A string of horrors in her native Vietnam ended in 1968 when she met a U.S. Naval officer and a year later became Mai Donohue. Recently, the Barrington mother of seven children graduated from the Community College of Rhode Island.
JAMES A. MEROLLA Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
1,601 words
25 June 1997
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
EAST BAY
They write Hollywood scripts about women like Mai Donohue and no one ever believes such stories could be true.
But they are.
When you meet this tiny dynamo with the warm manner, the thoughtful eyes and the ready grin, you wonder why she doesn't wear the weight of the world on her face. She has every right to, given her history.
In 1945 or 1946, when Mai (pronounced My) was a year old in the village of Thong An Ninh in southern Vietnam, nearby Viet Minh soldiers, jealous of her family's status as major landowners in the valley, raided her home, killing her grandfather, father and two uncles.
Her mother was 27, with three children, and seven months pregnant. Unable to read or write, her mother sold parcels of her land to pay for her children's schooling.
When she was about 11 (she doesn't know exactly how old she is, most likely, 51) her mother sold her last piece of land. After Mai did her daily chores of carrying the water, feeding the pigs, chickens and ducks, watering the vegetables, sweeping inside and out, spinning the cotton and weaving the cloth, her mother told her she could no longer attend school.
Her brother would go instead. In a memoir, she wrote about the shock.
"I thought I was hearing it wrong. I was about to ask her why but she walked away. She left me standing there and no one to comfort me. I cried a lot but it didn't help me any. When I was young, more often I asked myself, 'Why me?' but when I was older, I said, 'Why not?' I can't change my past. But I can build my future."
A seed was planted in Mai that day. A seed that she nurtured even when her mother told her she would marry a man she had picked out for her. She was about 13.
Mai endured a horrible marriage for two years and had a son, Ankh. She was beaten repeatedly and tortured. Finally, she left her husband and returned to her mother's home. But her husband followed her.
"I was his property," she shrugged. "Nobody ever divorced anybody. Women there live for the man."
The horror played itself out one day when Mai rested in a hammock with Ankh. Her husband and father-in-law wrapped her and her son in the strands of the hammock like a net and carried them through the streets between the bicycles they were riding.
Mai's screams brought out the villagers. Her husband's father became enraged and said, 'Kill her.' The two men beat Mai with sticks until she blacked out. She awoke six hours later in her mother's house after her mother had found her on the side of the road, the baby by her side.
"I was left on a narrow rice mat to die. To this day, I am still fearful of the torture my husband put me through," said Mai from her Barrington kitchen, her eyes welling with tears. She took her baby and ran away. She lived by her wits for a year, but realized this was no life for her child. She brought him back to her mother and went to Saigon.
Then her husband took the child and she thought she would never get him back.
For three years, she hid inside the Tan Son Nhut base. She took care of two little girls for a wealthy couple and helped the cook. She tried to educate herself by devouring newspaper clippings in wrappings that the cook brought home from the market. Sometimes they smelled of rotten fish.
"At that time, I have no tomorrow. I live for that hour. I live for that moment," said Mai.
She was still in hiding when her country's president, Diem and his staff, were killed and later, when our president, Kennedy, was assassinated. She decided to come out of hiding. She took most of the money she had earned and used it to send her older brother Than to high school.
"I bought him a government job," said Mai. Soon, Than was drafted, got shot and could not support his wife and three young children, so Mai stopped her plans for an education and supported her brother's family.
On Dec. 21, 1968, her string of terrible luck snapped. She met a handsome U.S. Naval officer from Massachussetts, Bernard 'Brian' Donohue.
Her attempts to educate herself in English began to pay off. The next day, she drove a Honda scooter by his office and told him it had broken down. She still laughs at the memory as her eyes brighten.
"We talked and he told me he was going to become a monk. I say, 'He is so handsome. How could such a good-looking man become a monk?' " They went out for fried rice, even though she was dating "a CIA man at the time."
