15. Summer School at St. Vincent College
The U.S. government had a plan to help students.
Those who dropped out of school for whatever reason.
Must satisfy this simple condition:
Passing two remedial courses in the summer school.
The GED exam I passed recently
Was required for my admission.
Saint Vincent College in Latrobe had this program.
Dr. Ronald Tranquilla was the head of their English Department.
Summer of 1977, I entered college at St. Vincent.
I felt good about English and Math courses.
I got an A in Math and a B in English
Which I was more than happy to receive.
In the Fall semester of 1977, I started full time
But my English was still very shaky.
Those students like me, mostly Vietnamese
Who needed to take an enrichment course called ESL class.
There were six Vietnamese students,
Three males and three females attending two different colleges.
For male students: Nam, Hùng, and I were from St. Vincent.
Two other female students and Vân were from Seton Hill College.
I was way above a college student age,
The rest were between nineteen to twenty-one.
It’s fun to hang out with Vietnamese students,
Whenever we had a chance, we went out on weekends.
There were few Vietnamese families in the area
We often got together drinking and singing in the weekends.
The Pittsburgh Steelers were our football team,
They had training camp at St. Vincent College every summer.
Whenever they played during regular season,
We would bring down the house with our screaming.
Notably, brother Đạm and brother Hùng
They were older and so were their mouths, always louder.
Gradually, one by one, they all moved away.
Brothers Huệ, Đạm, Hùng, and Vân from Seton Hill College
The weather here was colder and Vietnamese were fewer,
So California was always the reason for their relocation.
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