DATE: Friday, July 18, 1997                 TAG: 9707170243

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 04   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARK YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

CLASS PROJECT BECOMES PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION OF REFUGEE'S LIFE

This is the story of two women, two different cultures, one bond of friendship and a work of love.

In January, Lynn Cherin decided to take a Tidewater Community College class. A lifelong student of photography, she hoped to strengthen her resume for a future career change.

During the course, Cherin, a Beach resident since the mid-1960s, discovered that in addition to her original hope, she was going to get the unexpected opportunity to spotlight a longtime friend, Thao Nguyen.

Cherin had an assignment to document in no more than 18 photographs any institution of her choosing. The course, Sociology 295, titled ``Social Institutions through Photography,'' drew together the two disciplines to capture a more complete view of how people and institutions relate to one another.

Cherin decided to focus on Nguyen, who works for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond at the Office of Refugee Resettlement Program in Norfolk and is herself a naturalized refugee from Vietnam.

Cherin carefully sifted through 200 photos she took for the project to find the ones that best told the story.

Her largest photo shoot occurred on a night in February when Nguyen's family celebrated the Vietnamese New Year, an occasion for Cherin to portray the elements of Vietnamese culture that the former refugees have blended into their American home in Lynnbrook Landing.

Cherin first became acquainted with Nguyen about 10 years ago, when she was asked by her friend, Mary Pat Liggio, then the head of Refugee Resettlement, to photograph a group of refugees who had completed a training program to become home health care providers.

Nguyen worked with members of that group. Cherin remembered, ``It was very exciting seeing these refugees becoming a part of the United States, and so thrilled to be learning a skill and going to work.''

Cherin's admiration became friendship and only deepened as she began to know the struggle Nguyen survived in order to have the privilege of becoming a new American.

In 1978 she paid a dear price so she and her three young children could squeeze onto a 50-foot vessel loaded with 150 ``boat people'' heading out of Vietnamese waters.

She left behind a career as a professional pharmacist and a household with servants.

Nearly 20 years later, she and her three children are all successful and productive citizens of their new country. One is in medical school, one teaches nutrition in James City County and a third has just graduated from the University of Virginia and will teach in Japan.

Cherin, a currently unemployed mother of two grown daughters, appreciated the difficulties her friend encountered.

In addition, she said she feels an admiration for the gentleness and beauty of these new Americans, and tried to convey that in her photos, showing different elements of Nguyen's home, culture and family life.

``There's a lot of warmth in their family; you see a lot of touching,'' she said, describing how family members hold hands, interlocking fingers, as they speak together. ``It's wonderful to watch,'' Cherin said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Thao Nguyen and Lynn Cherin met at the Office of Refugee

Resettlement.

Staff photos by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT

Lynn Cherin shows off the photo-collage she made of her friend Thao

Nguyen for a TCC class.

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