(The regular type was read by Dr Paul Gooch. and the italic by Chandra, his wife)

It is December 31, 1966.  I am born in Salt Lake City, the first of 10 children.  I enter a world of freedom and opportunity.  My father is a computer systems analyst who left the family farm to pursue a vocation in technology; my mother, homemaker and daughter of an accountant.
We are rising middle class.

It is April 24, 1971.  I am 4 years old.   The world is a safe place.   My neighborhood is my kingdom.  the Soviet spacecraft SOYUZ 10 returns to earth.

It is April 24, 1971.  I am born in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, the second of three children.  I enter a world of privilege and royalty.  My father, a fighter pilot in the Royal
Cambodian Air Force--was fortunate to be born into upper-caste society;  my mother also from an upper-caste family marries my father at age 15.  Their marriage was pre-arranged when she was 5 and he was 15.  Maids take care of all mundane tasks.  We are happy, but all is not well.  The Viet Nam war just ended.   The United States recently deposed our king and installed an interim government.   The United States is secretly bombing the growing
communist forces that hide in our jungles.  My father helps with the bombing each day when he flies.

It is April 14, 1975, we live in Santequin, Utah while we wait for our home in Mona to be finished.  My father is running the room-size computer that does all of Nephi Rubber Plant's accounting.  My world is a safe place, except for an occasional school bully.   Today President Richard Nixon ends the blockade against the People's Republic of China.

It is April 14, 1975.  Cambodian New Year is just a couple of days away.  Nervous tension
covers the land like a suffocating blanket.  Rumors have it that the Khmer Rouge are getting closer.  My father pre-flights a plane and starts the engines.  While the engines are warming, he runs home and tries to get my mother to pack one small suitcase for the family--it is time to escape......He wants to defect to the United States.  My mother encourages him to stay and fight for our country.   We delay until it is everlastingly too late....the Khmer Rouge take the airport a few hours later.

It is April 17, 1975.  The Pittsburgh Penguins take a 3-0 lead over the New York Islanders in the Quarterfinals --- I am an American.  My world is a safe place....I am completely unaware that today's events on the other side of the world will change my life forever.

It is April 17, 1975.  Cambodian New Year.  The Khmer rouge declare victory.  Many people are excited that the war is over.  No one realized that this is the eve of one of the world's bloodiest genocides.   My family, along with everyone else in Phnom Penh, is forced from our home.

Immediately, the soldiers take our car, but don't know how to drive it.  The soldiers want to know what my father did for a living.   We realize that many people are starting to die.  My father claims to be a taxi driver--momentarily saving his life.  We are but flotsam in a sea of one million people marching to an unknown destination.   We walk until darkness falls then sleep in the open with the masses.

It is October 10, 1975.  We live in Mona now.  For the rest of my life, I will say I am from Mona when asked.  It is one of Utah' quintessential small Mormon towns.   Freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom from hunger--- I am 9 years old and boundless opportunity exists for me to hunt, roam, play, work and learn.  In school I learn (somewhat reluctantly) to read, write and do math.  Elizabeth Taylor marries for the sixth time.

It is October 10, 1975.  We are in a forced labor camp.   Most of the educated people have already been killed.   Sickness and death surround us.  Many are showing the effects of malnutrition.   There is never enough to eat.   Mother and Father work under the threat of death from sun-up to sun-down.   We are told how to think--the "organization" is now our parent--they will provide everything.  If we get caught crying or laughing over past memories they will kill us.  Everything from our past life is gone - money, books, hospitals, libraries, schools, religion - everything. 

The leaders tell us it is the year "Zero."  Yes, for us today became "year Zero."  Someone told the leaders was my father was a fighter pilot.  Two soldiers armed with machine guns came and took my father away.   We watched in agony--as our father shuffled out of sight, resigned to his fate.  We would never see my father again.

It is mid July 1976.  American celebrates 200 years of freedom.  This year's Ute Stampede Rodeo is the most colorful and patriotic ever.  I am proud to be an American.  Sweet freedom's song did swell the breeze:

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.
America, America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm they soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.....

It is mid July, 1976.  Conditions grow worse.  Grandfather died of starvation several months ago.  We are giving one cup of cooked water with a few grains of rice once a day.   Bugs, frogs and snakes are getting harder to find--but we eat them in secret.   To get caught could mean death.  Mother occasionally saves us by trading a small gold link from a chain that I wear
hidden in my skirt for a cup of rice that someone is brave enough to steal from "the organization."  We cook it and devour it under cover of darkness--knowing we are dead if we get caught.  Mother encourages us to pray---someday, maybe God will take us to America!

It is 1977.  Apple Computer Inc., Radio shack and Commodore all introduce mass-market computers.  I can't begin to comprehend how the personal computer will bring untold opportunity and wealth to our nation.