Within a few days, Brian stopped by her house and said his Jeep had broken down. They married a year later. Their first child, Maura, was born in Vietnam just before the couple left for America in 1970.
"My husband worked very hard for me and my family. He never stopped. My husband cut through all the red tape to get my son out to live with us," said Mai.
Ankh, already a teenager by then, joined his mother and his new family in Barrington. He is now a U.S. Naval officer in California with a child of his own.
Mai's dream of an education was again put on hold, as she raised her family. Her children went to Barrington High School. Maura, 27, graduated from Smith College. She leads her own dance company in New York.
Maeve, 26, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and also works in New York. Barney, 24, attended Columbia University and is now seeking acting work in Hollywood. He still holds the Barrington High School record for most awards received by one student at the annual Awards Day. Patrick, 23, graduated from Stanford University and is a computer engineer for Apple Computers.
Aileen, 21, is studying biology at Bowdoin College and Eirene, 19, will be a junior at Brown University.
"They were all on financial aid in college. People think since we live in Barrington, we have a lot of money, but my kids have been working since they were young. Patrick worked at Taco Bell. Now, he makes $50,000 a year," said Mai, under a dozen photos of her successful clan.
In 1993, Mai's family and friend Becky Shepperton paid for her to return to Vietnam. After 23 years in America, she walked up to her mother to hug her. Instead, her mother slapped her hard in the face and said, "Where have you been?"
But she reconciled with her family over several weeks. "All we did was eat and talk. We laughed at things that we did when we were young," said Mai in her memoir. "We laughed and cried. For the first time, I saw my mother's face calm and peaceful and happy." Soon, her mother was showing off Mai's pictures of her children to relatives.
"She was a very hard woman. But she did the best she can. Believe it or not, I think no one ever loved me as much as she did," said Mai. She will return to see her in August. "She is 82 and ill," she said.
Now, it was finally Mai's turn. On June 7, after five years of study, she graduated from the Community College of Rhode Island with an associate's degree in general studies. The school named her one of its outstanding students.
"It is just incredible. It is like a dream I never thought I could have," said Mai. "I have always been responsible for everyone else."
At the graduation party, attended by four of her children and CCRI President Edward Liston, Mai cooked special Vietnamese cuisine for 170 people in her backyard. "No one left hungry," she said.
This leads us to her next project: a cookbook called 'Mai Goodness' that she is compiling with friend Julia Califano. Mai is writing stories about her upbringing and the myths of Vietnamese customs.
She has also just been accepted by the University of Rhode Island to study psychology. She hopes to become a counselor to help others and is working part time, caring for a mentally disabled woman.
"My story, I guess, is of hope. Not just for me, but for other people like me who want an education but are afraid or don't have the opportunity to do it," said Mai. "I still cry, but they are happy tears.
"I cannot complain about my life. A lot of people have a harder life than I do. They can torture my body, but they can never destroy my spirit. My soul. I am still working on the story of my life."
CAPTION: OVECOMING ADVERSITY: At left, Mai Donohue looks through family photographs in her Barrington home. Above, she stands beside her husband, U.S. Naval officer Bernard Donohue, at their wedding in Saigon.
Journal-Bulletin / KATHY BORCHERS
[Copy Correction: Patrick Donohue holds the record for most awards at Barrington High School, not Bernard. Bernard spent his BHS days misspelling grafiti on chalkboards and trying to start a cult for dorks called "The Sons of Armand".]
As Mai Donohue's children were growing up in Barrington, R.I., she was the all-American mom, bringing guacamole dip to school parties, making lasagna for soccer banquets, baking Portuguese bread as gifts for the teachers.
The community knew her as a talented and generous cook. Yet at first, not many had tasted the extraordinary dishes of her native Vietnam.
Bernard "Brian" Donohue was a U.S. Naval officer when he and Mai (pronounced My) met and married in Saigon. He brought her to America in 1970, and his mother in Brockton, Mass., introduced her to Irish-American cooking.
