By Amber Nimocks
An early spring snowfall and a team of smiling UUFR members welcomed Ly Van Khue, his wife and their six children when they arrived at Raleigh Durham Airport on March 7, 1980.
A photographer from The News & Observer was also on hand to document the occasion. The Lys were the first refugee family that UUFR ever sponsored, beginning a tradition of offering kind and fair treatment to those seeking refuge from other countries that continues today with the work of UUFR’s very active Immigrant and Refugee Team.
Jane Hunt was among those who went to the airport to pick the Ly family up in 1980. She said they were surprised to learn that the mother was pregnant.
“Dr. Thompson (Gisila Flemmings’ step-father) did all the medical care,” she said. “We helped getting the kids in school, getting the father a job, and whatever other help we could offer.”
“After they had been in Raleigh a year or so – new baby born and welcomed – they packed up their belongings and sent them to San Jose, California, via UPS. They rented two cars and drove out to San Jose,” Jane said. “There were many other Vietnamese families there. My husband and I visited the family in San Jose a few years later and, trying to locate them, found several pages of Lys in the phone book. We kept in touch for several years and the children all were successful, several of them became doctors, I think.”
Sponsoring the family and helping them get settled was a heavy lift for the fledgling ministry team. Lutheran Services aided UUFR in the effort. Betty Brown, who compiled a history of UUFR to mark its first 40 years, writes that, “All the work involved in housing, feeding, clothing, health care, school attendance, teaching English and myriads of other things tested our commitment.”
She quotes James Quinn, who was UUFR president at the time saying, “This required the cooperation of the whole fellowship added to the extraordinary efforts of a few.”
Brown’s history recalls that after the Lys left for California, a Laotian family of four moved into the UUFR house in 1988, and after them an American-Asian family of five occupied the residence.
Over the years, various individual UUFR volunteers worked with other organizations to support efforts to help resettle refugees, and in 2018 the congregation organized the Immigrant and Refugee Team ministry team. Pat McLaughlin was elected as chair/facilitator of the team, which now counts 55 members.
Amy Blackwell, who is very active on the team, serves as the expert on dealing with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, the international NGO that connects volunteer organizations with opportunities to help those in need.
The team meets monthly via Zoom and can organize quickly when needs arise.
“The refugee agencies know us well, and they offer us opportunities and we do well,” Amy said. “We can get a group together of five or six in a hurry. The agencies know we’ll respond – we get a lot of requests.”
Blackwell recently took stock of the many ways UUFR’s team has helped over the past few years. Since 2019, UUFR’s teams have furnished 12 apartments for resettling families, and the UUFR Stitchers have donated more than 60 quilts. In September 2021, the team built 16 sets of bunkbeds.
The team conducts ongoing collections of clothes, diapers, car seats, bicycles, shoes, toys and baby items. Since 2021, they have offered children’s clothing stores of donated items for families in the spring and fall with another coming up April 29.
In addition to the things that refugees need, they also provide friendship and support.
They hold cultural events for the children, including Valentine’s Day and Halloween parties. Two UUFR families hosted Afghan high school students in 2022.
A subset of the group has become a Circle of Friends for a young mother recently immigrated from Congo. A Partnership with Welcome House, the circle members visit her regularly and provide emotional support and friendship as she acclimates and learns English.
They vet volunteers, doing background checks, which are required for personal contact with refugees, and sometimes they clean the apartments.
The team’s advocacy efforts have included hosting Rep. David Price, arranging a call with Rep. Deborah Ross, and a letter writing campaign addressing federal immigration legislative issues.
Other outreach efforts included an April 2019 Interfaith Community Education Forum
on sanctuary and working with Umstead Park Community Church, Temple Beth Or, Highland Methodist, Pullen Baptist Church, and Eno River Unitarian Universalist. The team works often with USCRI, Welcome House Raleigh, Lutheran Services, The Green Chair Project and First Baptist Church.