Award: Gold

Institution: Boston University

Title of Entry: Kinh Vu’s Journey from Vietnam Orphan to BU Music Professor

About this Entry: Kinh Vu is a popular Boston University music faculty member with an anguished back story. He was abandoned on the streets of Saigon an infant and airlifted to the US in 1975 as the US forces evacuated. Adopted by an American family, he became a promising teen musician, a high school music teacher, and finally a member of the Boston University faculty, beloved by his students. But his lost heritage was always on his mind, a soft steady drumbeat. His life truly changed when he went back to Vietnam for the first time in 2011, and has returned some 30 times since, making music with children in an orphanage there, healing himself at the same time.