Chất Văn Đặng, MD.

Adieu Docteur Robert Đại Vĩnh.

I have the privilege of sharing with Dr. Đại Vĩnh memorable experiences since our teen ages at the Lycée Jean Jacques Rousseau in the early 1960’s, and our training during the Vietnam War at the Saigon Faculty of Medicine. Like Dr. Đại’s friends and colleagues present today, we felt like brothers, always greeted with his warm, sweet smile.

We celebrate the life of a caring, gifted surgeon, and a true Prince. Indeed, Dr Vĩnh had royal blood from the last Vietnam Kings, the Nguyễn Dynasty.  Medicine study in Saigon, tracking French Academia, lasted 6 years. However, at the 5th year (one year before graduation), many in our class, including Đại Vĩnh, Hiền Hồ and I, passed the ECFMG MD equivalence exam of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates in Philadelphia.

Freshly minted but talented, Dr. Đại was recruited after a highly selective exam in 1972 to work in the Surgery Department at Bình Dân or Common People Hospital as an Interne des Hôpitaux de Saigon.

With the fall of Saigon in April 1975, we made it to the US. After finishing our Surgery Residency, Dr Đại worked on the East Coast while I stayed in the West. By chance then by design, we both enjoyed the annual Trauma & Critical Care Conference in Las Vegas for several years.

Dr. Đại Vĩnh left our volatile world. He returns to the lasting realm of our loving memories.  Rest in Peace, my dear friend! 

- Chất Đặng, M.D.