In the final year of the Vietnam War, Tranh Dang was a 61-year-old man faced with a decision that would shape the next 30 years of his life.

He was working at a shipyard in the South Vietnamese port city of Da Nang, where he unloaded boxes of bullets for the American military. The ship captain, as a word of advice, told him to leave the country.

"He told me the communists would slit my throat because I worked for the Americans," Dang said Wednesday, in Vietnamese. His son-in-law, Nhung Le, translated.

Dang wanted to see America. He had dreamed about it. But he couldn't take his wife and their three children. So he chose to stay.

Four months ago - and 30 years later - he stepped off a plane at Roanoke Regional Airport. He'd come to visit his daughter, Dieu Le, her husband and their children, and his son, Nhat Phan Dang, who live in Roanoke.

For Dang, now 91, it has been a trip of firsts: first trip to a country outside of Southeast Asia; first trip to the United States. First snowfall.

And it was the only time that Dang, a thin olive-skinned man with a triangular beard and dark hair speckled by gray, could witness the American dream come true: He watched his 22-year-old granddaughter, Uyen Le, graduate from Roanoke College in May.

"Not only am I happy to come here to visit but to come here to see my granddaughter graduate," he said. "It's a great pleasure to fulfill my dream to visit America. And second of all, to see the second dream, to see my granddaughter graduate."

Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai this week marked another "first," as the first Vietnamese prime minister to visit the United States since the end of the war 30 years ago. He called on Vietnamese emigres to help strengthen ties between the two countries.

Perhaps Dang's visit is a small beginning.

"The American people have a good heart, a big heart," Dang said.

Snow and a garden

Dang arrived on Feb. 26. A few days later, he stood outside his daughter's home while snow fell around him.

"We told him the snow waited for him to come," his daughter, Dieu Le, said. After the snow fell, and the seasons began to change, Dang taught his family how to plow with a hoe. He planted hot peppers, potatoes and onions in the back yard.

"He's very strong," Le said.

Dang's first major trip, locally, was a mid-March visit to Roanoke's Valley View Mall. Later that month, he visited Washington, D.C. In May, he visited New York City.

At Valley View, he met President George Bush - or rather, a life-size cutout of Bush - at a music store.

"The president is the leader of the world," he said. Bush "has this glow to him."

So when he crossed paths with the cutout, Dang seized the opportunity and asked a store employee to take a photograph. The photo shows Bush - glowing thanks to the fluorescent lighting in the store bouncing off his face - flanked by Dang, his granddaughter and her friend, Dan Dan Jiang.

"He wants to take that picture to Vietnam," his son-in-law said, "to show his friends."

Coming to America

When Dang realized he couldn't come to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War, he decided to move out into the country, where he was born. The place was called Binh Yen, which means "peaceful" in Vietnamese. He farmed there until he could return to Da Nang in 1990, when the strong roots of communism had been contained.

Three years later, daughter Dieu Le left Vietnam and moved to Roanoke with her husband and their four children.

Her brother, Nhat Phan Dang, arrived later. Le and her brother opened a nail care salon, Rosy Nails, in Salem.

Le said she and her husband tried to get her father to come to Roanoke last summer. They filled out the paperwork, which included an income tax return, a citizen certificate of Vietnam and verification that Tranh Dang's sponsor in America was someone related to him.

Dang met with the American consulate in Vietnam and told them of his dream to come to America. He answered their questions. He did not tell them about working for an American colonel during the Vietnam War and how he was transferred to a ship captain before the war ended. He did not tell them how those experiences gave him a love for the country he always wanted to visit.

Dang's application with the American consulate in Ho Chi Minh City last summer was denied. His family doesn't know why. It may have been because both he and his son-in-law's brother wanted to come; it was difficult to persuade the consulate that they would both return to Vietnam, his son-in-law, Nhung Le, said. Whatever the reason, the following year, when Le made the trip to Vietnam to celebrate the Lunar New Year, he went with Dang to apply and with no new evidence, was successful in getting a visa for him to come to the United States.

"Before 9/11, everything was easy," Le said. "My wife and I want him to come here and visit us and also to see how great America is. Second time we went, same thing, but he passed easily."

When Sept. 11 happened, Dang and his friends couldn't believe that the terrorist attacks were the work of people who wanted to bring harm to those who lived in the United States. It reminded him of the Vietnam War, when he said he witnessed a lot of people die for nothing. His nephews and relatives, people younger than he, died at the hands of others.

Sometimes he asks himself, "Why do people hate each other?"

When, on May 8, he visited Ground Zero in downtown New York City - a place he had only seen in pictures, when the twin towers were still standing - it was painful. It reminded him of all the lives that were lost.

"I felt a pain in my heart," Dang said.

A peaceful poet

During the brief moments that Dang has spent time alone on his trip, the calm and peaceful man likes to sit down and write poetry. He enjoys reflecting: how far he's come, what memories he likes to remember and relive.

Lately, he has been writing about his parents and birthplace.

"Sometimes, life is too short," he wrote in a poem called "Reminisce."

"Everything, life passes by quickly."