27 minute read
Omaha’s Top Dentists
Dental care is important to everyone’s health. General dentists work on preventative procedures, as well as perform restorative procedures, and improve the appearance of people’s smiles with cosmetic dental procedures. Specialists such as orthodontists can further improve people’s health with proper tooth alignment.
Omaha Magazine is pleased to present this list of Top Dentists as compiled by DataJoe LLC.
SUMMARY
To create the list, the magazine contracted DataJoe Research to facilitate an online peer-voting process and Internet research process. DataJoe Research is a software and research company specializing in data collection and verification, and conducts various nominations across the United States on behalf of publishers. To create the list, DataJoe Research facilitated an online peer-voting process. We paired this with an Internet research process to identify success characteristics. DataJoe checked and confirmed that each published winner had, at time of review, a current, active license status with the appropriate state regulatory board. If we were not able to find evidence of a dentist’s current, active registration with the state regulatory board, that dentist was excluded from the list. In addition, we checked available public sources to identify dentists disciplined for an infraction by the state regulatory board. These entities were excluded from the list. Finally, DataJoe presented the tallied result to the magazine for its final review and adjustments.
FINAL NOTE
We recognize that there are many good dentists who are not shown in this representative list. This is only a sampling of the huge array of talented professionals within the region. Inclusion in the list is based on the opinions of responding dentists in the region. We take time and energy to ensure fair voting, although we understand that the results of this survey nomination and Internet research campaign are not an objective metric. We certainly do not discount the fact that many, many good and effective dentists may not appear on the list.
DISCLAIMERS
DataJoe uses best practices and exercises great care in assembling content for this list. DataJoe does not warrant that the data contained within the list are complete or accurate. DataJoe does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. All rights reserved. No commercial use of the information in this list may be made without written permission from DataJoe.
QUESTIONS?
For research/methodology questions, contact the research team at surveys@datajoe.com.
TOBIN N. DRAKE Endodontic Associates
JACOB L. FIMPLE Advanced Endodontic Therapy
PATRICK K. HAFFEY Nebraska Micro-Endodontics
COREY K. KARIMJEE Midwest Endodontics
CACI I. LIEBENTRITT Omaha Endodontists
DAVID A. MAIXNER Midwest Endodontics
STEPHEN P. PRYOR Endodontic Specialists
GENERAL DENTISTRY
GREGORY M. BEALS Pacific Springs Dental
SARAH T. BILLESBACH Mancuso Dental
ANTHONY R. BOLAMPERTI Maha Laser Dentistry
THEODORE J. BOLAMPERTI Bolamperti Family Dentistry
WILLIAM J. BRESNAHAN
T. PAT BURCHFIEL Burchfiel Dental
BRAD W. CARSON Pacific Village Dental
AMY T. CHADWELL Chadwell Family Dentistry
JEFFRY F. CHEREK
RALPH M. CORPUZ Corpuz Family Dentistry
MICHAEL C. DANAHAY Dental Innovations
KATHERINE L. DEFORD DeFord Family Dental
JAMES R. DEMMAN The Dentists at Dundee
SCOTT C. DILORENZO 40th and Dodge Family Dentistry
JEFFREY D. DWORAK Capehart Family Dentistry
402.885.8990 capehartdental.com
JEFFREY T. GARVEY Midlands Dental Group
JAMES G. GERNER Montclair Dental
KENDRA L. GOSCH Gosch Family Dental JEROME F. GRADOVILLE Creighton University School of Dentistry
BENJAMIN G. HARDY Hardy Dental
GREGORY A. HAVELKA
MICHAEL J. HOOVER Hoover Dental
MICAH JEPPESEN Your Family Dentist
JAMES F. MCCASLIN Evergreen Dental Group
MATTHEW C. NEUMANN Serenity Dental
JEFFREY R. NIELSEN Bel-Drive Dental
MARK J. PANNETON Panneton Dental Group
BRIAN S. PENDLEY The Dentists at Village Pointe
RICHARD J. RONK, JR.
THOMAS O. RUDERSDORF Family Dentist Bellevue
Village Pointe Oral Surgery & Dental Implant Center is a privately run business, so not only are its patients supporting the local business community, they’re treated like family, said oral and maxillofacial surgeon Dr. Michael Shnayder.
“We focus on quality, from the materials we use to everything else; as a local, non corporate business we have that personal approach,” he mentioned proudly.