At first, Mai was reluctant to serve Vietnamese food, thinking it too highly flavored for American tastes. Instead, she cooked American style. But gradually, she was persuaded to serve some Vietnamese dishes.
"When I cooked Vietnamese food for my family, the smells would go out and neighbors would ask to come in to taste," says Mai. "Children asked to stay for lunch."
For parties, she began to serve favorites such as spicy-sweet chicken wings, fragrant sesame noodles with strips of chicken or beef, steamed dumplings, crisp spring rolls with sweet-tart dipping sauce.
Her food is lighter and less fatty than in Vietnam, but the flavors are authentic.
"I combine the seasonings of Vietnam with the luxury of the U.S. I cook with less fat, less salt, no MSG and with the better, fresher ingredients we can get here," said Mai, moving swiftly around her kitchen as she cooked lunch recently for five friends and her daughter, Aileen, a senior at Bowdoin College in Maine.
It's a fragrant, flavorful cuisine, aromatic with sesame oil, ginger root, fresh basil and garlic.
Mai has precise taste memory, and can reproduce a dish after tasting it once, even recalling flavors from 30 years ago. "It's like perfect pitch in music," says her friend Julia Califano, who has recorded Mai's recipes for a cookbook they hope to have published.Mai, a tiny but dynamic woman, has a host of friends. Whenever she cooks, she wants to share. "Food means love," she says.
The mother of seven, the youngest of whom is 19, Mai threw her energy into raising them and seeing that they all went to top colleges.
She had left school at age 13, and hungered for an education. As her children grew up, it became her turn. This year, she earned her associate's degree from Community College of Rhode Island, where she was honored as an outstanding graduate. Afterward, she entertained 170 friends and relatives with a party, doing all the cooking herself.
Now she's working on a degree in psychology at the University of Rhode Island.
As she filled her huge kitchen table with aromatic dishes, Mai described cooking her first turkey in Vietnam. Brian, an Annapolis graduate who had been assigned to set up a military academy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), brought her a 12-pound turkey.
Mai had never seen a turkey. She told Brian, "I know they grow people very big in America, but I never knew they grew such big chickens!"
She grew up in a country at war. Her village, Thong An Ninh in the Quang Ngai Province in the central region, was torn between north and south. "My grandfather was wealthy, but in 1945, we came down low," said Mai. When she was an infant, her father, uncles and grandfather were murdered by Ho Chi Minh's forces.
From age 7, too small and frail to work in the fields, she cared for her nieces and nephews and cooked their meals. "I'd experiment with spices, to make the food dance for people's hearts."
At age 13, she was forced to marry a man selected by her mother. Two unhappy years of marriage, which produced a son, followed. Abused and beaten by her husband, she repeatedly ran away.
At 15, after being beaten and left for dead alongside the road, she escaped. She got to Saigon and finally found work caring for children of families at the air base. (Her husband claimed their son.)
In 1968, Mai met Donohue, and they married a year later. Their first child was born in 1970, the year she moved to America. Mai's son by her first husband was by then a teen-ager, but was allowed to join his mother in America. He is now a U.S. Naval officer in California.
She never told others of her trauma in Vietnam, until a professor persuaded her to write about it for class. "I decided to tell my story so people would have hope," said Mai. "You can do something if you are determined."
She doesn't harbor anger over a painful past.
"That was then, this is now. I live now."
Mai and her daughter Maura, 27, returned to Vietnam recently to see Mai's ailing mother, 82, who died during their visit.
People in her rural village still pump their water and cook on open fires, having no stoves. They don't have refrigerators; people must cook and eat food immediately, or preserve it with salt.
In Ho Chi Minh City, there are French, Chinese and Indian influences in the food the well-to-do cook, Mai says. "But the poor cannot cook. They may open a can of beans, like the poor in any country."
In Vietnam, chopsticks are used for cooking, eating and serving. The Vietnamese eat with the small end of the chopsticks, but rotate them to use the large end to take food from serving dishes.
