. Before the time at our house was ended, Dinh was even helping with the laundry.
This story gives a picture of life in a house of 12 people that included three four year old boys. One afternoon I called Kathleen from the office to check in before leaving for home. She said all is well. An hour later when I got home, all three four year olds were bawling loudly after accidents with ball bats and bicycles. It was a daily circus.
At Hien’s wedding, Dinh introduced me to the guests as his friend of 25 years. Thereafter, both families called our friendship the Nguyen-Eckelberger Quarter Century Club.
At the turn of the century, I was CEO of a company in Fremont for a couple of years. I was a single in Fremont for half the month. Dinh was also a single at dinner time often, because Van was helping Hien and Tiphanie with child care. So Dinh and I had dinner together intermittently and often for most of two years. It was a great experience for me to explore American politics with someone with a French and Vietnamese orientation. It was a new window on the world for me. Whereas we agreed on much of what constituted progress, our orientations about how to get action were very different. Previously, our conversations had been about personal or professional problem solving. Now we were talking intellectually and philosophically, and it was an all new and immensely valuable insight for both of us.
There are only a handful of men in my life who have had a profound impact on how I approached new problems and personal growth. Dinh is a member of that wonderful group of mentors and colleagues. Here is my final salute to my wonderful friend and trusted colleague, Dai Ta Dinh, Republic of Vietnam Navy, and a great American.
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