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"When I saw them still on that little platform," McCluskey says, "something happened inside of me. I turned to Vu and asked, 'What would it take to build these girls a house?' "After considering such a grand scheme, Vu consulted the village chief. They estimated a simple house for the girls could be built for the equivalent of about $3,000. "I said, 'Jeez, I can raise that,' " McCluskey remembers. Then and there the two men made a pact. McCluskey would provide the money; Vu would manage logistics of building the houseboat. They both had to work fast if they were to get it built before winter set in. It was already the end of September. "I believed we could make it," Vu recalls. "We decided whatever it costs, however long it takes, we were going to do it."
Vu borrowed money from his travel company to get things started. The day after he got home to Minnesota, McCluskey started fund-raising. He got the local paper, The Ely Echo, to run an article about the girls and then told their story on local radio.
Ely is a town of 3,960, so it didn't take long for word to get around. The Girl Scouts had a bake sale and a couple of days later surprised him with a plastic bag stuffed with quarters and dimes and nickels and $1 bills. "There was nearly $150 in there," McCluskey said.
A few days later, an elderly woman, someone he didn't even know, stopped him in the aisle of the supermarket and pressed $10 into his hand.
Back in Vietnam, things were not going as well. Vu had lined up workers and the building materials for the little house, but ran into a problem. The legal age for owning property in Vietnam was 18. The plan was to give ownership to all three sisters -- but they were not yet of age.
The fear was that the girls' father would show up and lay claim to the building. Vu couldn't put himself down as a caretaker owner because he was not a resident of the village.
For weeks he could find no legal solution. Then some friends referred him to the Vietnamese offices of the Red Cross, which agreed to be the legal caretaker of the house until Mai was 18. Then the joint property would be turned over to all three of them.
In late October, Kim wired the first payment, $2,700, to Vu. And by the end of the month, the house was done.
On a sunny fall afternoon on November 3, 2003, Lan, Xuan and Mai were summoned to the front porch of a 12-by-12-foot floating cottage, where a local official formally presented the new home to them.
Sobbing with happiness and disbelief, they ran inside the sturdy little houseboat to find a bedroom with a real bed to sleep on and a small room with a desk where Mai could study. With tears coursing down her cheeks, Mai ran out onto the porch and called out to her friends in disbelief, "It's my house! It's my house!"
The next day McCluskey opened his e-mail to find photos of the house ceremony and a note from his friend Vu: "First of all, from my heart, I would like to say thank you very, very much for all you have done for these poor little girls. Tears of thanks I would like to send to your golden heart. I am proud of having a friend like you."
McCluskey felt the same way about his Vietnamese friend and partner. He felt that at last he'd given something back to the land that had claimed much of his youth and the youth of so many others.
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