The sweet anise flavor of fresh Asian basil perfumes foods such as fresh spring rolls. Fish sauce, a dark salty liquid that resembles soy sauce, seasons many dishes. Lemon grass, a scallion-like stalk, is chopped to add a lemon flavor.
Here are some of Mai's recipes, from the book she and Califano have written.
STIR-FRY CHICKEN OR SHRIMP WITH CHINESE CABBAGE AND EGG NOODLES
For a vegetarian dish, use fried tofu instead of chicken.
MARINADE:
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 (2-inch) piece ginger root, minced
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/2 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons sweeIt Asian chili sauce
MAIN DISH:
Water
1 teaspoon salt
1 pound egg noodles (spaghetti size)
2 whole chicken breasts, boned and skinned (OR beef, shrimp OR pork)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 clove garlic, minced
2 carrots, cleaned and shredded
1 pound bok choy (Chinese cabbage), rinsed and cut into bite-size pieces
1/2 pound bean sprouts, rinsed and drained
1 chicken bouillon cube
1/2 cup ground peanuts and fresh cilantro, for garnish
For Marinade, in a food processor, mash 4 cloves minced garlic with ginger and sugar. Add pepper, fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil and chili sauce.
For Main Dish, bring 3 quarts water and 1 teaspoon salt to a boil in a large, covered pot. Uncover and add noodles and return to a boil 5 to 6 minutes. Drain noodles. Cool and cut noodles into 4-inch lengths.
Put noodles and mix thoroughly. Set aside.Slice chicken into bite-size pieces.
Heat a wok over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons oil and 1 clove minced garlic. Add carrots; stir-fry 1 minute. Add chopped bok choy (both stems and leaves); stir-fry 2 minutes. Add sprouts; stir-fry 1 minute. Add crumbled chicken bouillon cube and 2 tablespoons marinade; stir-fry 2 minutes. Remove vegetable mixture from wok.
Reheat wok with remaining 1 tablespoon oil. Pour 1 1/2 tablespoons marinade over chicken; stir-fry until chicken is cooked through, 3 to 4 minutes. Add noodle mixture and mix thoroughly.
Turn into a large bowl. Top with ground peanuts and cilantro. Makes 6 to 8 servings.
MAI'S SPICY CHICKEN WINGS
This is a favorite with Mai's teen-agers and their friends. The Vietnamese name is ga (chicken) canh (wing) chien (fried) gon (crispy).
CHICKEN:
2 pounds chicken wings
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup vegetable oil, for frying
SAUCE:
1 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce (nuoc mam)
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon chili sauce OR Tabasco sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Dash ground cloves
1 tablespoon sweet Asian chili sauce (OR hot red pepper flakes to taste)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh ginger root, minced
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
For Chicken, cut wings at joint. Sprinkle chicken with seasoned salt, garlic salt and pepper. Set aside 20 minutes or more.
For Sauce, melt butter in a small saucepan. Add soy sauce, fish sauce, honey, sugar, chili sauce, cinnamon, cloves, sweet Asian chili sauce, garlic, ginger and vinegar. Stir together and simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat; cool.
Heat oil in a deep fry pan and fry chicken wings about 5 minutes on each side, or until crispy.
Mix chicken wings with warm sauce and put on a platter to serve. Makes 8 to 10 servings.
BARBECUED CHICKEN BREAST
Mai created this from her own imagination, but in Vietnam, much cooking is done outdoors over charcoal or on an open fire, as most kitchens have no stove or oven. Traditionally, three bent-over clay figures called "kitchen gods" would hold the clay cooking pot or wok over the fire. On Dec. 23 of the lunar year, or whenever a kitchen god gets broken, the clay figures are placed on their sides to rest. Incense and ghost money are burned, and food is set out as an offering to the kitchen gods. The next day, the gods can be turned back upright or replaced with new ones. More modern households have replaced their kitchen gods with metal racks.
