(VOVworld) - He is a man who has both a humorous way of speaking and the keen sense of responsibility and discipline of one of Uncle Ho’s soldiers.

Over the past 70 years, Radio the Voice of Vietnam including VOV5, the Overseas Service, has made significant contributions to national construction and defense. Credit is due to all the generations who have worked at the channel. I would like to tell a story of a colleague who used to work with me in the French section and left a profound impression on me. That colleague is Mr. Nguyễn Văn Thu, known to his co-workers as Thu “whiskers’’.

Anyone who has worked in the Overseas Service and is around my age will certainly remember the man known as Thu “whiskers”. He received this affectionate nickname because of his side-whiskers and to differentiate him from another Thu who was in charge of VOV’s News and Current Affairs Department. Thu’s real name is Nguyễn Văn Bàng. He began working at VOV after returning from military service and living for many years in France. Many still remember and admire him for his ability to commentate football matches, even in French. His passion has been handed down to his son, Xuân Bách, who has succeeded his father as football commentator at VOV.

Nguyễn Văn Thu (in the middle) and other reporters of VOV

Born on March 22^nd, 1922, Thu “whiskers” was the fourth child in a family of many children. His brothers are named after various birds - Quy, Thước, Nhạn, Bàng, Ly, Anh, Thảo... Perhaps it was his parents’ wish that their children would be free to go anywhere to do useful work for society.

Thu "whiskers" had a youth full of changes and often lived far from his family. Due to special circumstances, when he was 12 years old he was taken by a French family to France to study. When Nazi Germany launched World War II and occupied France, Thu was studying at the Journalism Academy in Paris. He had to drop out of the university and work at radio stations to earn a living. During this period he joined the French resistance.

In 1948 when Vietnam’s war of resistance in the southern region broke out, Nguyễn Văn Thu and many other young Vietnamese intellectuals responded to Uncle Hồ’s appeal and left Paris to return to Sài Gòn and join the struggle. When he was working for broadcast stations in France, Thu did football commentary, so when he started working at VOV, he became the first person in Vietnam to produce commentary for football matches. The first match he covered was between Vietnam and Cambodia to inaugurate Hàng Đẫy Stadium, which was rebuilt in 1957.

At that time Mr. Trần Lâm, VOV’s Editor-in-chief, was a little worried and asked Thu whether he was sure he could do the job. Thu said he could. Mr. Trần Lâm believed him and let him and a group including referee Nguyễn Quang Hiệp conduct the commentary. He won Mr. Trần Lâm’s confidence because he had already done commentary for other events, some in French for VOV’s French section broadcasts.

I still remember that at the time of his first overseas business trip, he was almost removed from the list because nobody could verify the period when he lived in France. Fortunately for him, Editor-in-chief Trần Lâm was willing to vouch for him and he was allowed to go. At that time, verifying a person’s CV was an extremely serious matter. Thu had a quite unusual resume –child of the leader of an armed squad, adopted by a French family, married to a Western woman. Despite these anomalies, he still managed to become a senior official. It is a credit to the courage and determination of VOV’s leaders, particularly Editor-in-chief Trần Lâm, that they recognized talented and conscientious people like Thu “whiskers” and composer Phạm Tuyên.

Thu “whiskers” was a thoughtful and responsible family man who was simple in enjoying food and drink. He was always full of praise for a meal, even when he didn’t eat anything or there were no special dishes. His favorite dish was dog meat. If he had continued to live in France, he would never have had a chance to enjoy this dish. In France, if you mistreat man’s best friend, there will be a public outcry! There it would be unthinkable to kill a dog, roast it over burning straw to make the meat deliciously buttery, chop it into pieces, and mix it with various spices before making a meal of it.

When I studied in France, I heard a story about an overseas Vietnamese, famous as a wine connoisseur. He could sniff and sip a wine and guess where and when it was produced and in which chateau it was bottled. I didn’t have an opportunity to meet this man, but Thu "whiskers" was just such a connoisseur. His talent was equal to anyone. He could precisely rate a wine and tell you when it was produced.

He liked reading and translating books, and was a good manager of money. His son, Xuân Bách, recalls: “He paid almost the entire cost of his wedding, which was huge and held at the Phú Gia Hotel, which at that time was very luxurious. A number of famous singers from VOV like Trần Khánh and Quốc Hương sang at the wedding.”

