 Good evening everyone. Let me first introduce myself. I'm Ramiro Salazar. I'm the Director of the San Antonio Public Library System. I'm very excited to be here this evening. I feel privileged to be part of a program that we are going to present to you. A very special program. When I first learned about this particular individual that you'll soon meet, I've indicated, you know, this story needs to be told. And that's one of the reasons we brought it downtown to have more space for more people to attend and to hear this story. And our special guest will be appropriately introduced very shortly. But I do want to acknowledge several individuals that played an important role in bringing this special program today. I'm going to start with Joel Banglin, who is our branch services coordinator and who leads the Diversity Committee in developing programs for the library and for the community to raise awareness about the value and the importance of having a diverse community and appreciating a diverse community. And so they work very hard as a committee to develop programs to offer throughout the library system. We have 28 library locations, so we have a large footprint in the community. I also want to recognize Sherry Hardin, who is the branch manager for the Westpaw Branch Library, for being instrumental in... Thank you, Sherry. And inviting and actually making happen that we're able to provide this and introduce this individual to you, very special individual to you very shortly. So I wanted to, I want to acknowledge them. And two, I also want to acknowledge Charlotte and Lucas, who is the head of Nowcast. And this program will be broadcast throughout the community. Thanks to Nowcast. So thanks, Charlotte Ann, for your continued support. I know you were with us this morning when we introduced the Teen Center upstairs on the third floor. By the way, the Central Library, we're celebrating 20 years when it first opened. And so what a wonderful way to mark that anniversary by hosting this program. So today, this evening, you will be hearing an incredible story of an individual with incredible fortitude determination. It's just a wonderful story that needs to be told, as I indicated earlier. And to help me to formally introduce to you our special guest, I want to introduce to you Colonel Ruben Sagan with the United States Air Force. Colonel, we're so happy that you're here to formally introduce our very special guest, Colonel. Thank you, Director. Before we get going, some housekeeping notes. I'd ask that you all please silence your cell phones or put them on vibrate. For those of you in need of facilities, bathrooms are directly to the left as you exit this room. And in case of emergency, please exit directly from the back of the doors towards the rear. And most importantly, after you hear the wonderful talk tonight, the books that Ambassador has available are at the back of the room to my right. So they'll be available at the end of this evening as well. So good evening, and thank you for coming to the celebration of Asian Pacific Heritage Month. It gives me great pleasure as an Asian American to introduce former Ambassador to the United Nations, Si Chan Siv, who now calls San Antonio home. Former Ambassador Siv is the international best-selling author of Golden Bones, an extraordinary journey from hell in Cambodia to a new life in America. And the poetry book, Golden Words. In 2001, after unanimous confirmation by the Senate, it was appointed by President George W. Bush as an Ambassador to the UN, serving until 2006. In June 2005, Ambassador Siv represented the United States at the 60th anniversary of the UN in the footsteps of President Truman in 1945, President Eisenhower in 1955, President Johnson in 1965, and President Clinton in 1995. From 1989 to 1993, Ambassador Siv served at the White House as Deputy Assistant to President George H. W. Bush and at the State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary. In the private sector, he has held positions in social services, educational exchange, financial management, and investment banking. Ambassador Siv holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University. He escaped Cambodia's killing fields in 1976 and was resettled as a refugee in Connecticut with his mother's scarf, an empty rice bag, and two dollars. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the George H. W. Bush Award for Outstanding Public Service, the U.S. Army Commanders Award, and Brazilian Academy of Art, Culture, and History honors. He has been a volunteer in the Civil Air Patrol and an honorary commander in the United States Air Force. Today, former Ambassador Siv is widely recognized in the community as being a leader who provides global strategic advice and gives motivational speeches around the United States and the world. We are very fortunate to have him here today to share his inspirational story with us. By sharing his incredible journey with us this evening, he is allowing us an insight into the lives of those who came before us and shaped our present. Please join me in welcoming Ambassador Sijon Siv. Thank you very much, Colonel, for the kind introduction. And thank you, Ramiro, and the Public Library of San Antonio for hosting this event. There is an old saying in Oklahoma, that behind