The growing practice, which serves patients of all ages, provides a full scope of oral and maxillofacial surgery, ranging from dental implant surgery and wisdom tooth removal to facial trauma and oral pathology. This includes techniques that rebuild bone structure with minimal surgical intervention and optimal patient comfort. Other state-of-theart technology and procedures include live navigation for implant placement.
“It’s an amazing technology that’s a huge advancement over how we used to do implants,” Dr. Shnayder said. “It’s very precise.” The practice was the first in nebraska to utilize live navigation technology. Village Pointe Oral Surgery also has the latest generation of CT machines, he added. “It gives us the ability to get detailed images for treatment planning and patient care. I like embracing new technology.”
Village Pointe Oral Surgery & Dental Implant Center
17121 Marcy St., Ste. 102 Omaha, NE 68118 402.317.5657 vpoms.com
AMY M. RUF The Dentists at Ralston Square
JAY D. SAMUELSON The Dentists at Hillsborough
MICHAEL R. SESEMANN Nebraska Institute of Comprehensive Dentistry
ALLAN M. SMITH Bellevue Family Practice Dentistry
CAROLYN L. TAGGART-BURNS Millard Oaks Dental
BRETT H. TAYLOR Taylor Dentistry
BRETT S. THOMSEN Thomsen Dental Group
STEVEN D. WEGNER
DEBRA S. WEST
KARRY K. WHITTEN Whitten Dentistry
ORAL AND MAXILLOFACIAL SURGERY
COREY J. AUCH Oral Surgery Associates
STEPHEN A. COFFEY Oral Surgery Associates
VALMONT P. DESA Nebraska Medicine
JOHN D. ENGEL Oral Surgery Associates AFOLABI O. OGUNLEYE Premier Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery
ROBERT M. PFEIFLE Oral Surgery Associates
MICHAEL I. SHNAYDER Village Pointe Oral Surgery
ORAL PATHOLOGY
ORTHODONTICS
MATTHEW J. BECKER Imagine Orthodontics
KELLY R. CONWAY
NEIL E. DUNLOW Dunlow Orthodontics
THOMAS J. HUERTER Huerter Orthodontics
KORT A. IGEL Igel Orthodontics
TAERA KIM Metro West Orthodontics & Periodontics LAURA E. LOW Wees & Low Orthodontics
BRIAN MCINTYRE Omaha Orthodontics
MARK MENDLIK Mendlik Orthodontics
JULIE E. OLSON Olson Orthodontics
BARBARA J. RIES
TIMOTHY J. SHEEHAN The Orthodontic Group
KIMBERLEY A. STAFFORD Stafford Orthodontics
THOMAS J. WEBER Weber Orthodontics
JULIE WEES Wees & Low Orthodontics
MICHELLE S. WULF Southwest Orthodontics
PETER A. ZIEGLER Ziegler Orthodontics
PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY
CARMEN L. DANA Pedodontics
ERIC D. HODGES Children’s Hospital and Medical Center
J. BRYAN HOHENSTEIN Smile Station Pediatric Dentistry
Omaha Family + Cosmetic Dentist
At our practice, we excel in Cosmetic Dentistry, Restorative/Implant Dentistry, Family Dentistry and Preventative Dentistry. We use the most current dental technology available, including Cerec, one visit dentistry for all-ceramic restorations and digital radiographs.
BOLDINGDENTISTRY.COM . 402.393.4400 . 10110 NICHOLAS ST., SUITE #101, OMAHA, NE 68114
THANK YOU FOR VOTING US BEST FAMILY DENTIST 14 YEARS
IN A ROW!
Family Dentist O ce
SELECTED BY THEIR PEERS AS
HILLSBOROUGH
13808 W. Maple Rd. Omaha, NE 68164 402.445.4647
RALSTON SQUARE
5360 S. 72nd Street Omaha, NE 68127 402.733.4441
VILLAGE POINTE
302 N. 168th Circle Omaha, NE 68118 402.505.7474
DUNDEE
119 N. 51st Street Omaha, NE 68132 402.502.5593
PERIODONTICS
DENNIS M. ANDERSON Gum Disease Specialists
NATALIE A. FROST Frost Periodontics & Dental Implants
MATTHEW R. KELSEY Kelsey Periodontal Group
W. PATRICK KELSEY V Kelsey Periodontal Group
TIMOTHY P. MCVANEY Specialty Dental Care
STACY L. MOFFENBIER
PROSTHODONTICS
ANDREA L. HALL Millard Hills Dental Health Center
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN DESIGN BY MATT WIECZOREK
C
Chambers has taken heat for his contention that anyone born or naturalized in America is a citizen “unless you’re Black.” “Blacks are not fullfledged citizens,” maintains Chambers, using himself as an example. “Yes, I was born here, I served in the military, I pay taxes, I got an education in all these white schools, I did well in all of them and graduated. I went to law school, there was no book I read I didn’t understand, no law I couldn’t find flaws with (if there were any) no provision of the constitution I’m unfamiliar with…But I’m still not a citizen because you have to have special laws so I can vote and then you try to undermine those laws; you have people who want to try to suppress my right to vote.”
