Street Roots • June 2-8, 2011
P H O T O B Y D IE G O D IA Z
FORGIVING, fro m page 5
didn’t know how to cross the street, turn on
a faucet or use a toilet. He was placed in a
special education class.
But Kilong learned quickly and started to
acclimate to his new-found American
culture. He soon became good friends with
a classmate named Scott Easter.
Easter’s parents invited Kilong to come
live in their home, and it was his new
American parents who took him to his first
Grand Floral parade in the early 1980s.
When the Royal Rosarians marched past,
Kilong saw spectators standing up to salute
them. People applauded and cheered. The
Rosarian leading the group waved a large
American flag.
“You’re an American, it’s a flag, you
respect the flag and all that stuff,” said
Kilong. “But it has a different meaning to
somebody who was supposed to be dead in
the killing fields.”
Kilong had no idea who these men were,
but to him they stood for peace and
prosperity. “The ultimate American dream,”
he would later recount.
He told his foster family at that very
moment that someday he wanted to be that
man in white waving an American flag in the
parade. It was a wish that seemed
preposterous at the time.
Through the help of administrators who
saw his potential in high school, he was
invited to attend Reed College, graduating
with a degree in mathematics in 1987.
He went on to earn his master’s degree
in statistics from Bowling Green State
University, where he said he began to feel
like his former self again - the outspoken
sociable kid growing up in pre-Khmer Rouge
Cambodia.
His first job after college was with
Anderson Consulting, a multibillion-dollar
Fortune 500 company (now Accenture).
He married his college sweetheart,
Elizabeth Roe. She now goes by Lisa Ung.
The couple had two children. His son,
Kilin, is named for his father, and his
daughter, Kila, was named for a brother who
died before he was born.
Kilong continued his successful career in
the corporate world and eventually built a
large, luxury home in an affluent
neighborhood - an affront to his former
communist captors.
But he suffered from depression and post-
traumatic stress as he struggled with his
identity and his past traumas.
After 20 years in the U.S., he traveled
back to Cambodia to see the sisters and the
country he’d left behind.
While he was there, an old friend from
the labor camps told him that for $800 he
would kill a notorious Khmer Rouge leader
that had put Kilong’s family through hell.
His friend knew where the man was, and he
News
the kids, I really respect his drive,” he said.
When Kilong visited the foundation’s first
school two years after it was built, he saw
that the government ran a power line into
the village to give the school electricity. A
political office and medical clinic had also
since moved in.
“My intention is not just building schools,
we want to actually bring the spotlight to
the village,” Kilong said.
Kilong and his foundation have donated
school uniforms, rice and hundreds of
bicycles to the villages where the schools
are located.
He recently traveled back to Cambodia
again with a documentary film crew.
His is one of several stories being
featured in “Risking Light,” which is in post
production and due for release at film
festivals this fall. The theme of the film is
“forgiving the unforgivable.”
Director Dawn Mikkelson said she hopes
to screen in Portland sometime next year.
Today Kilong owns a State Farm agency,
with an office on Southeast 82nd Avenue.
He sits on the board of his foundation and is
a member of the Rotary Club of Portland.
But it was a chance meeting with former
Portland mayor Tom Potter in a parking lot
that would pave the way to fulfilling a life
long dream.
Kilong was walking into the Barnes and
Nobel at Clackamas Promenade to do some
last-minute Christmas shopping in
December 2004, when he spotted then
mayor-elect Tom Potter exiting the building.
“Chief Potter?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Potter.
“Congratulation on the election,” said
Kilong. He thought that would be the end of
the exchange, but Potter began to ask him
questions. Soon the men were engrossed in
conversation, and Kilong was telling Potter
all about Portland’s Cambodian community.
Kilong invited Potter to a Cambodian
American Community of Oregon event. The
two have been friends ever since, and Potter
helped Kilong to give the Cambodian
Kilong Ung marches as a Royal Rosarian in the 2016 Starlight Parade. He joined the Royal
community more visibility by attending their
Rosarians 10 years ago, the fulfillm ent o f a dream he had since seeing his first Grand Floral
events, and even mentioning Kilong’s efforts
Parade in the early 1980s.
with the organization during a state of the
city address one year.