a good man there is a great Texan woman who happened to be a librarian. My wife, Martha, somebody named George W. Bush is also married to a librarian, and we both agree that we married up. I want to take you on a little journey back in time and in space to celebrate this particular heritage month of Asian American and Pacific ancestry. If I can make this work, does this work, Andy? Anyway, we are here to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, which was actually proclaimed by President George H. W. Bush, my former boss in May 1990. He extended the weekly celebration from one week to one month, and since then it has been in celebration. Can I control from here? You made very wonderful. That's great. So as was mentioned in the intro, I was born in Cambodia, which will take us about 22 hours to fly from San Antonio to this airport. I was born less than a mile from this airport, so when you go to Nong Ping, the capital, you land at my village. Cambodia was under the French rule when I was born, so we grew up speaking French, eating French food, which was not a bad idea. And until 1953, when Vice President Mrs. Nixon came to visit, then our teachers told us that there was another country, much bigger and farther away than France, called United States of America. As you can see, it's quite a long way from Texas, and if Cambodia were in the United States, it would be the size of Missouri. My father died when I was nine years old, so my mother, knowing that education was important, worked very hard to bring me up. At one point, she had to sell lotus leaves used in poor countries in the 50s in Cambodia to wrap produce that people bought in the markets every morning. She told me to never give up hope, no matter what happens. So that was instilled in me since I was a child. Since they didn't have anything, I said books, books, books, I planned, I spent a lot of time in the library. The National Library of Cambodia was founded in 1924, actually in Christmas Eve. There's Martha and I presenting a boat to the librarian in front of the inscription, which has been used as an epigraph of the book. The inscription up there was in Khmer and also in French, and it read, force ties for a time, ideas bind forever. And we decided to use this inscription of the National Library of Cambodia as the epigraph of Golden Bones. A few years ago when Martha and I were in Cambodia, Bogota, that thanks to the foreign minister of Colombia, she had the book translated into Spanish. They use inscription as a background of my presentation. And as you can read, the same, La Fossa Atapu en Tiempo, Las Ideas Unen para siempre, force ties for a time, ideas bind forever. In 1969, I became a flight attendant. I flew on this French built aircraft called the Caravelle, which looked like a DC9. It was the first mid-range jet build and it was used all over Europe, in Africa and also in French, former French colony. I flew all over Asia, I went to China and I was quite amazed or in a way incomprehensibly to see what happened in China at the peak of the Cultural Revolution. One of my claims to fame is that I've been to China three years before Nixon and Kissinger. What I saw there was unbelievable and I never thought for a moment that that revolution would reach my homeland. Cambodia was involved in the Vietnam War, the Cambodians were fighting against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese first and then against the Khmer Rouge. On April 10, 1975, President Ford gave an address to the joint session of Congress. He said for this administration, the time is short and the options are few as far as Cambodia and South Vietnam are concerned. Two days later, I was told by the U.S. Embassy to be at the embassy within one hour if I wanted to be airlifted out of Cambodia. I was concerned about the plight of some refugees, 3,000 refugees in a province, in a standard province. My colleagues and I were working in dangerous circumstances to save the lives of many refugees and displaced people, those who had fled the war-torn countryside to seek safety and shelter in Pnumpung, the capital and all the provincial cities. So I decided to go and meet with the governor of a province on that province. When I came to the embassy, I was told that the last helicopter had taken off 30 minutes before. So five days later, the Khmer Rouge came in and turned the country upside down. Two weeks later, Saigon fell and the Viet Cong took control of South Vietnam. I want to pause a moment because after this month, or not actually this month, but last month, April marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and Cambodia. So in a way the end of the Vietnam War was commemorated last month. And I wanted to take the moment to pay tribute to all the veterans, especially those who served in the Vietnam War, who was unfortunately not well recognized when they returned. And we want to thank them for their service. And also we want to pray for the memories of those people who lost. The Vietnam War ended on April 30th, 1935. And then the flux of refugees started to come. During that brief moment, a friend of mine, who is one of my instructors, was flying Navy planes to drop supplies to those refugees, especially the Vietnamese, both people who tried to escape the communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, to seek safer harbor in Malaysia, in Thailand. And he is one of my best pilots and I'm happy, Jim Gibson, that you are here. Yes, Jim flew a lot of missions helping those boat people in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Seas. So back to the 1975, when the Khmer Rouge came in, as I said a moment ago, they turned the country upside down. They killed anybody who wore glasses. That's a sign of education. They killed teachers, nurses, government officials, business people, military personnel, anybody who had not been with them during their revolution. So I threw away my glasses. I pretended to see nothing, to hear nothing, to know nothing, to speak of nothing. My mother gave me her wedding ring, her scarf, and a bag of rice. And she told me to run. No matter what happens, never give up hope. So I rode a bicycle across Cambodia for three weeks, using fake passes and false excuses to get through the Khmer Rouge checkpoints. I was captured near Thailand and they tied my arms behind my back because they suspected that I was trying to cross the border, which was actually my intention. A truck driver whom I had met a few days before saved my life. He said that I was an innocent person, wandering around, looking for my family. For the next year I was put in huge labor camps. The whole country was turned into a labor camp, into the killing fields. We were forced to work 18 hours a day. We were given a bowl of rancid soup a day. At night I never knew if I would be alive the following morning. When I woke up, I said I would make it to freedom. In January 1976, they were looking for a crane operator. The crane operator would use a crane to pick up timber along the Thai border. And that would increase my chances across the Thailand, because most of the timber were found there along the border. I never been in a crane in my life, but I raised my hand. I said I was a crane operator. So what I did at night, I burned small candles, I pulled a blanket over my head, and I began to study the instructions. That fact alone would have cost me the life if I were caught reading something in English. But I researched, because in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge there were two kinds of people. Those who had died and those who would die. During the subsequent trips to the border, I studied the land area, and I found out the shortest distance to Thailand was somewhere between the timber pickup point and the nearest village. And I knew exactly where to jump off the truck, but I could not jump to the left, nor to the right, because the driver would have seen me, or the Khmer Rouge soldier with an AK-47 would have seen me through the rear view. So what I did, I crawled on top of the timber, all the way to behind the truck, and I just dropped myself. It looked something like this. I was caught in a piece of lumber and I was dragged for a few hundred yards before I was flung off. Then I picked myself up and I began to run, to crawl, to walk, to swim for three days, having nothing to eat or to drink. I fell in a booby trap which is a deep hole full of punchy stick, sharp bamboo sticks. They were supposed to catch the unlucky victims at the stomach or the heart. But I'm tall for a Cambodian, so the sticks hit me in my legs. I was severely wounded, but I wasn't killed. So I pulled myself out of that hole and began to limp along until I got to Thailand, where I was jailed for illegal entry. I had no paper. Later on they realized that it was an instant refugee, so they sent me to a refugee camp. This is the size of a soccer field. There were some 3,000 refugee families living there. It was hot, humid, filthy. Many suffered severe mental depression for sitting around all day, feeling sorry about the past and worrying about the future. So I thought I would do something to help them. I organized English classes, which was a win-win proposal because many of them were going to go to an English-speaking country, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States. So they were able to get some English and they were able to get their minds of the worries and the sorrows. On June 4th, 1976, this is where I looked in the refugee camp. You see all the children there. We had nothing, no pencil, no paper, but they were so eager to learn foreign language, English language. On June 4th, 1976, I arrived in Wallingford, Connecticut, to my host family home with my mother's scarf, an empty rice bag, and $2. I was sick and tired, exhausted, but I was full of hope. I felt I was a free man. I wanted to start my new life. I wanted to adapt to America so that America would adopt me. In French, it sounds even better. S'adapte est suffé adopte, adapt to be adopted. I did everything that came my way to the best of my ability. I picked apples. I ate a lot of apples, enough to last for a lifetime. Then I went to work for a fast-food restaurant. I was going to be trained to be a manager, so I had to learn how to cook ice cream, to cook hamburgers, scoop ice cream. I never see the hamburger in my life. Suddenly I was hearing rare, medium rare. I was holding the lettuce, and the trainer said, Hold the lettuce! It took me a while to understand she didn't want me to put the lettuce on the hamburger. It's just so confusing. Then