In the early days of ASC it burned down. Any guesses who torched it?!!! ha ha ha 🙂
Gene Taylor was there when the school burned. Read his comments about it by clicking here.
Gene is probably the oldest Saigon Kid in our Saigon Kids Community. Not by ‘age’ but by time frame he was in Saigon and attended ACS. Gene was there in 1955 to 1957.
I personally don’t know of anyone else who was there during Gene’s time or earlier.
Was anyone else there during Gene’s time or earlier? Or, do you know of anyone who was??
I find this totally awesome, as with Gene and the Phoenix Study Group members of our Saigon Kids Community we span 20 years (1955 to 1975).
Hopefully, someday we’ll be able to find kids that lived in Saigon even earlier then 1955. I’ve always wondered when the first Americans actually started living in Saigon. I’m sure there were some.
Mimi or some of our French Saigon Kids may remember when the first Americans lived in Saigon … So, I’ll ask the question: What is the earliest any of you French or Viet-namese Saigon Kids remember Americans living in Saigon?
As always, you are welcome to leave your comments below.
Bob
As I mentionned in an earlier post, my first encounter with an american family was with my neighbours, the Hunter’s who had two adorable toddler tweens. They lived next to us on Truong Minh Ky street, and that was probably in 1955 or so. When they left they were replaced by the Swanson’s who had to young boys. Through them probably I met a teen ager slightly older than me, Jim Wilkes, with whom I went as far I holding hands…lol. Jim did not stay in Saigon for long. I heard about Jim some 25 years ago through a friend of my mother living in Washington who told me he has recently got married. Another late bloomer!
So, Bob, that is the best I can do..hope someone has a better memory than I do.
Thank you Mimi … 🙂
Interesting you knew Jim Wilkes. His parents were good friends with my parents. I only met Jim a couple of times, as it seemed our families were always in different parts of the world. When we were on Home Leave (as the State Dept. called it … actually was time off for vacation, etc. while between Posts) we would stop by and visit with Jim’s family if we happened to be in the same area at the same time. My parents and Jim’s kept in touch by mail, etc. throughout their lives.
It is kind of hard to locate people who were in Saigon prior to about 1957, mainly because there are few, if any, records (that I’ve been able to locate anyway) available to know who was there, etc. But, maybe we’ll find the ‘path’ to them someday. Time will tell.
I’ve often thought about how nice it would have been if I could have come to Saigon much much earlier … like in early 1950s. Saigon was such a wonderful, beautiful and mellow place when I got there in 1959 … I can just imagine it must have been really wonderful in earlier years. It makes me very sad to see how it changed so much, in the direction it went, after I left in 1961.
But, tucked away in the back pages of my mind are all those wonderful and beautiful memories of my brief time in Saigon and all the wonderful people I knew there … and, it seems the memories just get sweeter with each passing year … 🙂
Bob