When Potter learned of Kilong’s dream of
becoming a Royal Rosarian, he introduced
Leatherman wrote him the check that
Portland and Vancouver, Wash., metro area.
him to a Rosarian that he knew, a former
enabled him to establish a foundation to do
Kilong said community leaders estimate it’s
Prime Minister of the organization, Ray
just that.
closer to 10,000.
Hanson.
Kilong believes education can help
Portland’s Cambodian community is
When asked the prerequisites to
prevent another genocide in Cambodia.
among Multnomah County’s “most
becoming a Rosarian, Hanson replied, “good
“When you are educated, you are less
distressed communities,” according to a
moral character.”
likely to be recruited by propaganda and lies
2012 report from the Coalition of
“I interviewed him and thought he was a
- you will have some degree of critical
Communities of Color and Portland State
good guy,” said Hanson, “and I decided to
thinking. Many of the Khmer Rouge just did
University.
sponsor him. He’s a truly excellent example
what they were told,” he explained.
The report found 44 percent of the local
“It is mob thinking and propaganda -
of a person who gives back to the
Cambodian population had received less
those are really, really dangerous, and I’ve
community.”
than a high school education, and roughly
seen that leading up to the Khmer Rouge,
Ten years ago, the Rose Festival Queen
half could barely speak English. It also
and even now there are some propaganda
knighted Kilong an official member of the
revealed nearly half were low income, with a
going on in Cambodia and new generation
Royal Rosarians at Washington Park.
quarter falling below the federal poverty
may get fooled.”
He remembers soon after, when he
line, but only 13 percent were receiving any
Since its establishment in 2010, the
marched in his first Grand Floral Parade, he
public assistance.
Golden Leaf Education Foundation has built
quietly spoke to his father’s spirit as he
In 1994, Kilong’s sister, Sivheng,
four schools in remote and economically
fought back tears, saying, “I made it. I told
co-founded the Cambodian-American
depressed
areas
of
rural
Cambodia.
It
plans
you I’d make it. Here I am!”
Community of Oregon in Beaverton, where
to break ground on its fifth elementary
On June 2, as Kilong marches in the
she continues to teach younger Cambodians
school this month.
Starlight Parade, he will be at the helm of
about their cultural heritage.
“Quite
often
the
school
ends
up
becoming
the Royal Rosarians, dressed in white from
Kilong decided to volunteer with the
the community center,” said Ray
head to toe, proudly carrying the American
organization and became its president for
Dilschneider, board president of the
several years. He worked diligently to give
flag.
volunteer-run
foundation.
the Cambodian community in Portland more
emily@streetroots. org
“Kilong’s all about doing good things for
visibility and credibility.
needed the money.
Kilong seriously considered taking him up
on his offer. He had long-dreamed of having
murderous revenge on the Khmer Rouge.
But he realized he was at a crossroads,
and he declined.
“They killed over 50 of my relatives, they
starved both my parents to death, and they
put me in a slave camp for almost 5 years,”
said Kilong. “I forgave them. So today, what
can another person do to me that I cannot
forgive?
“The Khmer Rouge should have killed
me, at the very least. They destroyed my
faith in humanity, and yet here I am. When
you go through something like that, you can
turn out to be a really bad person, or you
can turn out to be a decent person. You
have a choice.”
Kilong was conflicted about his material
gains. He had so much, but when he visited
Cambodia, he saw that his friends and family
had so little.
He decided to change course, refocus and
give back to the Cambodian community.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, there
were 4,424 Cambodians living in the
“I wanted people to know we exist,” he
said.
Kilong and his wife decided they would
sell their fancy house and 80 percent of
their belongings. They moved their family
into a small, sparsely furnished two-bedroom
apartment instead.
“I love him and I respect him, not
because he’s my brother but he’s the
kindest human being,” said Sivheng, who
today works for Portland’s Immigrant and
Refugee Community Organization.
“I don’t know if he’d want me to say this,
but at his house, he has this one couch and
one dinner table and one TV - that’s it. He
never buys anything more than that, just the
necessity. He said he’d rather give money to
help other people. His wife is the same
way.”
Shortly after his book was published,
Kilong met Tim Leatherman, of Leatherman
tools, at a book reading. Leatherman,
impressed with Kilong’s story, asked him
what he wanted to do next, now that he’d
written a book.
Kilong told him he wanted to build an
elementary school in Cambodia.
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