DREAM OF DAD NOW A REALITY | Daughter of Vietnam veteran finds him after years of hope
The San Diego Union - Tribune
San Diego, Calif.
Dec 25, 2000
Dong-Phuong
Nguyen
Copyright SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY Dec 25, 2000
 Que Anh
Tran often daydreamed of walking down the aisle with her father on her wedding
day. Yet two weeks before her July nuptials, she still had no idea who he was,
where he lived or what he looked like. Despite an exhaustive Internet search
that began five years ago, she knew nothing more than what her mother had told
her: He was a U.S. military policeman named "Jay" whom she had met during the
Vietnam War.
Deflated, Tran married in a church in El Cajon without her
dad and went on her honeymoon to the East Coast to visit new in-laws in
Virginia. The National Archives and Records Administration building, which holds
federal government papers and mementos, loomed in nearby Washington, D.C. Aging
documents there held the key to a man named Jay.
Jay was tall, very thin,
with reddish hair. Twenty-eight years ago, he was a 20-year-old from Racine,
Wis., and a member of the Army's military police, stationed in Saigon. His name
was Jay, but his friends called him "Sless."
It was 1972 and Sless and
his buddies were on the Army compound, relaxing in the clubhouse when he spotted
a petite Vietnamese woman with long, black hair standing at the guard
shack.
"She was a pretty young lady," Sless recalled.
Thoa Tran
was 20, just like Sless. They started talking and, soon after, they began
dating. Then, in March 1973, less than a year after they had met, Sless was
flown out of Vietnam.
Thoa Tran, who had refused to follow Sless to
America because she feared going to a foreign country, was pregnant. She had a
baby girl Oct. 28, 1973, and named her Que Anh.
Back in Wisconsin, Sless
exchanged a few letters with Thoa Tran but that communication suddenly stopped.
When the Communists defeated the South in 1975, Thoa Tran burned her photographs
of Sless and his letters for fear the government would punish her for
befriending the Americans.
Que Anh, who was ostracized for being
Amerasian, helped her mother sell cigarettes, fruit and wood in the streets. She
often asked about her father while growing up, but her mother could no longer
recall his address in the United States, or his last name. All she remembered
was his first name, his nickname, and the years he was in
Vietnam.
Whenever Que Anh asked what her father looked like, she was told
to look in the mirror.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Sless had
returned to Wisconsin, but he never really came back, his mother
said.
"He was not the same person," she recalled. "All these years, there
was always a shadow in the back of his eyes."
Sless, now 48 and a
machinist, was married three times, but never had children.
He had told
only two people about his experience in Vietnam, and what he offered was
limited.
"I told my ex-wife and mother, someday, somebody is going to
come knocking on the door and say 'Hi, Dad,' " he said. "But I didn't know what
happened to her mother. I didn't know if she was alive or what. I had wondered
all these years."
In 1990, Que Anh Tran and her mother immigrated to the
United States under the Orderly Departure Program, which grants visas to
Amerasians and their families.
They lived in City Heights and Que Anh
Tran went to Grossmont College. There she met John Gross, the man who became her
college sweetheart and would become her husband.
It was at his urging
that she started looking for her father, the man named Jay.
Together,
they e-mailed Army veterans and did research over the Internet but, without a
last name, they ran into walls at every end. The closest they got was narrowing
down his unit.
 Que Anh was graduated from UCSD in June 1999 and,
13 months later, she married Gross.
While visiting Gross' relatives in
Virginia during their honeymoon in July, the couple decided to stop at the
National Archives building in Washington, D.C.
They got help from Richard
Boylan, a longtime employee in the modern military section, who has worked on
more than 200 searches but who warns people that the success rate is less than 1
percent.
In front of them were thousands of boxes containing millions of
records. For more than two hours, they combed through sheets of loose paper and
made photocopies of records pertaining to military men named
Jay.
Finally, in the last stack of papers, a name jumped out from one of
the pages: Jay Slesarenko.
It was a letter of commendation, asking that
the Bronze Medal be awarded to him.
Tran's heart pounded. He was the one,
she just felt it in her heart.
That night, a search engine produced a sky
diver named Jay Slesarenko in Wisconsin.
A day later, while visiting
other relatives in Pennsylvania, they looked up his name and found a phone
number for him in Racine, Wis. They dialed the number and heard a voice on an
answering machine: "If I know ya, leave a message. If you're a telemarketer,
drop dead."
Que Anh Tran chickened out and didn't leave a message. They
called four more times over two days before Gross finally left a
message.
Slesarenko came home, played the machine and a man's voice
explained that he was doing research for his bride and was searching for someone
named Jay Slesarenko.
Slesarenko sat down to think. "I just needed a
beer," he said. "I had a feeling I knew what it was about. After an hour, an
hour and a half, I finally got enough nerve to call back."
The
conversation that followed was lengthy and nerve-wracking for both Tran and
Slesarenko. Gross did most of the talking and asked Slesarenko many questions to
see whether his experience in Vietnam matched the story Tran's mother had told
her. Because so much time had passed, fuzzy memories caused
discrepancies.
"I told her I'm not trying to lie to you or anything --
but you can't believe the things you just unleashed in my mind that had been put
away for 27 years," Slesarenko said.
He told Tran that he had pictures,
and suggested that she look through them. They arranged to meet in Wisconsin the
next day -- July 23 -- because Tran's layover was in Chicago, about an hour
away.
After the conversation ended, Slesarenko went upstairs and took out
a box that he had not opened in 27 years. Inside were his jungle fatigues and
some pictures.
"The more and more I started thinking and looking, I was
pretty sure that she was my daughter," he said.
The following day, Tran
and her husband drove to Wisconsin from Chicago and met with Slesarenko and his
girlfriend.
Tran got out of the car and walked over to where Slesarenko
was waiting. "You look just like your mom," he said. They had breakfast and
Slesarenko took his daughter to Racine to visit her grandmother, aunts, uncles
and cousins. Tran called him Dad.
The tearful and emotional reunion was
short-lived because Tran and her husband had to catch a flight back to San
Diego. Yet Tran and Gross were able to spend Thanksgiving in Racine and, this
past Thursday, Slesarenko flew to San Diego to spend Christmas with his
daughter.
Tran's mother, who married after she came to America, has only
spoken to Slesarenko over the telephone. Still, Tran's hope is to one day have a
family picture taken of her, wedged between her mother and father.
"It's
overwhelming," Tran said. "I had thought so much about it, I have no words to
describe what it's like. It feels very good to know where I came from. I feel
complete. It's amazing."
She has not stopped beaming since finding her
father, and she even talks about renewing her wedding vows someday so Dad can
walk her down the aisle.
"That's an honor reserved for somebody that has
actually raised her and done things for her," Slesarenko said. "I'm taking
credit for things I didn't do. I missed 27 years. I don't know how I can ever
make it up to her."
[Illustration]
2 PICS; Caption: 1. Que Anh
Tran walked out of Lindbergh Field last week with her new-found father, Jay
Slesarenko, after she and her husband, John Gross, tracked down the Vietnam
veteran in Racine, Wis., and he flew here to spend Christmas with his daughter.
2. Jay Slesarenko had a lot to share with daughter Que Anh Tran when she picked
him up at the airport. (B-3); Credit: 1,2. Earnie Grafton /
Union-Tribune
Credit: STAFF WRITER
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