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 stalks lemon grass, crushed and chopped (remove tough part of stalk)
1 piece (2 inches) unpeeled ginger root, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
4 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 1/2 pounds boneless chicken breasts (4 breasts), skinned and cut into thin cutlets
Put pepper, lemon grass, ginger and garlicI in a food blender and grind or use a mortar and pestle. Add brown sugar, fish sauce, soy sauce, olive oil and Worcestershire. Mix. Pour over chicken. Marinate at least 1 hour, but not more than 12 hours, as chicken will lose its texture.
Cook over a very hot grill 3 to 5 minutes on each side. Serve as is, or with peanut condiment sauce, rice and marinated cucumbers. Makes 4 servings.
FRUIT COMPOTE
The ice melts and mixes with the fruit juices; the cool liquid is especially refreshing after a big meal. The strawberries are Mai's American addition to the dessert. Chunks of fresh pineapple may also be added.
3 to 5 cups ice cubes
1 can (1 1/4 pounds) lychees
1 can (1 1/4 pounds) jack fruit
1 can (1 1/4 pounds) ramabutan
1 can (1 1/4 pounds) longan
1 can (11 ounces) mandarin oranges
1 pint fresh strawberries, cut in half
Fill a very large bowl with ice. Add canned fruits with juices from cans. Add strawberries. Stir to mix.
MARION DAVIS Journal Staff Writer
23 October 2002
The Providence Journal
*CCRI pushes expansion project despite state cutbacks
* * *
PROVIDENCE - The Community College of Rhode Island formally broke ground yesterday for a 30,000-square-foot addition to its South Providence campus that President Thomas Sepe said is "critical" to the school's future.
The project, financed by a $6.65-million bond approved by voters in 1998, will expand the Liston Campus by nearly 40 percent, providing more modern facilities and extra space for a student body that has grown from 650 in 1990 to 3,411 today.
The building is busy day and night, on weekdays, Saturdays and even Sundays. The students overwhelmingly women, half of them minorities split their time between jobs, family and school. Many are immigrants, and many are the first in their families to attend college. As the 2000 U.S. Census showed, they're part of the fastest- growing segment of the Rhode Island population. This year alone, CCRI's Providence enrollment grew by 12.5 percent.
"This is exactly the right place to expand, right here in the city," said Higher Education Commissioner Jack Warner. "It's got an underserved population, and we'd like to see substantial growth [here]."
People such as CCRI's Providence students are the state's future work force, Warner said, and public higher education can make the biggest impact by serving them well. CCRI has the expertise to serve them and can do it at a low cost to both the state and the students, Warner argued, so it's crucial to give CCRI the resources to do its job.
"The future of the state depends on it," he said.
THE PROJECT has already begun, with site work under way and completion expected in the spring of 2004. The timing isn't ideal CCRI plans to break ground on its Newport campus in December, so it will be working on two new buildings at once but Sepe said both are urgently needed.
CCRI had originally hoped to start the Providence expansion early this year. Sepe said delays with the approval process, and difficulties accommodating the needs of two neighbors, the Urban League and the Flynn School, pushed the project back by about six months.
The lag time between the bond approval and construction also forced CCRI to pare down its plans, Sepe said. When CCRI pitched the bond to voters, the plan was for a 40,000-square-foot addition and yet at the time, only 2,042 students were enrolled in Providence.
Under the modified plan, the addition will provide five new classrooms, a computer lab, a hard sciences lab, two labs for allied health programs, and a distance learning classroom. A new child- care center will also be set up there, replacing the existing facility in the main building.
The project also includes substantial renovations in the existing building: a new, larger entrance, more faculty office space, and to make things easier for students, especially newcomers a cluster with all the most important student services, such as counseling and financial aid, so students can get everything done in one place.
Much as with the Warwick campus expansion last year, the bond money for the Providence expansion won't quite cover the cost of equipment for the new space, said Stephen F. Marginson, CCRI's dean of administration. But as with Warwick, CCRI will use money from its regular budget as needed.
