My story starts with my Grandfather and on April 30th, 1975 - our lives were changed forever. I wasn’t born then but my father was and he escaped Vietnam on an overcrowded passenger boat originally designed for 150 people. The only reason my father was able to be smuggled out of the country at age 23 was because my grandfather had been a successful serial entrepreneur and most notably, a president of a Vietnamese bank. So when the war looked as if it was coming to a close - my grandparents took the funds they had on hand and cashed it into gold that they hid underneath the floor boards of our house. Shortly afterwards, the communist came and took all his remaining assets to support the emerging regime. A few years later, through a series of bribes with the gold that was hidden, my father was issued a one-way ticket on a boat, never to return again.On that voyage, before everyone was rescued by an Italian tanker, my father witnessed two children die. Afterwards my father lived in a refugee camp for 2-1/2 years before he was sponsored to come to America. That is when he struggled to learn a new language at age 25 and had to find his way to live in a strange new world.My father didn’t see his family for another 20 years and has never returned to Vietnam since because of the scars that were left behind. Although he has been nothing but thankful for his new life here in America, these are the traumas my father endured and I do admit that I come at a much, much later point in time.I wonder what life would have been like, if I was guided by my grandfather’s hands and my father in his footsteps. To this point, their courage, their commitments, their challenges, their aspirations, hopes and dreams - I have felt that energy deep inside me, which was hard to explain growing up amongst the other immigrant children throughout the community.I’ve always felt my potential was out of place and It wasn’t until I began to rediscover these truths much later in life, that I began to understand why. A path much like my father’s life in America, a past I had to rediscover and a future I’ve had to define on my own.Though, I was never able to develop a deep relationship with my grandfather and at his frail age of +90, living in another country, a cultural barrier and late-stage dementia - I may never get the chance. However, my grandfather’s strength, courage, focus, dedication, sense of drive and commitment lives within me. My father’s resilience, adaptability, wisdom, and easy-going spirit lives through me as well.This is my story.