IT’S A THEORY HE HAS LIVED THROUGH HIS 84 YEARS;
SERVING DISTRICT 11 FOR 46 YEARS AND TRYING TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE OF NEBRASKA ABOUT INEQUALITY.
Foundations
He was born July 10, 1937, to Lillian and Malcolm Chambers. Two years before he was born, 20 people in the United States were lynched—killed for an alleged offense without a legal trial; the year before his birth NAACP founder William English Walling died. Chambers, the son of a pentecostal church minister, grew up in a “religious strait jacket.” Ever a careful, quiet observer and quick read, he doubted what elders told him after noting their behavior contradicted what they professed. He vowed not to blindly follow or believe others.
“That put in me, from a very early age, a responsibility and obligation to do what I knew or thought, no matter what anybody else said or did,” he said. “And that has stayed with me throughout my life. I do what my conscience tells me what I ought to do.”
When he gained enough insight to realize that actions speak louder than words, he left the church, or, as he said, “I have a Bible verse for almost everything. The verse I thought of for that is from Paul: ‘When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, I believed as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things.’”
Hypocrisy was easy to identify once the wonder of words opened to Chambers, who, with help from a grade school teacher, overcame early reading-language deficits.
“I became somebody who would pore over things until I thought I had it,” Chambers said. “I would listen carefully to what people said. I learned how to pronounce words by listening to how other children pronounced the words or when the teacher corrected them,” he said. “When I did learn how to read, I was fascinated by insects and animals. They didn’t mistreat each other like people.”
He attended mostly white Lothrop Elementary School, where a young Chambers discovered not all books are friendly towards non-whites. In an interview in January 2006 for Mother Jones, Chambers was quoted as saying, “I was in a class where I was the only Black child, and they sang ‘Old Black Joe’ during the music portion and read The Story of Little Black Sambo and let those little white kids laugh, which children will do because the story is supposed to be funny—it wasn’t funny to me at all.”
-ErniE ChambErs
Chambers graduated from Omaha Tech High School in 1955 before earning a B.A. in history, with minors in philosophy and Spanish, from Creighton University in 1959.
Following his graduation, he served four years in the U.S. Army, from 1959 to 1963. “In basic training I carried the flamethrower voluntarily. It weighed 68-and-a-half pounds.” After his honorable discharge, he entered Creighton Law School. Despite making the dean’s list, he was denied the chance to complete his studies in a dispute over skipping classes. It would be many years later, under a new school regime, before he was allowed to complete his degree. He never took the bar exam, believing that people should not have to take an exam to enter the profession for which he was already prepared.
Exposure to new ideas led him to interrogate the status quo. Once he found his voice, he used it as a tool and weapon. “I was a skeptic. My life when I was growing up was full of contradictions, full of confusion, full of wondering where can I go to find out how things really are. I didn’t know much about Black history or that Black people had done things because the daily newspaper obviously didn’t carry it, the textbooks didn’t carry it.”
Some adults who noted his gifts introduced him to knowledge beyond school lessons. Buoyed by a growing self-confidence and sense of purpose, he stood up and spoke out against wrong.
“I was a thorn in white people’s side even when I was young,” Chambers said. “As a result, I’ve always been kind of an outsider, and that’s what I am now. I was not afraid to stand alone and do alone what needed to be done. I carried on one-man pickets even then because I felt something needed to be said by somebody publicly from the Black community. But I am my own person. I will follow what I believe. I don’t care what the consequences are. Nobody can compel me or frighten me out of saying what I believe. I’ve gotten death threats. I’ve gotten the usual hate mail, racial slurs, all of it.”
Freedom follows being unafraid, which is why, he said, “For me to do what I’m doing is as natural for me as it is for you to drink water or breathe air.”