This year, CCRI took a nearly $3-million budget cut from the state, and for 2003-04, the state Department of Administration has asked all state agencies to cut another 8 percent.
In addition, CCRI's allowance of employees under state caps was cut this year, so in Providence, for example, a heavily used science lab has only a part-time technician. So the new wing will provide more space, but CCRI still won't have enough people to serve its students, Sepe said.
"Our biggest fault is that we always find a way to get it done, whatever resources they give us," Sepe said in an interview. "Everybody tells us what a wonderful institution we are 'bedrock of this community.' Well, the time has come to give us the resources we need to operate."
At the groundbreaking ceremony, however, those concerns remained mostly unspoken; only Lt. Gov. Charles J. Fogarty said that he hoped the state would reverse this year's cuts.
"Times may be tough, but you don't cut back on those investments that pay off in the future," Fogarty said.
* * *
TELLING HER STORY: Mai Donohue speaks at yesterday's groundbreaking for an addition to the Community College of Rhode Island's Providence campus. Donohue spoke of losing her family to the war in Southeast Asia and of her efforts to attend and graduate from CCRI.
JOURNAL PHOTO / ANDREW DICKERMAN
Document prov000020021024dyan0001d
CCRI Public Relations
November 06, 2002
The Liston Campus is stretching its wings now that construction is underway for a new addition.
Governor Lincoln Almond, Commissioner of Higher Education Jack Warner and Chair of the Board of Governors for Higher Education Sarah Dowling were among the dignitaries gathered beside the construction site Oct. 22 for the project’s official ground breaking.
Funded by a $6.65 million bond issue passed in November 1998, the expansion will include a two-story, 30,000-square-foot addition off the northwest end of the existing building; a 20,000-square-foot renovation to first-floor faculty and student services offices; and a new, larger entrance.
The architect for the expansion is the Robinson Green Beretta Corporation of Providence and the contractor is A.F. Lusi Construction, Inc. of Smithfield. The project’s completion is currently projected for Spring 2004.
This expansion could not be more timely, as increasingly the population of the urban campus approaches current capacity. This fall’s Providence enrollment jumped 12.5 percent from September 2001.
"We had been changing closets to offices, and storage space to classrooms," CCRI President Thomas D. Sepe told the crowd.
"The Liston Campus has shown extraordinary growth since it first opened in 1990. Our Providence enrollment has blossomed from an initial 650 students to a current population of 3,411 full- and part-time learners. The campus operates seven days a week, days and evenings. It is critical and timely that the facilities expand to accommodate our growing community of learners," said Sepe.
Many speakers at the event lauded the importance of growing an urban campus.
"One of the most important things we can do for our economy is improve our education," said Governor Almond to a round of applause. "This institution gives people the skills to go into the economy, to earn money, to support families."
Lt. Governor Charles Fogarty echoed Almond’s sentiments, and addressed the current budget crunch by adding, "time may be tough, but we don’t cut back on those investments that pay off in the future."
Commissioner Warner spoke of raising the overall educational achievement of the state, to attract better businesses, fill higher-paying jobs and improve the overall standard of living. To accomplish this goal, he reminded the audience how important it is for public education to reach the "under-served"—those community members whose income levels and personal circumstances make them less likely to pursue a college education.
"Community colleges represent access points for those residents," he said. "We need to graduate more students, we need to enroll more students, and we need more classrooms."
The Liston Campus expansion, will help meet these needs by increasing the building’s square footage nearly 40%, from 78,000 to 108,000 square feet. The new addition will house five new classrooms, a new computer laboratory, a new hard sciences laboratory, two allied health program laboratories and a distance learning classroom. A new child care center, relocated from its original campus location, is also planned. The renovation component of the plan calls for the expansion of faculty offices and the enhancement of the campus’s current entrance.
