st. paul

Chor Xiong pulled a worn black wallet from his back pocket Friday night and extracted two photographs. One showed his 18-year-old son, Nelson Xiong, stoic in a dress blue military uniform. The other showed his stern-faced oldest son, 23-year-old Kham Xiong, in camouflage fatigues.

Chor has been worried about Nelson, who is fighting in Afghanistan and due back in Minnesota on Nov. 28. So when the phone rang at his family's home on St. Paul's East Side at 3 a.m. Friday, Chor braced himself for bad news about Nelson.

Then, as his daughter explained to him that Kham, not Nelson, had been among 13 people killed in an Army psychiatrist's rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, the father grew confused and angry.

How could his unarmed son have died on U.S. soil two months before being deployed to Afghanistan? And how will he find the words to explain this to his other son, the one on the battlefield?

"I could understand if he died in Afghanistan or Iraq, where they are under attack and going head-to-head with the enemy," Chor, 52, said in Hmong, as his son-in-law translated. "I don't know how I can explain it to his younger brother."

As Kham's 10 siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins crowded around the family's red couches and tables of fruit Friday, the "CBS Evening News" came on their television, with Katie Couric reporting the horrific news from Fort Hood.

All day, Chor, who fought with CIA-backed soldiers in Laos during the Vietnam War, had kept his emotions frozen. But when he recalled coming to America when Kham was a toddler, he could no longer hold back his tears.

"He would always tag along and be at my father's side -- he loved his grandfather so much," Chor said, weeping as he recalled his own late father, Xia Soua Xiong, the first of the family's three generations of soldiers.

Anger mixed with grief as family members wondered why Kham, a private first class, wasn't allowed to carry a gun at Fort Hood. If he had, maybe the shooter could have been stopped sooner, they said. He should have been allowed to use his training to defend himself, family members insisted.

Kham's wife, Shoua Her, is heading back to St. Paul from Texas with their three kids -- a 4-year-old daughter, a 2-year-old son and a 10-month-old baby boy.

"They will never know their father," said Chayee Lee, who is married to one of Kham's five sisters.

Kham's wife told family members that she had texted her husband as he waited in line for a flu shot and an eye exam at Fort Hood's Soldier Readiness Center around noon Thursday.

She told him to come home for lunch. The family had followed Kham to Texas in July. He sent a text message back that he was second in line and he would wait a little longer.

That's when the bloodshed began.

'We thought he was safe'

It would be hours before the family received word that Kham was among the victims of the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base.

"We never expected this on U.S. soil," Lee said. "If it happened in an Afghani ambush, it would be easier. We thought he was safe here. This is much harder."

They recalled stories of the happy-go-lucky, always grinning Kham, who loved to get up at 2 a.m. and go bass fishing Up North. He enjoyed playing basketball, especially because he was taller than most of his Hmong friends and relatives.

Kham grew up in California and moved with his family to St. Paul about 10 years ago. He graduated from the Community of Peace Charter School on St. Paul's East Side in 2004.

Since boyhood, Kham had relished the notion of following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father and joining the Army. At family meetings, he and his relatives discussed the war on terror and the dangers of military service in the 21st century. He considered going to college but lacked the funds, so enlisted two years ago, Lee said.

'He was a good son'

On Friday, condolences swept in from his high school principal and his congresswoman.

"Kham was an individual of sound character whose greatest attribute was his ability to bring a smile to everyone's face," said Tim McGowan, principal at Community of Peace. "He was an excellent role model for his peers, his siblings and children and he'll be greatly missed."

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., said in statement: "This senseless act of violence has resulted in a tremendous loss for the Xiong family, but also for residents of St. Paul, and indeed our entire nation."

At the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University in St. Paul, director Lee Pao Xiong shook his head.

"This gentleman passed away in a place that is not the battlefield, but he was in military uniform," Lee Pao Xiong said. "We have many young Hmong men and young women serving in the military and this case is so tragic, but reminds us that they are not only part of our Hmong community, but part of this country and willing to defend it.

"We are sad and shocked and it speaks to the fact that we are living in dangerous times."

Back at the family home on Beech Street, Chor Xiong wiped a tear from his cheek.

"He was a good son. He never left my dad's side. He never caused any trouble. He will always be remembered and loved and missed."

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767