Vietnamese Adoptee Reunion Story

This adoptee was placed with his biological brother into a US home. He also had ongoing contact with his brother and sister who remained in Vietnam. They reconnected in 2005. This story is told from the correct perspective…that of the adoptee.

“The sign welcoming the two Vietnamese brothers to America read: “Welcome Home Hung and Hai.”

Hung and Hai Bui just had stepped off an airplane at the Omaha airport. As they approached the American couple standing near the banner, 7-year-old Hai immediately began speaking to them in Vietnamese and hugged them.

Hung, 12, stayed back, nervous and overwhelmed. Eventually, he extended a hand.

Bill and Bernadette Frohner looked different from the photograph Hung had seen at the orphanage in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam. They looked older, lighter skinned and bigger.

Everything in America seemed big — the buildings, the roads, the sky and especially, the people. It all made him feel so small, so alone.

The couple loaded the boys into their van, handed them cans of Coca-Cola and drove them home to Wahoo.

It was March 17, 1994, and Hung Bui’s life as Bret Frohner just had begun.

The long ride

Just a week before, he and his brother were living in an orphanage in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam. Their mother died in 1987 of ovarian cancer, their father two years later of heart failure.

Their sister, Tuyen Bui, dropped out of school at 14 to care for her three younger siblings but couldn’t afford to feed them all. She eventually enrolled the two youngest boys in the orphanage, where they got a free education, food and beds.

Hung rode on the back of his sister’s bike on the nearly 8-mile ride to the orphanage, his brothers next to them on another bike. He tried to stay strong, but he hated leaving home, hated leaving his older brother and sister.

He knew there was no other way.

Never any problem

In 1994, the Frohners learned of the Bui brothers through a Colorado adoption agency, International Mission of Hope.

“We just decided to take them both and keep them together,” said Bill Frohner, a Wahoo auctioneer.
Hung and his older siblings in Vietnam weren’t sure they should let their family be separated and even considered letting Hai go by himself. But they decided the 7-year-old was too young.

They feared Hai would forget his family and his culture if he went to America alone. So the family decided to let both boys go in the hope they eventually would find their way home.

In America, Hai became Brent in a family that included Beth, Brian and Brad, a boy adopted from Korea.

The day Bret and Brent started classes at St. Wenceslaus School, neither could speak English. Nine years later, Bret graduated as valedictorian of his senior class at Bishop Neumann High School.

Bill Frohner describes the two as the most scholarly of his five children.

“These boys would get their chores done right away and would get to studying,” he said. “We never had any problems with them.”

Finding their way home

After Brent graduated from Bishop Neumann in May 2005, he and Bret jumped on a plane and returned to Vietnam for the first time in more than a decade. They had kept in touch with their older brother and sister, calling them at least once every two months.

Flowers, smiles, tears and hugs greeted them at the Hanoi airport. A niece and nephew asked what the brothers ate in America to make them so big. Bret and Brent laughed, then loaded up their bags for a taxi ride back to Thanh Hoa, back to the home where their parents had raised them, back to the orphanage.

On Saturday, Bret will walk up to the stage at the Lied Center for Performing Arts and receive his bachelor’s degree in dental hygiene, the culmination of a trek that began on that long bike ride to the orphanage nearly 20 years ago.

Ever grateful for finding a loving family and gaining a good education, Bret paid his own way through college, largely through federal veteran benefits he earned after serving a year in Iraq with the Nebraska Army National Guard.

He even helped pay for his younger brother’s education, working as many as 60 hours a week at four jobs while attending classes full time at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Dentistry.

Darlene Carritt, a dental hygiene instructor at the college, said Bret doesn’t talk much about his history and doesn’t brag about his accomplishments. Rather, he gets his work done and does everything he can to help others.

“He has a big heart and looks beyond himself all the time,” she said.

She recently learned more about him after she discovered he plans to return to Vietnam after graduation to help the children at his former orphanage — teaching the orphans and people of his village how to brush their teeth and floss and providing them with dental hygiene supplies.

He said he’d like to offer free dental hygiene services but has struggled to get permission from the Vietnamese government to do so. He also would like to take the orphans on a shopping trip and host a party for them.

He said he has fond memories of a few occasions at the orphanage when sponsors would pay for a party. They would roast a pig, and all the children would sing and dance.

He wants to bring joy to those children again.

“I just want to give back.”

Long road to graduation for dental student
[Journal Star 5/5/12 by Kevin Abourezk]

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