Download PDF of this full issue: v55n1.pdf (47.2 MB)

Romeo and Tuyet: A Love Story

By Jane Barton Griffith

I was nervous. We were meeting after fifty years. Sam was my first love. We dated in high school and college but lost touch. Now, what a coincidence—a young man and a young woman from Melrose, a small town, a northern suburb of Boston, who had both served in Vietnam. The chances were minuscule. Sam met me on Main Street in Melrose in a small restaurant with fake leather booths. Sam carried a bouquet. The waitresses thought we were married and celebrating our anniversary. No, we were both married to other people and were meeting to become reacquainted and sharing the remarkable fact that we'd both been in Vietnam. Sam served as an officer in Vietnam, based 75 miles southwest of Saigon; I directed a Quaker humanitarian program for three years in Quang Ngai province.

Over the next six years, we continued our meetings; Sam repeated these words as if the words justified the missed opportunity. "We were just high school college-age kids, remember? We weren't ready to marry. What tragic timing." Our relationship remains, for both of us, as one of the ironic missed events of our lives.

Our Vietnam experiences were starkly different. During one of our soul-to-soul talks, I shared with Sam that while working at the Quaker hospital, where all injured civilians were welcome, I had developed a deep friendship with a former patient who had her legs blown off by a mine. She was probably a Viet Cong sympathizer. Sam mentioned that he served with a guy, Jerry White, who had fallen in love with a local Vietnamese girl who was known to be a Viet Cong agent. I challenged Sam. That situation was impossible. I saw for myself how the military kept themselves within a guarded compound. The US military saw Vietnamese women as hootch and laundry cleaners or prostitutes. There was no mixing of US soldiers and Viet Cong female agents. "No, it's true, Jane. Jerry brought this Vietnamese woman to the reunions with my war buddies years after we all returned from Vietnam." Because I remained in disbelief, Sam connected Jerry and me. I became captivated by Jerry's story.

How did these two meet? Of course, there was a division between the US soldiers and the local population. Still, a few Vietnamese were allowed onto the base where Sam and Jerry were stationed, including some women who sold cokes to the US soldiers. The first time Jerry saw "Barbara," he was smitten. She was pure—a delicate young girl with penetrating eyes, dark hair, and an animated personality. A superior officer pointed to her and explained to Jerry that they believed Barbara was a VC agent, but they'd never been able to prove it and arrest her. Indeed, the Vietnamese woman who used the alias "Barbara" was, in fact, observing and gathering information. At first Barbara was a friend to Jerry, saying hello as they crossed paths. Occasionally Barbara suggested that Jerry take a different route when out on patrol than he had planned, which Jerry began to understand was her way of keeping him safe from locations where she knew booby traps had been planted.

Then, in a horrific incident, one of Jerry's men was killed, and Barbara was seriously injured by a VC detonated mine. (The VC hadn't realized Barbara was with the group of soldiers when they detonated the mine.) Jerry carried her to the medivac helicopter, which took Barbara to a local hospital. When she looked at Jerry, Jerry knew she was looking into his soul for trust. She was also sending a message of affection. When Jerry learned Barbara was coming home from the hospital to die because her family couldn't continue to pay for her to remain in the hospital, Jerry paid $40 to cover the cost of one month's continued care in the hospital.

In a fortuitous assignment, Jerry was reassigned to another area where he could live in an apartment. He was shocked when Barbara arrived and came to live with him. They told everyone they had married since "good girls don't shack up" with GIs. Jerry and Barbra had three ideal months living together. When Jerry's tour of duty was over, he wanted Barbara to return to the States with him, but she couldn't leave her family for an unfamiliar country. Plus the US military had identified her as VC enemy already and she would never be granted a visa. Jerry returned to the US. When the war was over in Vietnam, Barbara was coerced by her family to marry a former ARVN soldier. She produced eight children before her husband died of a heart condition. She raised the children alone.

After Jerry returned to the US, he completed graduate school, held successful work positions, and survived a couple of unhappy marriages. He even had to fight for custody of his children from his first marriage. Granted custody, Jerry was a single father to his children. Jerry had never stopped loving Tuyet. Secretly, he would look at and caress the few pictures of Tuyet he had saved for 30 years.

In a life-altering decision, Jerry hired a guide who could act as an interpreter, and in 2001, went back to the area where Tuyet's family lived and miraculously found her. Over the next few years, Jerry returned to visit every year. Then, in 2004, Tuyet and Jerry flew to the US, where they were legally married. Jerry's children, now grown adults, embraced their new mother. Tuyet and Jerry settled into a "happy ever after" life in Texas. Every other year, they returned to Vietnam. In 2021, it was their turn to go to Vietnam. However, with COVID-19 raging, Jerry and Tuyet decided it might be better to stay in the US, based on the theory that if either of them got COVID-19, the hospitals in Texas might be superior to those in Vietnam. At the end of March 2021, Tuyet felt suddenly sick. Jerry's son immediately drove her to the hospital. It was just a precautionary step. Unfortunately, Tuyet had contracted COVID-19 and quickly became seriously ill. She was moved into the ICU. No one was allowed to visit. Jerry was not able to even see or talk to her. He lamented, "I never got to hold her, tell her that I loved her, nor kiss her goodbye." Tuyet died on April 1, 2021. Jerry is still mourning and eager to join Tuyet—wherever she may be.

After hearing Jerry and Tuyet's story, I wanted the whole world to know about this remarkable love story between enemies, which Jerry had recorded in English. As the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War was approaching, I thought that it would be a sentimental story that should be shared with the Vietnamese, an example of how two "enemy" individuals and two nations have reconciled. I arranged for a Vietnamese contact to translate the story into Vietnamese and find a publisher. This Vietnamese woman worked on the translation for free; she didn't ask for any money. Jerry insisted that the translator and publisher would ask for a "bribe" at some point, but she didn't. Still, because the translation and editing process was onerous and time-consuming, Sam and I discussed sending some money to the translator as a token of appreciation for her effort. Sam didn't want Jerry to know because the translator had never asked for money. Sending some money wasn't a response to a request from her. The translator was working on the effort to publish Jerry's story because she believed in the lesson of Jerry's story. Sam was kind and sent me a small check. I added some money and wired it to the translator in Vietnam. The story of Jerry and "Barbara" is called Romeo and Tuyet and will be published in March 2025 for the 50th celebration of the end of the Vietnam war—the story of how two enemies married after holding love in their hearts for each other for 31 years.

Sam wanted to see the book Romeo and Tuyet in print, but he died in December 2024 from cancer caused by Agent Orange. Tuyet and Sam are gone. Their story lives on, and, as the Vietnamese say, they will be remembered until the last person who knew them has died.

Jane Barton Griffith was the director of humanitarian programs for the American Friends (Quaker) Service Committee from 1967-73 in Quang Ngai, Vietnam. Her memoir, Two Women, One War: An Unlikely Friendship During the Vietnam War, was released on March 8, 2025. It is available online and in independent bookstores. This memoir is the story of two women of opposites: race, religion, educational and economic backgrounds, and views of the war. Author Barton Griffith relates how they coped with fear during the war and found joy in discovering that they shared a common humanity and desire for peace and love. They have kept their friendship alive over the past fifty years and felt compelled to share stories of their rare friendship as they grew older.