Obituary: The Rev. Tin Tran, Vietnamese Grace Church pastor

In the communist re-education camp in postwar Vietnam where the Rev. Tin Tran was tortured in the 1970s, he made himself one promise: If he made it out alive, he would serve God forever.

After fleeing to the U.S. with a quarter in his pocket, Tran got an engineering degree, a job with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and finally a master's in theological studies to become a pastor at Vietnamese Grace Church.

Such was the commitment of the Plymouth resident, who died Feb. 27 after a diagnosis of rare refractory T-cell lymphoma. He was 64.

Friends and family call him a gracious man who never complained, and who loved God and his church. Even when he was in the hospital in the past year, he never grumbled about his illness, said his daughter, Elizabeth, of Chicago.

"My dad isn't a complainer," she said. "He's a fighter."

Tran was born in northern Vietnam in 1951, in the midst of war in the country. He dreamed of becoming a lawyer — he had Bill Clinton-like aspirations, said his son, Scott, of Portland, Ore. But in his last year in school, he was drafted into the army. From 1971 to 1974, he fought against the communists as a sergeant in the artillery division. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Tran was sent to the re-education camp.

From hospital documents, his family knows he was waterboarded, said Scott Tran, but his father never mentioned that part of the camp experience. He talked only about the good things, like friends he made there.

But coming back home after three years at camp wasn't easy. People who had fought the communists weren't allowed to be in the workforce, so his father had to barter for survival, Scott said.

The family decided to flee to the United States, where Tran's sister had been living. She was able to sponsor 20 family members. The family moved overseas and settled in Golden Valley, eventually moving into a four-bedroom home together.

Tran had always wanted to finish school, but his family and friends told him to get a job on an assembly line or become a cook. Instead, he paved his own path. He knew some English and earned a civil engineering degree from the University of Minnesota. He spent 25 years working for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

In his late 40s, he went back to school for a master's degree in theological leadership at Crown College in St. Bonifacius. He worked as a pastor at Vietnamese Grace Church, a Baptist church in Minneapolis.

"The work of the church was a labor of love for him," said Brett Miller, pastor at Southeast Christian Church, the building where Vietnamese Grace Church meets. Tran was "a very gentle, gracious, wise spirit," added Ken Lewis, a retired pastor at Trinity Baptist Church of St. Paul.

Scott remembered the time his father spoke to his eighth-grade class, and someone asked whether he had bad dreams about war or camp. "He said, flat-out, 'Of course I do, but then I wake up, and then I'm thankful for the life that I have,' " Scott said.

Tran is survived by his wife, son and daughter. Services have been held.