Speaking at the event, Nguyen Van Huynh, Vice President of the Vietnam Peace Committee, said the death on October 23 of Tom Hayden, a long-time friend of Vietnam, was a great loss for his family and his supporters in both the US and Vietnam.
The Vietnam Peace Committee, the Vietnam-US Society and many Vietnamese people have sent messages of condolence to Hayden’s family.
Nguyen Thi Binh, Former Vice President and Chairwoman of the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation, wrote in a letter that Vietnam shared this loss with Hayden’s family and Americans generally.
“Since early 1960, Hayden was among the first Americans who knew Vietnam as a nation and a country, not a war,” Binh noted in her letter.
“Hayden will always be with us for the friendship between Vietnam and the US and for peace and justice in Vietnam, in his hometown and around the world,” Huynh stated at the ceremony.
Born on December 11, 1939, Tom Hayden began his activist campaigns as a college student. He wrote many articles and nearly twenty books on peace, human rights and environmental protection, including three specifically about Vietnam. Hayden served a combined eighteen years in the California State Assembly and State Senate (1982-2000).
