Sharing Her Fighting Spirit: Sue L. Nguyen
Educator, adventurer, world traveler, sister, daughter, friend, businesswoman, and most of all— fighter. Sue L. Nguyen was all of these things to her family. When diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in 2010, she fought the disease the same way she fought many other challenges throughout her life – with determination and strength.
“ She characterized herself as a strong, independent woman,” says niece Glenda Lee.“ It was important for her to not let this illness define her and what she could do.”
Born in 1937, Sue and her family lived in northern Vietnam, but were forced to flee south in the political chaos of 1954 when the Geneva Accord divided their homeland in half. The family moved from Hanoi and ultimately to Saigon, where Sue’ s father encouraged her and her six siblings to pursue careers. Like many young women at that time, however, Sue’ s options were limited— she could become either a teacher or a nurse.
She chose to be a teacher; in 1960 she received a full scholarship to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Sue became the first woman in her family to go abroad to study and the first person in her family to come to the United States. Her brother, Binh Nguyen, and sister, Bich Nguyen, remember that Sue wanted more.
“ She was always a dreamer,” says Bich.
Bright, ambitious, and fluent in three languages, Sue spent the next several years after college traveling the world using her talents. In 1964, she moved to Sydney, Australia to work as a radio broadcaster for the Australian Broadcasting Company. From there, she taught French at a middle school in Illinois, studied French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, trained in Geneva, Switzerland to be a translator, and taught Vietnamese to advisors for the U. S. Armed Forces in El Paso.
When Saigon, Vietnam fell in 1975, much of her family was scattered around the globe in France, Switzerland, Canada, and a refuge resettlement camp in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. It was Sue, then living in Singapore, who set about finding her family, ensuring they were safe and using her connections to reunite them.
Sue eventually settled in Houston and began her decades-long career with the Houston Independent School District, first as an ESL teacher and then as a student counselor. After retiring in 2008, she experienced a nagging cough, and was diagnosed with a cold by her doctor. However, when she developed a pain on her left side, her doctor suggested a chest X-ray and then a series of tests, which revealed she had an advanced stage of cancer.
She sought cancer treatment at( what is now) Baylor St. Luke’ s Medical Center, and was impressed with the level of compassion and expertise shown by her care team.
“ The family chose Baylor St. Luke’ s because they keep with the ideals that Sue lived by— persevering to build knowledge, advocating for those who needed help, and working hard to make the world a better place,” said Lee.
When Sue passed away in September 2011, Bich was determined to follow through on her sister’ s wish for a legacy at CHI St. Luke’ s Health and today, generous gifts from the Sue L. Nguyen estate have funded cancer research, a tissue and tumor bank, and most recently, a hot lab to store radioactive medications for cancer treatment. Sue lives on as a true example of compassion and love.
“ Compassion needs to go hand-in-hand with fighting cancer,” Bich said.“ Sue, with her humble contributions to the world, is a model for sowing the seeds of compassion in all directions.”
15