when I was at the cash register, I was even more confused to see that the dimes were smaller, but worth more than the nickels. Did you ever notice that? I said, This is so difficult. So my next stop, New York, New York. I arrived in Manhattan in the cold winter day of January, 1977. I stood there on the street corner with all these yellow checker caps and we signed the back. The driver was worried. So I called and they asked me to go and take a test. It's all about directions. How do you get from Yankee Stadium to the water of Astoria? I had no idea where these places were. I'm not sure how to get from one to another. So I just checked the boxes. At the end, I brought the sheet to the examiner. He looked at the boxes, he frowned. He looked at me from head to toe. He turned away his side and he said, You passed. So I became a taxi driver. In 1977, you didn't need to know where you were going to drive a taxi. You need strong horn and good brakes. And I was amazed that New Yorkers could also communicate in sign language. I continued to apply to a number of graduate schools. They also had me down because I had no chance to get by sub-Colombia. They gave me a full scholarship. So I did a Master of International Affairs and I met Martha there in New York. New York has been a special place for us. Incidentally, I went there to drive a taxi and I left as an ambassador. I went there sitting behind the wheel and I left sitting at the back. In between, I met Martha and I went to school there and had a number of jobs, including representing the United States. So it's a very special place for us. In the 80s, Martha and I were introduced to the Reagan's. Somehow we got invited to the White House, but none topped this one on the right. That was July 13, 1988. It was in the Rose Garden. I was a nice guest of President Reagan and Vice President Bush. I had already volunteered in the Bush campaign because I wanted to understand how things worked. In 1976, when I arrived, there was an election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. And I was watching the convention on TV. I saw these people wearing funny hats, jumping up and down the chairs, screaming, shouting and yelling. And I didn't understand what was going on. So my host family told me that these are delegates. They are going to choose two people and be able to elect one of them to be the next president. And then they turned to me. They said, Si Chan, if you wanted to understand this country, you should get involved. So my chance to get involved was 1988. While I was standing there, I never thought. The thought never crossed my mind that I would be working at the White House a few months later. When George H.W. Bush collected, he asked me to go and work for him. That was quite unusual because there are hundreds and thousands of people who volunteered in the Bush campaign, not the Bush campaign, but in the presidential campaign. And I happened to be among the lucky few. I walked into work at the White House on February the 13th, 1989, which is exactly 13 years from the day I jumped on that truck in Northwestern Cambodia. 13 years to the day. So there is no other place on earth where somebody could run from the killing fields to the working for the top person of the country of adoption in 13 years, only in America. On the Bush, the world changed. The Cold War ended. Eastern Europe became free. Berlin Wall came down. Soviet Union became a powerful, fell apart. And there I was sitting at the White House, seeing history taking shape in front of my eyes. It was quite overwhelming. One of the words of wisdom that we remembered very well was this, when George Bush said on June 22, 1989, that any definition of a successful life must include serving others. After I heard that, I went to join the Civil Air Patrol, where Jim and I are now members, and we have been doing a lot of good work to protect the American people. We have airspace education, we have cadet programs, we have the emergency services, and now we are going into Homeland Security. And Jim and I have been flying together quite a bit. So any definition of a successful life must include serving others. He signed a lot of proclamation, and one that also landmarked to us, who are Americans of Asian and Pacific ancestry, is this proclamation, which is, I have a copy there behind you, with a pen that he signed that proclamation. He gave me the pen, so when you leave, take a look at the proclamation. He extended, as I mentioned early on, the weekly celebration to the whole month of May. That's one of the reasons we have to get tonight, to celebrate this strength of America, that is the ethnic. In 2001, George W. Bush sent me to the United Nations, which is a special place for us, because we co-founded the United Nations. We play host. New York is the world's largest diplomatic community. Then we are the largest benefactor, too many United Nations program. We are right at the top, from cradle to coffin, from children to aging. Everything in between, women, HIV, AIDS, health issues, food, we are there. We are doing this not to be popular. We are doing this because it's right, because it's our duty to honor our country, because we are Americans. America is never conquering power. We transform the rubbles of Europe and Japan into parliaments