ERNIE CHAMBERS
He worked construction and odd jobs from high school through college. “Then I worked at the post office (downtown) until I got fired.” Upon being fired he waged a solo protest. Chambers continued, “I’ve never been ashamed or embarrassed to work, no matter the kind of work. If I did honest work and got decent pay for it, then I would do it.”
After graduating barber school, he rented a chair at Spencer Street Barbershop and cut hair for a living. It became a forum for this thought leader and community spokesperson who, with his blend of street and book smarts, polemics and philosophy, led lively discourses on social-political topics. In proprietor Dan Goodwin Sr., he found an ally. “He knew what I stood for and he liked it,” Chambers said. “Saturday mornings we’d go to breakfast. Then, sometimes when I wasn’t cutting hair, I’d come down to the shop, sit around, and just talk to people. Our friendship just blossomed. We saw so many things exactly the same way that people began to think he and I were brothers.”
Hanging with Chambers, who was an FBI target, came with a cost. “Dan got arrested sometimes because he was with me.” After appealing for justice on the radio about the wrongful 1969 police killing of Vivian Strong in Omaha, the two were arrested outside the studio.
Along the way, Chambers also found brotherhood and camaraderie in Omaha Star editor Charles B. Washington, noted for his 1964 interview with Malcolm X for the North Omaha newspaper. In 1964 he and Chambers met the activist when he visited the town of his birth to deliver a talk. Chambers greatly admired Malcolm X. The two men, both preachers' sons cut from the same ideological cloth, took the opportunity after the event to exchange viewpoints. The next year, Malcolm X’s political career, and life, ended while Chambers’ was getting started.
Taking action and in harm’s way
The barbershop’s intellectual rigor is captured in the 1967 Oscar-nominated documentary A Time for Burning. It lays bare racism through an Omaha church’s failed attempt at interracial fellowship. Chambers appears as the prickly conscience of the piece. The film screened on PBS and prompted a national lecture tour by Chambers.
He misses the shop’s “open line” vents and discussions. “I don’t think it’s just because those were the good old days. What happened there could be called ageless. I think this kind of activity occurred anywhere in the world at any period in history when there was a group disadvantaged in the way Black people are.
“When the 4CL (Citizens Coordinating Committee for Civil Liberties) came into being, a group of us would go with them when they went on demonstrations,” Chambers said. “They knew we didn’t believe in nonviolence. We wouldn’t start anything, but we wouldn’t let anybody do anything to us without doing anything back. We didn’t believe in suffering in silence.”
He became a go-to intervener and mediator for folks embroiled in police matters or public housing issues. He’s credited with trying to calm protestors when civil disturbances erupted in the late 1960s.
“There were times when I was putting myself in jeopardy,” he said. “I had an obligation. The police did not have to tell the truth. All they had to do was say this person did this and so on. They might take him downtown, bust his head, not charge him with anything, turn him loose downtown, and he’d have to struggle back home. This was one of the reasons I was so highly regarded in the community. I would get calls in the dead of night about somebody who’d been taken downtown by the police and if I didn’t go down there we might never see them again. I would get up and go.”
A life’s work
Chambers twice ran for elected office before winning his legislature seat the first time in 1971. He represented the community in all but name, so when approached to run, he did. Elected offices in Nebraska then were on an at-large basis with the exception of the legislature. District 11 was the lone public office a Black candidate could realistically win. He later pushed legislation that replaced at-large elections with district elections, which opened the door for Black candidates to win school board, city council, county commissioner, treasurer, and other seats.
“If I had known I would give 46 years of my life to it, I would not have run. If that was the bargain, I would not have taken it. But once I got in, there were things I saw a legislature could do and I tried hard doing them. I got some things done initially. People began to rely on me. I gave them a reason to rely on me.”
He knew well the challenges his district’s residents confronted and the uphill climb to remedy disparity. “I was faced with what mine were facing, but laying all that aside, ultimately it was on me. When I gave that affirmation I did it willingly without mental reservation and I carried through on it.”
Each time he ran, he told supporters he wouldn’t actively campaign: “If you all want me here, you’re going to have to send me here, and that’s what they did.”
He continued, “I carried over from law school a principle that says when you give people a basis for relying on you for something, you’re liable if you don’t carry through. In an ethical or moral sense, I’ve given the people in this community a basis to believe I would do everything I could in that office and I would be in that office as long as they wanted to keep me there. So I stayed.”
