Robert J. Elder

Let me tell you about my friend Fou Luang. Fou Luang came to our country amid the vast exodus of refugees from Southeast Asia in the 1970s. He and his family fled from their home in Laos and from the people they loved in a hill-country tribe called the "Mien" (pronounced mee-enr). Like most refugees from those war-torn countries, Fou Luang had experienced more trauma in the weeks and months it took him to reach the U.S. than most of us will know in a lifetime.