Sam Schrade spent the first years of his life in a Vietnamese orphanage during the Vietnam War. As the conflict came to a close, the children, staff, and their families fled the country in search of a better life. The orphans and staff of the orphanage made a harrowing journey to the sea to try and board a ship and make it to an island off the coast where they could shelter until things called down. A very young Schrade eventually made it to Dallas, where a local family adopted him in 1975. Being born with the common last name of Nguyen, lacking paperwork, and being the youngest of the party to escape from the orphanage in Vietnam means that he has never connected with his birth parents.
The group was able to find safe passage through the states because of the work of a missionary in Singapore who knew the group and connected with them when the landed in Singapore but were denied the ability to land along with the thousands of ships fleeing Vietnam. The missionary made contact with the U.S. and eventually the U.N. stepped in to save the grou.
Here, the founder of media company DNA Studios, which produces sports and other programming with mobile TV trucks and television studios that broadcast live sports and other events for sports and news TV stations. The business specializes in broadcasting regional sports in Texas and the surrounding states, but broadcasts coast to coast.
Here, he shares more about his journey to America. “We loaded up 98 people on a boat and were heading toward an island when the engine broke, and we floated off into the sea. We floated for five days, and we were running out of food and water. We saw a Taiwanese tanker ship and thought we would get saved, but the captain did not allow the ship to help us; it kept going. Later that day, the captain changed his heart and turned around, throwing our boat a rope and towing us for two days. We were cut loose outside of Singapore, but the country would not let anyone in, with thousands of refugee boats on its shores. Miraculously, a local soldier found a missionary from Houston whose church sponsored our group. The UN helped us travel from Singapore through Switzerland to New York then Arkansas, and we arrived at the Houston church that sponsored our resettlement. I was later adopted out of Buckner Children’s Home. Our group started a nonprofit that rebuilt the orphanage we came from after it was destroyed following the war.”
Author