The CCRI Liston Campus offers associate degree programs in Business Administration, Criminal Justice, General Studies, Nursing, Fire Science and Liberal Arts; and certificate programs in the fields of Allied Health, Entrepreneurship and Office Administration. Key to the campus’s success is the flexibility of its scheduling, which includes the innovative and highly popular Weekend College Program.
Not all courses at the Providence campus are geared to the college-bound. ESL, GED and workplace literacy programs are also available for the community. In addition to CCRI programs, the Liston Campus houses the RI Educational Opportunity Center for adult educational, financial and career counseling, and the RI Educational Talent Search for promoting high school student retention and achievement,
both funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education. It also houses the REACH welfare recipient program, funded by the U.S. Dept. of Human Services.
One alumna who can attest to the need and the flexibility of CCRI’s Providence programming is Mai Donohue (’97), an immigrant from Vietnam who waited until three of her six children had gone to college before pursuing her own dream of higher education. As guest speaker at Tuesday’s ceremonies, Donohue mesmerized the crowd with her personal achievements.
As a women in Vietnam, Donohue was not allowed to pursue her dream of becoming an educator. Instead, she was forced into an arranged marriage. After suffering domestic abuse, she did the culturally unthinkable — she ran away to Saigon, "where there is no welfare, no education, no hope for me," she remembered.
Donohue did find hope in Saigon, however, where she met her current husband, an American serviceman. Together they moved to America to raise a family.
Yet, while her children excelled in school, Donohue recalled, she neglected her own education. "They (her children and her husband) lived in a different world, a world of education, a world of knowledge, a world that belonged to somebody else but not to me," she said.
One call to CCRI and its Access to Opportunity program "changed my life," Donohue said. She credited the CCRI staff, in particular Leisa Young of Advising and Counseling, for helping her attain her degree. "When I fell down, they picked me up," she said. "When I fell apart, they glued me together."
Since earning her associate’s degree through CCRI’s Liston Campus, Donohue has gone on to earn a bachelor’s degree at URI, and now works as an assistant teacher in an alternate learning program in Barrington.
Bob Kerr
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
October 31, 2003
People who had been to Vietnam before me told me that I would get sick at least once. The food is just too different from standard American fare. There would be some rejection.
But during the two weeks I spent traveling from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City in February, I probably ate better than I do at home. A driver, an interpreter and I would settle into some very open places where the breeze blew through and an occasional dog wandered in. And the table would be covered with vegetables, fish, noodles, chicken, wonderful soups, sticky rice and lots of Tiger beer.
And I never felt better.
Which brings me to Mai Donohue and the dinner she is planning at Barrington High School on Nov. 18.
"I will use the ingredients of Vietnam," she says, "and the luxuries of America."
It is a chance to sit down to all the good things that sustain a very lean Southeast Asian country. It is a chance to help some kids who live in a dark place without much to hope for. And it is a chance to meet a woman whose story reflects so much of the conflict and the coming together of two very different cultures.
Donohue and her husband, Brian, live in Barrington, which Mai says has been a wonderfully welcoming and supporting place. They met in 1968 on her home ground. He was a U.S. Navy officer. She was a woman trying to survive.
Her mother had taken her out of school and married her off to a stranger when she was 13. She told her husband right from the start "I will not be a good Vietnamese wife."
She had a child. Her husband beat her. She took her child and fled. Her husband found her and beat her.
"Vietnamese women do not leave their husbands," she says.
She fled again. She was in hiding for a year. She supported herself and her son by, among other things, weaving conical straw hats.
She finally got to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, where she fell in love with an American. She and Brian were married in Vietnam. He had to leave the service but stayed in country to work for the Navy. They came to the United States in 1970 and started a life that has included raising seven children. It has also included Mai's 11-year effort to get a college education. She started at CCRI and finished up last year at URI, where she earned her bachelor's degree in human development.
"I really want to be educated," says Mai.
She has been back to Vietnam five times and on one of her trips she visited the orphanage in the village of Dalat. She remembers it as a dark place where children doubled up in bunk beds that were crammed close together. The children are all deaf and some suffer from other disabilities.