I already knew Thu “whiskers’” when he moved to Hồ Chí Minh City to live. Whenever he came back to Hanoi, he would drop in at the Overseas Service to pay his respects to his colleagues. One time when he visited the French section, he said he had joined a French club in Hồ Chí Minh City and had been elected Chairman. He was proud but he added that there was no budget or source of income for the club other than the enthusiasm of those involved.

Before 1997, French clubs were very common. That’s why at the end of that year, Vietnam could host the Francophone Summit of the International Francophone Organization. VOV had a French club, which was established on February 29, 1996.

Blanche Maison, the former French ambassador who made a great contribution to improving Vietnam-France relations, delivered a speech at the club’s opening ceremony and cheerfully asked whether he had to wait another 4 years to mark the second anniversary of VOV’s French Club. Following this impressive opening ceremony, there was sadly no one to run the club. If Thu “whiskers” had remained in Hanoi and could have assumed the chairmanship, perhaps the club would have had a longer life.

Thu was very jovial. Whenever he met the young people of the French section, he called each of us “toi” (the informal pronoun in French). I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s sometimes said that people who study a foreign language often acquire a habit of teasing or speaking in a humorous way. Certainly that was Thu “whiskers”! Occasionally, if he couldn’t find anyone else to tease, he made himself a humorous example just for entertainment. In the French section, he always told jokes about himself. Some said that when he was in the army, Thu “whiskers” was a reporter for the military newspaper of the southern region’s High Command. Later he became the editor-in-chief of the French version of the newspaper for agitation and propaganda among enemy troops. He was also deputy director of the southern region’s High Command’s camp for European and African prisoners.

In 1955 Thu was among the southern soldiers who came to the north under the Geneva Agreement of 1954 with the rank of deputy chief in the Research Department of the General Department of Politics. In June, 1956, he returned to work at the French section of the Overseas Service. During his time at VOV, Thu “whiskers” held several positions, including Vice editor-in-chief and director of the Overseas Service and the International Relations Department of the Vietnam Radio and Television Broadcasting Committee. At one time he was deputy chief of VOV’s Mission 59 working in Kunmin, China, and head of the first delegation of experts of the Vietnam Radio and Television Broadcasting Committee to Cambodia when that country was newly escaped from the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.

Thu was a keen, diligent, serious, and responsible reporter. He could write various genres of press from political commentary to sports. During his journalism career, he was in charge of such features as “The sound of justice”, “Repatriation”, “The country’s soul”, and “Hanoi today”. When he was assigned to report on the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics, he took advantage of the opportunity to also write reports for the Voice of Russia. He said with a note of pride: "At the time I earned quite a lot of money to buy presents for my wife and children!"

Two years after his wife, Mrs. Lê Thị Lân, died, he married Mrs. Trần Ngọc Mỹ Phương and moved to Sài Gòn. There he took a position as deputy director of a company specializing in producing audio and video programs for the Vietnam Radio and Television Broadcasting Committee until his retirement in 1985. He was also director of the company’s Hồ Chí Minh City branch. 

Nobody is foolish enough to think they understand all aspects of life. But only those who are fully aware of life can live peacefully and at ease. You live the life you create for yourself. That was true for Thu “whiskers”, an optimist full of enthusiasm for life, who preferred simplicity and mixing with the masses. His happiness came from the smallest things in life. Happiness and pleasure are feelings, after all, and Thu “whiskers” knew that the most important things were his own sensations and state of mind.

When he contracted a fatal illness, his son Xuân Bách brought him back to Hà Nội to live in Hàng Khoai alley near Đồng Xuân market. I visited him, along with a number of senior officials of the Overseas Service. He couldn’t speak clearly any more, but still understood what others said. When we teased him a little, he laughed with a toothless grin. The housemaid whispered: “He knows it all”. He died a few months later at the age of 83. He was awarded many honorary medals by the Vietnamese government and friendship medals by the Soviet Union, Laos, and Cambodia.

What impressed me most about him was his extraordinary passion for the French. It was hard to reconcile his two contrary characters – his humorous, joking way of speaking and the keen sense of responsibility and discipline of one of Uncle Ho’s soldiers.