INVISIBLE, FEATURE STORY BY ANDREW J. NELSON PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN DESIGN BY MATT WIECZOREK INVISIBLE, INVISIBLE, What is
INVISIBLE, INVISIBLE, but Found Everywhere
You Look?
SOLVING OMAHA’S ILLITERACY RIDDLE
Khanh Nguyen
M
ost days Khanh Nguyen can be found at the Millard Branch of Omaha Public Library. He’s studying for the Test of English as a Foreign Language. He’s also studying for the Graduate Management Admission Test. In his backpack he carries a copy of You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero.
That last book is 250 pages, all written in English—and that’s saying something. Nguyen, 30, is a recent immigrant from Da Nang, in Vietnam. There he was a development official, a graduate of the Da Nang University of Economics. In Omaha, he waits tables in a Vietnamese restaurant.
“English is a basic skill that is needed to get a life, get a career, in a foreign country,” he said in an interview outside the Millard library.
Nguyen knows it will take many more shifts at the Vietnamese restaurant to get comfortable speaking English, and much more time studying to get the certifications he needs, before he can practice accounting in the United States.
“Nothing is easy at the beginning, and English is no exception,” he said. But I can improve my English if I do my best and practice day by day.”
Literacy and skill with English is an extensive problem in the city of Omaha, with tentacles that stretch into most parts, if not every part, of city life.
In a city and country of immigrants, those who are new here may always struggle with literacy. But many of our neighbors who have lived in the United States their entire lives are challenged as well.
According to information provided by the literacy education nonprofit Learning for All:
• 17% of people in the Omaha area are functionally illiterate
• 14% of the adult population of the United States cannot read
• 70% of incarcerated people in the United States score at lowest proficiency for reading
• More than $230 billion per year in health care costs is linked to low literacy
• About 75% of incarcerated people in state prisons did not complete high school or can be classified as having low literacy Omaha Magazine further found that low-literacy patients have less health-related knowledge and get less preventative care, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation. Forbes reported a Gallup/ Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy study found adult illiteracy may be costing the United States as much as $2.2 trillion per year.
“When you look at what’s going on here in Omaha, it’s just not something that we’re talking about,” said John Nania, executive director of Learning for All. “But it’s something that’s impacting each of us, something that we can do something about. But we don’t even know it’s a problem.”
Illiteracy is a problem for immigrants and refugees to this country. But the problem is homegrown as well. Learning For All’s GED students whose primary language is English often read at some of the lowest levels on the scale of literacy, said Courtney Baughman, Learning for All’s program director.
Nania moved to Omaha about 12 years ago as a senior executive with the American Red Cross. He joined Learning for All after retiring from the Red Cross in 2018.
“When I moved here, one of the things I kept hearing is that you know the unemployment rate is so low,” he said. “When I came to Learning for All, I realized that there are so many people that don’t have their GED or don’t have some of those basic educational skills—they’re not even applying for these jobs.”
Someone who cannot read probably won’t be able to fill out a job application or write a resume. They can’t read instructions and warnings on a container of medicine. They can’t understand their car registration or insurance information.
“Typically, these are people [in] a cycle of poverty that is very difficult to break out of, because if they can’t function well, they can’t help their kids with their education or their homework,” Nania said. “This is a cyclical problem.” The reasons for the American-born literacy problem are hard to pin down. That conversation often circles back to schools.
“I think that we are not as progressive as many of the other countries, which then leads to lots of holes, lots of gaps, kids falling through the cracks at a young age,” said Baughman, a former teacher with Omaha Public Schools. “The problem is, teachers are given a classroom of 20 to 25 students and some of them come to them basically illiterate and some of them come to them as incredibly high achievers. And a teacher [is] told, ‘OK, teach them all. And get them to pass these tests, so that, according to the state, we are a functional, progressive, school.’”
And children having trouble fall through the cracks and aren’t helped, she said.
“By the time they get to 12th grade, it’s clear that they have fallen so far behind that it would be next to impossible for them to make up for what they have lost.”
Not quite 20% of high school graduates leave school not having developed basic reading proficiency, according to information from Learning for All.
In adulthood, it’s up to the person to get help for themselves. And that is not easy for someone to do. The processes of admitting that you can’t read and learning how to as an adult are difficult. But programs like Learning for All and others are available.