It is 1977.  We are weary of seeing death.  We live in the "killing fields."   Each day we wonder if we will see sunset.  Soldiers commit unspeakable horrors in front of our very eyes.  Babies are tossed and caught on bayonets.  Men are shot in front of us.  Whole families are buried alive to save bullets.  Mother is devastated when she witnesses the bodies of our very good friends floating down the river, tied together, and bloated beyond recognition.

It is sometime in March, 1979.  The Supreme Court rules 8-1 that police cannot randomly stops cars.

It is sometime in March, 1979.  Soldiers come and take my 9-year old sister away.  They force her into the jungle with several other children for intensive re-education.   They teach them that there are no longer families, no love, no parents, no children.  The organization is the only parent.   the organization is to be obeyed over all else.   If your family is breaking the rules, you must tell the organization so they can correct them.   My sister sees other children die of starvation.   Some children are killed for disobedience.  She wants to cry out, but doesn't dare.
One night, she escapes with 4 other girls.   A miracle---she finds her way back to us.  Some unseen hand helped her along, she tells us.   Good thing!....two days later our family is forced to move to our fourth and final camp.   We would have never seen her again.

It is early April 1979.   I am 12.   I know of death.  My grandfather recently passed away from old age.  A neighbor boy died in a motorcycle accident.  The cold are is full force and I fear a nuclear holocaust with its grisly aftermath.   The carp are spawning and I spend nearly all day spear fishing in the Mona Reservoir with friends.

It is early April 1979.   We are now in the worst of hells.   We will only spend a few weeks in this place.   We are asked to work, but we aren't fed.  There is no reason to feed the dead.  Our purpose here is to die.   Our execution date is set for mid April.   Each day, the families on that day's list are marched off and killed.  My mother finally gives up hope.  We are numb.  For four years now, the leaders have blared a chilling slogan over camp loudspeakers, "To destroy you is no loss, to keep you is no benefit."   We are human refuse.   Three days before our execution, our sector is liberated in invading North Vietnamese.   We are released to the Chaos of fleeing refugees.   Two million of my countrymen were not so fortunate--they were murdered by "the organization."  Within a couple of weeks we are in Thailand's refugee camps.

It is October 2, 1981.  I am a teenager with all the attitude I can muster.  Boy, I can't wait to leave this small town.  I fear nothing.  I know nothing of hunger or even want.  I live in the land of opportunity.  2,500 miles away, Lady Liberty beckons from New York Harbor:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

It is October 2, 1981.  President Reagan has opened doors to America.  The world is searching for places to assimilate countless refugees from southeast Asia.  My mother's prayers are answered.   A group of Catholic Nuns in Jefferson City, Missouri has sponsored my family and we have stepped off an airplane into the brisk Missouri fall cold.   Tired, penniless, huddled, wretched, discarded humanity---yearning to breathe free--I am an American now!

It is July 22, 1987.  I finally got out of that little town.  My church sent me on a mission to Boston of all places.  I've been out here for 16 months now and have spent most of my mission working with refugees from Cambodia in the town of Lowell.   I am learning their language by the seat of my pants-Cambodian won't be taught in the mission-training center for another 4 or 5 years.   I am stunned to learn of the genocide that brought so many homeless, wretched masses to our shores.  Their stories cut me to the quick....I feel such reverence for the boisterous sea of liberty enjoyed by all Americans---freedoms given us by the great creator and codified in the US Constitution....Someone called today and gave us the name of another refugee family that wants to know about our church.

It is July 22, 1987.   We live in Lowell, Massachusetts.   After 5 years in Missouri, mother decided to move us to a place where there are many other refugees.   She goes to night school for English and works two jobs.  My brother, sister and I go to school.  Learning English is the most difficult subject of all....Tonight two missionaries are coming to our house---Mother wants to know about their church.

It is July 22, 1989.  I have been off my mission for about a year and a half.  The past two summers I have been back in Boston building swimming pools with my brother. 

Today I married Chantra---the most divine and noble creature I have ever met.   Our courtship took unusual twists and turns as we missed a culture of arranged marriages and no dating with a culture of playing the field for all you are worth before deciding on a mate.

It is July 22, 1989.   Today I left my family at the tender age of 18 to marry another American.  I'm not sure I like these American wedding receptions.  In my native land, weddings last well day.  Pomp, ceremony, dancing and seven course meals finish the evening.  Instead I had to stand in line while well-wishers filed in, then out of our reception with only a mint, cake and small cup of wedding punch.

It is today.   I have 5 children.  I live the American dream.  I own a business and a home.  I was born an American--free from fear, free from hunger, free from want.   I live in the land of liberty and opportunity, America The Beautiful.

It is today.  I have 5 children.  I live the American dream.  I own a business and a home.  I was born into tyranny and despotism, once rejected as human debris. 

I am now an American Citizen----free from fear, free from hunger, free from want.  I live in the land of liberty and opportunity - America the Beautiful!

(Dr. Paul Gooch and Chandra spoke to our group on January 5, 2012)