CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Coastal Bend family came to America seeking freedom from the emerging communist regime of Vietnam.
The Nguyen family was among the thousands of South Vietnamese refugees who sought and received sanctuary in the U.S. in 1975.
Vietnamese refugees faced discrimination, hardships, and the unknown.
"Everything good," said Lyly Nguyen Le, owner of Hu-Dat.
Nguyen Le is the epitome of an American success story.
"Thank you for cooking for us today. Well, thank you for visiting," Nguyen Le said.
To appreciate and understand the Nguyen's family successes, one needs to travel back in time to the waning days of the Vietnam conflict and the mass exodus of South Vietnamese fleeing from the communist aggressors advancing to the south.
"I was 8 years old. I remember in the middle of the night. Dad would wake all five of us. There are five kids at that time. My mom was 3 to 4 months pregnant. He said we've got to go because the V.C. is coming," Nguyen Le said.
With only a few belongings and their clothes on their backs, they set off.
"We went through the swamp in the middle of the night. I remember us getting onto a boat. Dad said we're going on a boat, we're going out to the sea, we're going to the new world. I don't know what that means at 8 years old I know that I'm leaving my house, my country everything that I know for an adventure somewhere out in the seas," Nguyen Le said.
The Nguyen family started it's trek into the unknown barely escaping with their lives.
"As we were leaving, we see this flash of light coming towards our boat. I remember the boat rocking, and that light hit literally about 20 feet from us. And dad would say that was a bomb it just missed us," Nguyen Le said.
After days at sea, the Nguyen family went to Thailand. The Nguyen family found a sponsor that eventually helps them get to the United States.
To the Nguyen family, the new world was as strange and foreign as they could never have imagined.
"Our sponsor was in Kalamazoo, Michigan. When we get there in the dead of winter, that's what the shocker was. Like what is all this coldness, what is all this white stuff. Why are we in a freezer box," Nguyen Le said.
Months go by, and the family moves to New Orleans and then Grapevine, Texas.
The family's profession in Vietnam was shrimping. One day Nguyen goes on to say, her father received a call from their former Vietnamese pastor who had settled in the Coastal Bend.
"Now mind you, the city we lived in was Benga, ok, so the paster is calling him and his in the city, the little city in Texas called Rockport. Benga means port of rock in Vietnam," Nguyen Le said.
Taken as a good omen, the patriarch moved his family there and began his first business venture. The Nguyen family found not welcoming neighbors instead of the darker side of life.
"Lots of controversy at school. You know we were, they called us chinks. You know you go to school they say chink, they make fun of you. You're bullied," Nguyen Le said.
The Nguyen children weren't the only targets of bullying.
"They put crosses up, the KKK came into town, and it's all over shrimping," Nguyen Le said. "Now that there is a texas sized shrimp, that's what this whole town lives on."
In 1985, a movie was made about the uproar that pitted local shrimpers against the new arrivals.
"I see my dad leave at two in the morning. He would come home ten, eleven, twelve. Sometimes the next day. He wants to make sure he gets enough shrimp to provide for the family. The one thing my dad was big on is welfare. He said I don't want to depend on the government I don't want welfare," Nguyen Le said.
The philosophy proved to be the backbone of the Nguyen family.
In 1993 the first Hu-Dat restaurant opened in Rockport.
More from 3News on KIIITV.com: