Angrith Na clings to his roots while embracing America

By Lisa Levitt Ryckman
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Somewhere on the edge of memory, there is a field stained with blood, a soldier with a gun, a moment when Angrith Na's father could have died.

Angrith Na, left, and his father, Pav Na, relax in their Denver home. Angrith was born in Ohio after his parents fled their native Cambodia during a Khmer Rouge campaign of terror.

Somewhere in the past, fear changed the future of one Cambodian family.

Now Angrith Na lives that future, and creates his own.

He is the sixth of seven children born to Pav Na and Chhum Ly, Cambodian refugees who fled the Khmer Rouge with nothing but their lives and their children.

They are still what they were when they arrived in Denver 20 years ago, simple people with little education and little English who worked with their backs but wanted their children to use their minds.

So began the Na dynasty.

Kheng was the first high school graduate, Rokha the first computer specialist, Sopheap the first medical student.

Angrith, now 17, was the first American. Really American. Maybe too American.

"I get a hard time for that, from my siblings," Angrith says. "My parents have told me it's fine to have American aspects to my character. As long as I remember where I'm from, they're fine."

Outgoing, outspoken, self-confident, he is perfectly at peace with the person he is: a child of newcomers fervently embracing every opportunity. Succeed. Excel. Do your best. Never give up.

So Angrith is now second in his senior class of 330 at West High School; the B he got in American History last year is the only one of his high school career.

His days are packed. He's up at 6, at school by 7:20, studying Chinese, European history, drama, English lit, leadership -- all before lunch.

He's in the National Honor Society, works on the yearbook and serves as president of Student Council and Westworks, a community service club.

He's also a member of the drama club; a club for kids into math, engineering and science; and a club that raises money to buy school supplies for kids in underdeveloped Asian countries -- like Cambodia.

But Angrith's real home is the stage. He wants to be an actor, an Asian Tom Hanks.

Last year, he played Linus in the school's production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. That meant singing and dancing, sometimes solo.

His parents came, and his brothers and sisters translated for them, bridging the cultural chasm with the "Peanuts" gang in whispered Cambodian.

No whispers for Angrith. He pulls out his business card. "Angrith Na," it says across the top. "Asian Boy," it says down the side.

He has a sense of humor, too.

"I'm not the standard Asian, a quiet, keep-to-myself type of person," he says. "I speak out. I let my opinion be heard. I sometimes get in trouble for it. But it's fine. That's another quality I've acquired. To speak out. And never let anyone put you down so you can't express yourself and say what's on your mind.

"That's part of the American side of me."

Angrith was born in Columbus, Ohio, on March 30, 1982, on a stopover between the refugee camps in Thailand a new home in Denver.

The family's first house was a modest two-bedroom cracker box on Sante Fe Drive. Their first clothes were church-scrounged hand-me-downs. Their first lessons were tough ones.

"The neighborhood we lived in wasn't all that great," Angrith says. "Once our front window got smashed in by someone throwing a rock. All the younger kids hid under the bed. We were really scared.

"But it taught us about society. Everything's not all that great. And you always have to keep in mind that whatever point you get to in society, there's always going to be violence. And you can't block that out. You always have to keep that in mind. Life is great in itself, but there is good and bad."

In Cambodia, Angrith's parents were shopkeepers and lived a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. But the Khmer Rouge ended that. Angrith's mother told him a story about how soldiers came to their house one day and wanted to take his father away and shoot him in the field. One of his father's friends convinced them it was a case of mistaken identity.

"My parents knew they couldn't stay, and that was really hard for them to face," Angrith says. "They had to leave everything behind, but they knew they had to do that so their kids would have a future. So they did.

"We always keep that in mind. We love them for that. They put us in front."

His oldest sister, Kheng, faced the first and biggest hurdles. She was about 15 when she arrived in Denver and became a freshman at West. She spoke no English.

"So she was behind," Angrith says. "But she never quit. And she set the standard for us, set the example to keep trying. She held a job to help out the family. And she graduated.

"Most of us think to ourselves, we have it easy compared to what she had to go through. And we don't take it for granted. Everything we get, we earn it."

It hasn't always come easily.

Angrith has spent his school career in Denver Public Schools: Dora Moore Elementary, Grant Middle School and now West. He was often the only Asian. He started school unable to speak English, which meant ridicule from classmates and segregation in special education.

"Sometimes it hurt, because you were treated differently because you couldn't speak it, or you couldn't say a certain word in the correct manner.

"It hurt, when you'd talk, and they'd make fun of you.

"But it taught me that my skin color didn't matter. If I just went out there and showed them the type of individual I was, I'd do fine. And I did. I never let that get in the way."

Whatever the other kids did, Angrith did three times as much. And he did it by himself.

"It's not like I came from a background where my parents were engineers or teachers. I didn't have anyone to sit down with me and read with me and do homework with me. I just had someone who was there to encourage me. My parents.

"I know they wanted to help. I achieved to make myself happy and to show them that through their encouragement, they helped me out. It helped me learn a lot better. Because in life, it's usually just yourself when there's a problem. You have to solve it yourself."

The future isn't a problem. Angrith would be happy being a movie star, or just another computer guy. His desires are modest: a nice little car, a two-bedroom house. Nothing fancy.

"Money doesn't make you all that happy. It's a hassle finding ways to use it, and people getting on your case because you have it and you're not spending it the way they want," he says.

Sometimes, Angrith lies in bed thinking about how he can raise kids like himself. Public school, definitely -- it's a way to learn about real life. And let them work for what they want. Angrith considers that a greater gift than simply giving it to them.

"I think to make your child earn it would be a lot more useful to them. How would I find a way to instill the work ethic I have into them? I guess if my parents found a way to do it, I have to find a way to do it, too. I guess there is a way. And I'll figure it out."

December 26, 1999

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