“By the time we may finally [get them] to the front door there was a lot that went into that decision to come and see us,” Nania said. “And they know that they’re going to be in for some work, and they know it’s not going to be easy. But they know that if they don’t do this, things are not going to change, things are not going to improve.”
The embarrassment problem is profound. Attempts to reach a native English speaker who suffered from adult illiteracy for this article were unsuccessful—no one contacted through Learning for All or other programs would talk to a reporter, or would only do so without a promise of anonymity.
Solutions to native-born illiteracy in the United States are elusive. Nania said something relatively easy people can do is volunteer to read to children.
They don’t need an educational background, he said. “You don’t need experience doing that.”
When he lived in Georgia, Nania took part in an opportunity to volunteer in classrooms once or twice per month.
“A lot of my day was spent reading to kids and talking with fifth and sixth grade kids who had no books in their house,” he said. “Their parents had never read to them. And the teachers were trying to give them extra time, [to] encourage that child to read, because their reading skills were so low and it was impacting all of their other academic pursuits as well. So definitely reading to children at a very young age is a critical piece.”
Part of the solution is making families aware of the resources that are available, Baughman said.
“If you have a functionally illiterate single mom, she’s not going to be doing any reading with her kid at night. She’s just not,” Baughman said. “If you’re giving her the resources that she could tap into, then that’s a great start. The problem with that—and therein lies that multilayer issue—is that mom going to feel comfortable enough to reach out? It’s embarrassing for a lot of people.”
There are some literacy statistics that can be considered positive: Nebraska ranks well overall, with the sixth highest literacy rate in the United States, according to the World Population Review. Neighboring states score in the top 10 as well, with South Dakota ranked as fifth, Iowa as ninth, and Missouri as 10th.
The United States ranks seventh in the world in literacy, according to a study published last year by Central Connecticut State University.
Issues with literacy and language are tough for immigrants as well. Many refugees come to the United States with no knowledge of English.
According to Nania: “My wife was tutoring a woman in her 50s who was never even allowed to go to school in her home country. So, there are a lot of cultural issues. There are a lot of issues that are specific to some of the countries.” Others might have to adjust to a reality where they are no longer the valued professionals they were in their country— like the doctor from China who had to work washing dishes at Red Robin.
“What a shame to have someone with that talent washing dishes and not working at the Med Center, or some of the accountants we’ve had,” Nania said. “We have a lawyer from South America whose life was threatened and had to escape his country. And you know, he doesn’t want to be waiting tables. He wants to be a lawyer. That’s his passion.”
Nguyen is on a path to get out of restaurants and back into accounting. He earned his bookkeeping certificate from Central Community College by taking online classes during the lockdown. He plans on pursuing a master’s degree. And he is taking English classes with Learning for All.
Because English is a mandatory subject in Vietnam, Nguyen was able to read a little English when he arrived in the United States. But speaking and hearing the language were real problems. He needs to get better, because he said not learning how to communicate in English means his career options are limited.
He moved to the United States after getting married—his wife is a former first-grade classmate who he reunited with over Facebook.
“At first I was reluctant to move because life in the U.S. is so different from Vietnam,” he said. “But my wife and my family told me this would be the right choice.”
He was inspired to persevere by reading Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration speech. At the height of the Great Depression, Roosevelt told Americans “the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” English is a hard language for Vietnamese people to learn, even if they have an educational background in it, he said. Those who struggle the most in the Vietnamese community to learn English are older, he said.
“They are dependent on their children. They are not familiar with [the] American language. They just want to stay at home in their comfort zone,” he said. The older people have good experience, but they don’t know how to share it with their children because they don’t know how to speak that language.
Nguyen said that Americans can help immigrants by putting money into community colleges and offering “more suitable programs for English learners.”
He lives in Sarpy County just south of Harrison Street. His wife owns a nail salon—a common occupation in the Vietnamese community.
Nguyen often ponders his move to the United States. “I think about it every night and day. I don’t know if it was a good decision or not,” said Nguyen, a permanent resident pursuing citizenship. “But what I look forward to [is] a better life in America with my family.”
Nguyen said much of life is better in the United States. The air quality is better. So are the hospitals and schools, as is the infrastructure. And once he is able to relaunch his accounting career, the money will better.
But life is also good in Vietnam. And if he can succeed here and be an example to his family back home, so much the better.
“If I am successful in a foreign country, like the U.S., I can set a good example for the younger generation,” he said. “For my family members…to try their best.”
Visit golearnall.org for more information.