and prosperity. We respond to earthquakes and tsunamis. We help improve health and education. We support women and children. We give voice to the voiceless. We are breeding democratic prosperity. Among the trips I have done, this probably is counted among the best or the most memorable. In 2004, I was sent to Cambodia to represent the United States at the coronation of the new king. You know, monarchs have a lifetime job. For example, the king of Cambodia, the former king, was overthrown in 1941 when FDR was at the White House. Just imagine, 1941. He sent an elephant to Truman as a sign of friendship. Unfortunately, the elephant died of the course of Cape Town in South Africa. I met everyone since then, so Eisenhower onward. So he decided to abdicate in 2004, and the United States decided to send me to Cambodia. There I was in a throne hall. There's a throne behind me. And I look around, I saw that I realized that I was the only person invited from a foreign capital. All those countries were represented by their ambassadors. I created to Cambodia. And as I watched the ritual that date back to the 10th century, I was quite overwhelmed to realize that here I was representing my country of adoption at the coronation of the king of my country of birth. I may be one of the few people in history to have experienced that, but that is because it's only in America. It has been an honor for us to work for two presidents, both Texans and both named Bush, and I used to say that I worked behind the Bushes. So Martha and I decided to summarize our experience into this memoir of golden bones, which are the terms that Cambodian use to describe somebody who is very blessed, very lucky. I think we are all people of golden bones because we are blessed, very lucky to be Americans and to live here. After that, we came up with another novel which is sort of a political thriller. It's what I call a faction, a fiction based on facts. It's involved Russia, China, the United States, and France. Financial world, political world, and there was a top of war between the legislative branch and the city branch. But it's all about love, power, and greed. Very interesting book, because one of the principal characters is a Texan who happened to live not too far from here. So those are the countries that were involved in this book. Here at home, we like to interact with young people. As you recognize, this is the U.S. Air Force Academy, and then there's a group called City Year, which is a program for young people to spend one year of their lives helping underperforming students. And at the center is Paul Garrow, who used to be heading that poll. You want to stand up and recognize being recognized as Paul. And of course, the Civil Air Patrol cadets, which I mentioned a moment ago, their gym and I served with pleasure and privilege. These are the cadets of the Civil Air Patrol. And we have these blue Boy Scouts. This picture, if you recognize my socks, this was at the Bush Library last month. It was a program for Scouts, Boy Scouts who want to earn a merit badge, and they had to interact with somebody, and I happened to be that somebody. The picture on the top is from a school here called Concordia Lutheran, which they taught students to love one another, family, community, country, and the world. So that is one of our pleasures, and I usually show this slide because young people have to learn how to ride bikes. Because life, I've been telling them, is like riding a bike. You have to keep on pedaling, otherwise you'll fall. And that reminds me of my younger years. When I was in Cambodia, I rode my bike 10 miles four times a day, and then 90 degrees to 100 degrees sun. And somehow, bikes saved my life because I was able to ride for three weeks across Cambodia trying to escape. So if you have not learned how to bike yet, you should, the children especially. BPP, I usually ask them, if you were a boat, what would you be? A speedboat or a cruise ship or an aircraft carrier? The second is plane. If you were a plane, would you be a jet fighter or a cargo plane, a C-5 or Boeing 747? And the last P, if you were a person, have you ever thought what kind of person you are? A beach person or a mountain person? Those are children, they like that kind of thing, you start thinking about all of this. Then you have a family, you go to college, you work hard to bring up a family, and suddenly, you're 90 years old. What do you do when you're 90 years old? You jump off the plane, like George H.W. Bush. This gentleman on the right, I met him just last month at the senior games that my friend, Lee Porich, took me. I was a volunteer in a sewing lane, and he came to me, I looked at the chart, I said, are you Baker Shannon? He said, yes, he's 90 years old. And he won, he's in a class by himself. So that was a week before the Bush Library events. When I asked him, you want to come to the Bush Library, have you been there? He said, yes. In fact, I'm an Ivy. I'm a 1946 graduate of Ivy. So he came, he drove from Houston to College Station, and he brought his Eagle Scout medal from 1939. That's amazing, isn't it? But this is what George Bush said, just because you're an old guy, you didn't have to sit around drooling in the corner. Go out and do something, get out and enjoy life. So I take a lot of inspiration from you. I haven't gone up the sky and died yet, but it's on my list. And last but not least, this is what I usually live with the young people. Be well, be wise, be worthy. Be flexible and able to adapt to difficult circumstances. Follow your passion. When you do well, don't forget to do good. Thank you very much. God bless you and God bless America. I'd be happy to take any questions. Yes, I cross the western part of Cambodia, which is the eastern part of Thailand, in a village, close to a village called Tapriah in Pichinburi province. And when I arrived in Thailand after three days of crossing, was put in a police cell. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? OK. I don't know how to use it, but I try. OK. And they put me in a police cell until the following day, and they took me to a prison, put me in prison. And some years ago, Ma, I went to see that police cell. It's still there, and we also went to see the prison. Yeah. Bobby? Where? What's it, 19... When? Did you ask when or where? Where? Where, yes. Where? Oh, he said where. You said ask when or where? Where? Where, yes, where. OK, yeah. Yeah, you've been to Thailand? Yes, I have. Oh, you live there? No, I've never been there. Yeah, it's a beautiful country. Yeah. Yes, ma'am? How does it get a man? I said something happened for a reason. They put all the... When the Khmer Rouge came to power in this part of the country, they put all the heavy-engine equipment in the form of school. And somehow, the old manuals of the locking truck were just lying on the ground, and I picked it up, and it was in English. And of course, I had to hide it, because reading is already a crime, and reading English is... Why did you read without your glasses? I don't read with my glasses. You don't need them. No, it's driving that I do. That's why I had an accident when I was driving a truck under the Khmer Rouge. I told them I was a truck driver, so they put me behind the wheel, and I drove the truck. I couldn't see anything. And at one point, I was driving a loader, the one that carried stuff, and you unloaded. Yeah, and my shift was from midnight to six o'clock in the morning, and it was a rainy day. And you know, in Southeast Asia, when it rains, it just rained very heavily. And I backed up to unload the soil. They were building a road, and I couldn't see. So the back wheel of the truck fell off the road, and the heavy load pulled the truck to collapse on the side. And the windshield was broken. I was cut all over, blood all over my body. I crawled out of that truck, and suddenly the Khmer Rouge arrived on that spot, and he said, what happened? And I know that it was going to be killed, because that I damaged state property, and damaged state property carried the sentence. But the same truck driver saved my life the second time. He said that the damage is very minor. It takes only a few moments to fix it. So I was saved by the same guy. Who am I? Bami? About the damage he wasn't telling me. He wasn't telling me. Somehow I knew that he knew I was not the person I was telling him, but he didn't ask a question, and I did not want to hear the answer. So sometimes you're alive, you feel that somebody just show up. I think in my life, it would be him. It would be the truck driver. I did not get my mother out. She was killed along with my sister, my brother, and their children, 15 of them. And if you go to my website, cchanstate.com, there was an article I wrote in the New York Times called Last Breakfast in Cambodia. That's how I describe the final days of the war in Cambodia, and of the 16 people who left that day when the marriage came in. I'm the only survivor. Yes? Last Sunday in the travel channel, yes? And they had a goal to see them engaged with the fight. Yeah. In this table, there were one of the cameras. Yeah. And one of the members of the fight is running in Cambodia right now. Yeah. A victim. They killed all their family. Yes. And the person who represent the opposition in Cambodia right now. The last time you were in Cambodia was in 2000? A few years ago. A few years ago? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. How do you see the situation in Cambodia right now regarding the genocide? You all hear the question? Yes. Okay. What is the situation now regarding the genocide? The United Nations decided to set up a tribunal to bring these people who have committed what they call the crime against humanity. I was, at that time I was ambassador to the UN. My personal position coincided with the US position. We were encouraged by our friends, Japanese, the French, Australian to help the tribunal. So we agreed along. We decided to go along. But these tribunals took so long to be established and spend a lot of money. And they only had a mandate to bring about five or six people to trial. $160 million to bring four or five people to try. And the first verdict was for a guy who ran a concentration camp that resulted in about 25,000 people, 25,000 deaths. The first sentence was for 19 years. I mean, if you are responsible for 25,000 people, you only sentence that much, that crime crime is descendants. There is a crime is right here and the verdict is here. It was like the wrist slap on the wrist. From that time, I felt very disappointed. A lot of people felt that they