ALUMNI AFFADAVITS - School of Nursing - University of Virginia

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ALUMNI IN ACTION
Grateful to Mentors, New Nurse Seeks to Serve
Lan-Anh Thi Phan
BSN Class of 2005
“In the nursing
field, I play the
role of not just a
care provider,
but also as an
educator and a
counselor,
because I get to
interact with a
diverse group of
patients.”
In 1995, Lan-Anh Thi Phan and her
family left a rural farming village outside
Saigon that had been home for all of her
nearly thirteen years and boarded an airplane.Twenty
hours later, she looked out
the window and there was New York
City at night. After another short flight,
she arrived in Washington, where she
first experienced snow.
“That was the most freezing cold I
have ever been,” she said.
On May 22, 2005, Anh, then 22,
walked down Thomas Jefferson’s hallowed
Lawn and graduated from the
University of Virginia with a degree in
nursing. She carried upon her slender
shoulders the hope of her family and an
entire refugee community, having overcome
a language barrier, the tragic death
of her father three years ago, and an illness
of her own, brought on in part by a
sometimes crushing sense of responsibility.
Throughout her journey, the words
of her father have echoed in her mind:
Education is the key to survival, no matter
who you are in this country.
“Her strengths are her ability to
overcome adversity, to always look for
opportunity and not be discouraged,”
said her adviser, nursing professor Emily
Drake. “She will not be discouraged.”
Anh credits a series of people with
guiding her transition from a wide-eyed
immigrant to a self-assured college graduate.
“There was always somebody
supporting me,” she said.
The first was her father, Hoanh Huu
Phan. A lieutenant in the South
Vietnamese Army, he had a chance to
escape during the fall of Saigon in 1975,
but turned back to stay with his wife.
His loyalty cost him eight years in a reeducation
camp; he and his family then
spent ten years awaiting papers to allow
them to leave for the United States.
Anh remembers her father carrying
her the three miles to her Vietnamese
school on his bicycle, and listening to his
voice as he read to his children at night.
It was he who urged her to follow
her passion into nursing, though her
mother suggested she try business
instead. “If you do what you like, money
will come to you,” he told her.
Hoanh Huu Phan died tragically in
an automobile accident in Washington
during Anh’s second year at U.Va. Anh
was torn between continuing her studies
and the obligation she felt to help her
mother and younger brother. Her father
was the family’s guide in the United
States. With him gone, Anh took on
more responsibility.
“I have always been the second
mother to my younger brother, Minh,”
she said. “But suddenly I became the
father and the emotional support for my
mom, and the personal representative for
the family, while I went through coping
myself.”
In addition to her father, Anh said
she is grateful to Sandy Dang, the
founder and executive director of Asian
American Leadership Empowerment and
Development for Youth and Family
(AALEAD), a Washington group that
helps Vietnamese immigrants make the
18 The Virginia Legacy WINTER 2005–06