Thanh Van Nguyen

In Loving Memory of Thanh Van Nguyen

Thanh Van Nguyen, 59, passed away at home on August 27, 2026 with Garfield, cat, honorary grandchild, and his close companion during his final years.

Thanh was born in Vi Thanh, Vietnam, where his story began with his parents and eight siblings. Though life would set sail across the ocean to a new country, Vietnam remained integral to his identity. Many of his siblings continue to reside in and around Vi Thanh, carrying on the ancestral roots.

As a young man, Thanh left Vietnam during the war and began a difficult journey of escaping to America. He faced uncertainty and hardship being a foreigner, refugee, and unfamiliar with local etiquette. However, with his instinctive persistence, grit, and determination, he rose to become a middle-american with just the clothes on his back.

Thanh worked as an electronics technician, specializing in RF technology. His education was largely self-taught through books, observation, experimentation, and the determination to understand how things worked. If there was something he wanted to know, he would find a way to learn it. If something needed fixing, he would fix it.

Curiosity followed him into nearly every aspect of life. He was always beginning a project or discovering a new interest. He gardened, repaired old cars, roadtripped across the country, and enjoyed a good game of pai gow.

At the heart was creating a foundation for the future. The hardships he experienced as a boat survivor of the Vietnam War shaped his insistence to ensure his children had opportunities that he could not afford. He worked—at one part in his life three jobs to establish security for his family and give his children the chance to grow into the first generation with futures that he was unable to attain.

Thanh was preceded in death by his wife, who passed away on October 16, 2018, and by his parents.

He is survived by a son, a daughter, seven siblings, and his honorary grandchild.

After spending his adult years half a world away from where he was born, Thanh makes one final trip home. He has been cremated and will rest in the family plot in Vietnam, returning to be memorialized alongside his parents.

May he rest in peace, reunited with those who went before him, and may his memory continue through the family he built and the generations that follow.

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