were betrayed by the sentence. And I felt that this tribunal has become a symbol of injustice, of impunity. How many schools, how many hospitals, how many libraries can you build in Cambodia with $160 million? And here they spend $160 million to try to bring some of these people who are in their 80s to so-called justice. It turned out to be a complete justice. So I had no trust in this tribunal, unfortunately. And Cambodia doesn't have a death penalty. So the maximum sentence was life sentence. They later converted that sentence to a life sentence for this guy. But it's still, if you kill my mother, my sister, my brother, my friends, my neighbors, and two million of my people, the only sentence that matches that kind of crime is death sentence. Yeah, and other questions. Yes, how are we? Can you talk a little bit about, other than, you know, your model seems to be very helpful. How do you make that change? Well, we all, you know, we all want to forgive and we don't want to forget, just like what happened in the Holocaust and genocide. By the way, how we, as I mentioned to you, I'm a member of the Texas State Commission on Holocaust and Genocide. And our mission is to educate people about the danger of this. And we, I always remember what Einstein said, that the world is a dangerous place to live, not because bad people are doing bad things, but because good people let it happen. So we want everybody to be upstanders instead of bystanders. Positive attitude is very important. It happened, it happened already. It's too bad that it happened to me, to my family, but I wanted to transform this around, to turn this around, so that people can benefit from it. That's why it took us so long to write that book, Golden Bone, because I don't want to go back and visit all these painful memories. It took us 30 years. The minute I arrived in Connecticut, each time I was introduced myself, people asked me, when are you going to write a book? When are you going to write a book? And I said, no, I have no plan. And a friend of ours began to sort of encourage me to try to go over these painful memories so that the rest of the people can benefit from it. So she encouraged me to speak and to write. Right, and the first time I spoke was at a church in New Jersey, a Lutheran church in New Jersey. And I was so nervous that I didn't know what I was saying. At the end, I just, I remember I said, I'm very happy to be here, and I thank America for giving me a place to start my new life. And the pastor came and gave me a big hug, and I got a sudden ovation, so I must have said something right. But, and then after a number of practice, especially after I was at the White House, when I spoke on behalf of the president and the United Nations, when I spoke on behalf of the United States, and I became more and more comfortable, yeah. But it's important to share the experience. I encourage people to share their stories, each of us has a story to tell. Yes, I was brought up in- You were brought up in the Buddhist family. Yeah, I was brought up in the Buddhist family because Cambodia, just like Thailand and Burma, and Laos, and many countries in the southern part of Asia, we are Buddhists. About 90% of people are Buddhists. So my mother was a devout Buddhist, and that's what she taught me how to do good things to forgive, but not forget. And that's what I'm married to a priest of Terran. And I, when I came to America, I came to America through a Catholic agency, and I found a job through the Jewish organizations. And I worked for the Lutheran Church and the Episcopal Church, so I am very ecumenical, yeah, that's right. You're saying that. That's right, yeah. Any other, yes, yes, sir. Why did you choose to live here in San Antonio? A good question, yeah. I should mention that Martha is from a small town in the panhandle called Pampa. Hey, you heard of Pampa? How many of you are from Pampa? Oh, wonderful. Pampa is about 60 miles northeast of Amarillo, and they say that it's closer to five of the state capitals than to Austin. I can count Lincoln, Nebraska, Topeka, Kansas, Oklahoma City, Santa Fe, and what is the last one? Denver, right? Yeah, five, yeah. There's nothing between Pampa and the North Pole. Except for a barber-wide fence, and two strands are down. So Martha was a valedictorian of high school, and in fact, when she was inducted to the High School Hall of Fame, we went to Pampa and we were in this homecoming parade, and we rode in a 1960s Plymouth convertible. 1966 Plymouth, so that was, and the owner drove the car himself, so it was quite a big deal. So after Pampa High School, she went to UT, and then to Washington, to Paris, and Bangkok. Working for United Nations, as I mentioned, we met in New York. So we've been in New York since 1977, and when Martha decided to leave the World Bank, we decided to come back home. We look at Austin, and at Dallas, and Houston. Of course, Pampa is a bit too remote for us, and she's only child, and we have no living relatives. And we chose San Antonio because we love the military. This is a big military city, USA. Good medical facilities, a lot of history, a lot of museums, and the tie breaker was the airport. It's so easy to get in and out. When you arrive at the airport, you arrive at the terminal. Well, thank you all very much.