SAN DIEGO — Linda Willette still remembers Bishop Michael Pham as the boy next door.
Willette, 82, and her husband, Jan, lived in Blue Earth, Minnesota, from 1974 until 2005, when they moved to Minneapolis.
A Catholic, she was an active participant in an ecumenical effort to sponsor Vietnamese refugee families in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and to help them settle in Blue Earth.
One of those families, the Phams, moved in next door. The Willette and Pham children often played together in the open lot between their properties.
“Our youngest son and the youngest of the Pham family were always out playing football,” Willette said.
She recalled how she had felt when she learned that Pope Leo XIV had appointed her one-time neighbor as the seventh bishop of San Diego.
“It was wonderful, exciting news,” she told The Southern Cross.
Willette said that the Phams were “regular church-attenders” and fellow parishioners at Ss. Peter & Paul Catholic Church, located about two blocks from their home, and that the pastor there gave Bishop Pham’s father a job doing custodial work at the parish.
She posits that the future Bishop Pham, who arrived in Blue Earth in 1981 with two siblings and was joined by his parents and four remaining siblings two years later, received “a good foundation in the Catholic Church” while living there.
A small agricultural community in south-central Minnesota, Blue Earth has a population of about 3,160. It’s home to a 55-foot statue of the Jolly Green Giant, mascot of the Green Giant company, which operated a vegetable-canning plant in Le Suer, Minnesota, for over 90 years.
Reflecting on the town’s embrace of Vietnamese refugee families, Willette said, “It was wonderful for a small community to take these people in, even if it was January and 20-below, when the first families arrived.”
Generally, Catholic volunteers assisted newly arrived Catholic refugees, while their Protestant neighbors met the needs of families who belonged to their own denomination.
“But we all worked together as an ecumenical group to make things better for the Vietnamese refugees,” said Willette, who was among those who taught English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for refugees at the local public school.
“We saw to it that they got a good public school education and also went on to vocational school,” she said.
In addition to Linda and Jan, the Willette household also included their daughter and two sons. Between 1976 and 1988, four nephews also lived there.
In 1981, the Willettes sponsored two teenaged Vietnamese refugees, who lived with them for much of that decade. Willette said that, when one of them got married later, it was her husband who “gave away the bride” at the wedding.
Willette said that it was “an honor” for her and her husband to be godparents to another refugee couple’s child.
Eventually, many of the Vietnamese families relocated to warmer climes, finding new homes in California and Texas. (The Phams moved to San Diego in 1985.)
“But I always felt like we gave them a good start,” she said, “and life was good for them in Blue Earth when they needed it the most.”
As for her former neighbor, who was installed July 17 as bishop of San Diego …
“We wish him well, and I just think it’s a great thing,” she said. “He’s a wonderful person, (from) a good family, a wonderful background, and he should be able to succeed greatly as a bishop.”