She asked a government official what she could do. He suggested computers and hearing aids.
So on Nov. 18, she will cook to raise money for that orphanage.
"I cannot change the whole thing," she says. "But I can help to introduce them to the outside world."
She will work with members of the Interact Club at Barrington High School, a service and social club which develops local and international service projects.
Food, says Mai, is love.
"At home, I make anything. I make the best pizza."
But on the evening of Nov. 18, the food will be decidedly Vietnamese -- spring rolls, chicken with lemongrass, a light salad, stir-fried noodles. . . .
Do yourself a favor. Call Barrington High School and make a reservation. It's just $15 and you'll get more than just a great meal.
And you'll be healthier for it.
Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr@projo.com
Ted Hayes
EastBay Newspapers
October 23, 2003
Mai Donohue spent her honeymoon in a concrete building in Vietnam in 1969. She and her new husband, Brian, a lieutenant in the United States Navy, spent four days there with the distant rumble of bombing a constant presence. A day after they left, they learned later, a Viet Cong squad came looking for them.
Yet at the time, they barely noticed the war around them. "The war just stopped for us," Mrs. Donohue said.
Earlier this year, near the end of a 2,500-mile hiking journey that took her from North to South Vietnam, Mrs. Donohue returned to the same home, in the southern village of Danat, to find it changed forever. Now a boarding school for the deaf and hearing-impaired, the building is drastically changed. It is now home to about 127 children, ages 9 to 17, and its occupants are extremely poor.
Though the school trains its boarders in menial tasks — sewing, knitting and the like — it is grossly underfunded by the Vietnamese government, she said. Children there have barely enough to eat, no privacy, and basics like hearing aids are in short supply. The school needs help, she said.
What Mrs. Donohue saw will manifest itself in three weeks when the mother of six holds a fund-raiser for the school. A gourmet Vietnamese chef, she will host a traditional Vietnamese dinner at Barrington High School on Tuesday, Nov. 18, with the proceeds sent to the school so administrators there can buy at least two computers for the children. Tickets are $15 each, and just 175 will be sold.
In addition to the money, she has solicited the help of the high school's Interact Club to seek donations of hearing aids to be shipped to the school. The club, which undertakes one international service project every year, has been sending the word out to audiologists and local businesses.
"In my life, I had so many obstacles," said Mrs. Donohue. "People helped me and today I want to return that."
"I want the children to learn about the outside world."
The outside world — Mrs. Donohue's hopes for an education and to escape the turmoil she experienced as a child — has driven her life.
She was born in Vietnam near the tail end of World War II, part of a wealthy, land-holding family. When she was an infant, most of the patriarchs in her family were murdered by a religious faction, and she was subsequently raised by her mother, who lost all the wealth that family once had.
Forced into marriage at age 13, she soon bore a child. But the marriage was brutal, her husband abusive, and she fled. She continued to live — sometimes on the run, sometimes returning home — until the war, when she found herself in Saigon, working as a cook and at other menial jobs.
She met her husband at a nightclub there in 1969, a year after his arrival, and they married soon after. When his enlistment ended in 1970, he returned to the United States, and she followed. They eventually settled in Barrington, where they still live today.
In the years since, Mrs. Donohue has returned to Vietnam several times, and pursued her own education at Brown University. She hopes the fund-raiser will help other children realize their dreams.
"If even one out of 127 can exce, it is worth it," she said.
WHAT: Dinner with Vietnamese menu; fund-raiser for a school for the deaf and hearing-impaired in Vietnam
WHEN: Tuesday, Nov. 18
TICKETS: $15 each, just 175 will be sold; may be purchased in the Barrington High School office.
DONATION: Hearing aids, working or not, will be accepted at the high school office, care of the Interact Club
MORE INFORMATION: Call the school at 247-3150
By Ted Hayes
thayes@eastbaynewspapers.com