Mr. Linh Van Chau left his home and family at the tender age of 14 to join the MILFAB team at Tan An US Army base in Vietnam as a translator,
In 1974 he left Vietnam to come to the U.S. to train at Fort Knox with U.S. Army diesel mechanics/tank armored services as a tank turret mechanic.
In 1975, he was stranded at Fort Knox, Kentucky after the fall of Saigon. He then moved to the Huntsville, Alabama and got a job at a logging company, He met his wife, Kim while she was working at the Hitching Post, Alabama. They got marry and moved to Oklahoma City. In 1979, they opened the largest Vietnamese grocery store in Oklahoma City.
In 1987, when they moved to Palacios, he worked for many years for Texas Parks and Wildlife. While there, he spent years volunteering as a translator and mediator to help ease racial tensions between newly immigrated Vietnamese shrimpers and the coastal fishing community in the ’80s.
In 1990, he went back to college at WCJC and received an Associate’s Degree, then his Bachelor’s Degree from University of Houston-Victoria in 1993. He was sworn in as an associate municipal judge in 1994. In 1996 he was sworn in as the main municipal judge, the first Vietnamese magistrate of Texas. He retired in 2008.
Mr. Chau, an immigrant, overcame to become a judge and now a mayor in the town in Matagorda County.
Source: https://abc13.com/
