and the escape from communism BY BOB BURKE Mai Khanh, bottom right, and her brother and sisters with an uncle and aunt in DaNang, South Vietnam, in 1972. This is the only photograph of the family while still in South Vietnam. Loc and Kim Le in 2018. They were retired and often traveled back to their native Vietnam. This photo was taken two years before COVID-19 would claim both their lives within a 10-day period. or nine-year-old Mai Khanh, it was a frightening Ftime. She and her family scrambled to reach their 昀椀shing boat as artillery shells shattered nearby boats and sent people into the water where many would drown. Bullets from automatic ri昀氀es whistled over Mai’s head as her father yelled for the rest of their family to run for their lives. It was April 1975, on the beach in the pretty seaside town of Vung Tau, South Vietnam, two hours from Saigon, the capital of the country that was falling to the Communists. The United States had withdrawn its troops and large battalions of North Vietnamese Army soldiers overran the undermanned and underequipped South Mai Khanh was nine years old Vietnamese army. But Mai’s family story began when the Communists invaded two generations before. South Vietnam. 36