When Jenny Do arrived in San Jose as one of the first beneficiaries of a pilot project for the Amerasian Homecoming Act , which allowed immigration of children fathered by American men during the Vietnam War, she was 18 with a mother and a younger brother to support.
She knew little English, but she learned fast and got a county job helping low-income people like her. It was the start of a rapid advance through college and law school, then into private practice and public service.
Do opened a gallery in order to provide a venue for Vietnamese American artists in San Jose. She became executive director of the Friends of Hue Foundation, which operates children’s shelters in central Vietnam. When San Jose’s Coyote Creek flooded in 2017 , she organized a local relief effort and a Vietnamese community response team. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, she mobilized a food drive to deliver to elderly people in quarantine.
“Jenny was like three or four persons working at the same time,” said her former husband and law partner, Dan Do. “She was involved in so many things at once that I would become exhausted simply by being alongside her.”
When she was just 41, Do was recognized as Woman of the Year by the state Assembly and separately received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of San Jose. Those honors came in 2007, which was also the year she was diagnosed with breast cancer. That gave her one more cause: tearing down the taboo among Vietnamese women discussing breast cancer or illnesses of the reproduction system.
Do created and exhibited personalized art related to her cancer for 15 years after her diagnosis. Do fell into a coma on July 30. She died Aug. 4 at Stanford Hospital. She was 56.
“Jenny was such a vibrant person who energized everyone around her,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, who adjourned Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting in Do’s honor. “Her can-do spirit gave people confidence that they could accomplish anything.”
Do’s given name was Phuong Thanh Gang. She was born Feb. 20, 1966 in the coastal city of Vũng Tàu and grew up in Saigon. She never knew her father, but was told he was an American civilian in Vietnam for the war effort. She was 9 when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. Her mother took Do and her brother to the docks where they hid in hopes of boarding a ship out.
“That was the beginning of her dark years,” said Dan Do, who also grew up in wartime Vietnam. “Because she was a child of the enemy, her mother was afraid of acts of revenge from the anti-American crowd.” In order to hide out, they volunteered to move into what was called “a new economic zone,” in the isolated countryside.
Their home was confiscated when they left Saigon, then their valuables were taken when they moved to the countryside. Unable to make a go of it, they returned to Saigon and had to beg for shelter in their former home.
Do attended school by day and worked at night making baskets out of rattan to help support the family. In the village, “She was ostracized and mocked and bullied because of her fair skin,’ said Dan Do. “If something was stolen she was always accused of being the thief.”
It got so bad that Do walked into her neighborhood police station and asked to go to her father’s homeland of America. The United States government had recently launched a pilot program to repatriate children fathered by U.S. military personnel. When she and her family were accepted for immigration, Do changed her first name to Jenny after Jenny Cavilleri, the character played by Ali McGraw in “Love Story.” It was her favorite film and one in which the heroine dies of cancer at a young age.
She arrived in the U.S. with her mother and brother in 1984, and after a few months of processing in Texas, they came to San Jose, where her mother had cousins. Her first job was as a clerk in the central intake unit of the Center for Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement. She then advanced to the position of eligibility worker with the county, doing case management for low-income public assistance recipients.
“She was very frank and honest and she had a passion for what she did ,” said her ex-husband, who was an analyst with the county refugee program. “She really cared about the Amerasian cause, of bringing youth over from Vietnam. It was a reflection of her own life.”
As such, Do never gave up the futile search for her own father, a search which ultimately landed her as a guest on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.”
The Dos married in 1990 and bought a small house in West San Jose. A year later, their son, Alan Do, was born. She’d earned her undergraduate degree from San Jose State University while working full time. She later entered night law school at Lincoln University.
The less sleep she got the more she got done. After passing the California bar exam on the first try, she and her husband became law partners in an office downtown. In the early 2000s, they opened Greenrice Gallery next door to their law office. The gallery hosted up to four exhibitions a year with many of the shows were intended to raise awareness of human trafficking and gender inequality. After Do was diagnosed with cancer, she staged an en exhibition to deal specifically with its stigma in the Vietnamese community.
Among the pieces in the show was an abstract painting indented to depict the spreading of cancer cells in her own body. She also included photographs of herself before and after surgery to remove a lump in her breast.
In 2008, not long after her diagnosis, she closed the gallery. That same year she went to Vietnam to visit cancer clinics in Ho Chi Minh City, and later published a travelogue titled “Eucalyptus Road” in the Viet Tribune, a Vietnamese language newspaper in San Jose.
In 2015, Do was named Trailblazer of the Year by the California Senate. She also received a proclamation from the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors commending her for her dedication to arts and culture, which included a term on the San Jose Arts Commission.
But she wasn’t finished. She made a run for a seat on the San Jose City Council and her campaign was gaining momentum when her cancer returned as stage 4. Her doctor gave her up to 90 days to live. She reluctantly quit the race to undergo treatment. Those 90 days became seven more productive years
Do’s dying wish was that the Ao Dai Festival in San Jose, which she launched in 2011, continue in order to display the diversity of Vietnamese culture. The festival, celebrated in mid-May every other year, has been dormant since COVID. But its organizers are determined to bring it back as a tribute to Do.
“Jenny Do spent her life giving voice to the voiceless, whether they were refugees, or children, or the homeless,” said Supervisor Chavez. “I miss her terribly,”
A memorial service will be held September 18 in the rotunda at San Jose City Hall.
In 2010, Dan and Jenny Do separated after 20 years of marriage. Earlier this summer, she was married to Dr. Lawrence Dong, an oncologist and distinguished professor of cancer biology at UCSF. Dong wasn’t immediately available for comment.
In addition to her husband, of Palo Alto, she is survived by her mother, Mrs. Ngat Dang; her brother, Tuan Dang; her son, Alan Do; and her former husband and long-time “comrade in arms,” Dan Do, all of San Jose.
Donations in her name may be sent to the Friends of Hue Foundation, P.O. Box 1823, San Jose, CA, 95109.
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] . Twitter:@samwhitingsf
