This Page Full-Screen | Your Link Here

Tuesday, August 31, 1999

Hometown of first Vietnamese-American NFL player raises funds for billboard

By Art Chapman
Knight Ridder Newspapers

FULTON, Texas — Now that Hurricane Bret has become a soggy nuisance to inland farmers, residents of the Rockport-Fulton area near Corpus Christi can turn their attention to more pressing matters.

They are about $5,000 short of the funds needed to raise a billboard on the area's western edge. The billboard will acknowledge Rockport-Fulton as the home of Dat Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-American player to wear a National Football League uniform.

Nguyen, a 5-foot-11, 231-pound linebacker, was taken as a third-round draft choice by the Cowboys. As the team's training camp closed last week, Nguyen was the second-team middle linebacker.

“It could mean more fans for the Dallas Cowboys,” said Diane Probst, executive director of the Rockport-Fulton Area Chamber of Commerce. “When he was playing for Texas A&M, everybody here watched him very closely. The whole town was in tune; everyone was talking about him.”

Also, Probst said, the Rockport area is heavily populated by retirees from other parts of the country. They might not have been Cowboys fans when they got here, but having someone from this area playing for Dallas might cause a shift in allegiance.

“Not all of them knew about Texas A&M when they got here, but they quickly adopted the Aggies as their team,” she said.

Nguyen was a 1998 Lombardi Trophy winner for the Aggies. He also was a Dick Butkus Award finalist and a Big 12 Conference and national defensive player of the year.

Those are the kinds of achievements that will be noted on the billboard, which will be installed on Texas 35 west of Rockport near Aransas Pass.

Probst said the billboard will cost about $10,000. Half has been raised through private donations.

“The locals here are very proud of their Dat Nguyen,” Probst said.

As Nguyen's athletic ability and popularity rose, so did interest in his story — conceived in Vietnam and born in the United States after his family endured a frightening and dangerous boat trip out of Vietnam.

The family moved from a relocation center at Fort Chaffee, Ark., to Kalamazoo, Mich., had a short stay in Fort Worth, and then moved to New Orleans and eventually to Fulton in 1979.

Nguyen's name is prominent in this coastal area. His family operates a marine supply business, a crab company and a restaurant.

The restaurant, called Hu-Dat's for both Dat and his brother Hung, is painted white with maroon trim. Inside, the walls are covered with plaques and pictures of Nguyen's athletic triumphs.

In one corner rests a glass case with a signed football and his Texas A&M jersey.

It is a shrine of sorts, speaking both to Nguyen's athletic ability and to the assimilation of the Vietnamese people into the Texas Gulf Coast lifestyle.

Cultures mix freely in the restaurant. If there were any scars of racial bias, or hardship, they have been erased. Hu-Dat's is a gathering place to enjoy Vietnamese and Chinese food, and an information center for locals who want to know how Nguyen is doing with the Cowboys.

“I wish he would call,” said Nguyen's cousin Canh, who works at the restaurant. “We have people coming in here every day wanting to know about him, but we haven't heard from him in a couple of weeks. He called his mom, but he didn't call here.”

Nguyen was home earlier this summer and signed autographs at the restaurant. Also, during a “Dat Nguyen Day” he spent several hours at the high school athletic complex signing autographs.

Canh Nguyen said his cousin was always popular in town. He was the first Vietnamese-American to do a lot of things here: the first to play on the soccer team, the first to play football.

“He's always been pretty popular. He's always been a nice guy,” Canh Nguyen said.

Canh Nguyen said the restaurant is not only a gathering place for Aggies and former Aggies in the area, but also a meeting spot for Texas Longhorn fans.

“A lot of Longhorns come down here on fishing trips, and they stop by to hear about Dat,” he said.

Probst said the chamber of commerce gets two to three inquiries a week about the location of the family restaurant. They also field weekly telephone calls from various news media outlets asking about Nguyen.

“ABC News was recently here doing a documentary on Dat and the acceptance of the Vietnamese in this community,” she said. “A lot of people ask us about the Vietnamese culture.”

Probst said that there about 100 Vietnamese-American families in the Rockport-Fulton area and that they are “people of very good moral character and values.”

Canh Nguyen said his family is used to the inquiries. He is only sorry that his cousin's Cowboys jersey isn't displayed in the restaurant alongside the maroon and white Aggie jersey.

“I bought his Cowboys jersey once,” Canh Nguyen said. “It was No. 90, and I think I paid about $80 or $90 for it. Then he changed numbers. His brother told me Dat was going to change again before the season starts, so I've decided to wait.

“It could get expensive.”

(c) 1999, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Visit the Star-Telegram on the World Wide Web: www.star-telegram.com.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.