Frederick Gulden dies at 86; American architect was left behind when Saigon fell

[Coventina]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Frederick Gulden, an architect dubbed "the last American in Vietnam" when stranded in the country for 15 months after the U.S. military withdrew, died of complications from esophageal cancer April 4 at George Washington University Hospital. He was 86 and lived in Alexandria, Va.

Gulden had established a Saigon office for the architectural firm DeLeuw Cather International in 1972, after two years with the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 1975, the 53-year-old architect, who had been designing an ammunition dump for the South Vietnamese government, got word that the government's collapse was imminent. On April 18, he went to Bangkok, Thailand, to persuade higher-level people in his company to close the Saigon office. He returned to Saigon four days later to try to evacuate the firm's Vietnamese employees.

On the advice of U.S. officials, he put most of the employees on barges to be evacuated by river. He and several others were to be flown out, but when he arrived at the American Embassy on April 30, the last flight had just left. A British television correspondent found him on the roof with 200 Vietnamese and asked why he was still there.

"I think I'm the last American in Vietnam," he said, according to a 1987 interview in Veteran, a monthly magazine of the Vietnam Veterans of America.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-frederick-gulden1-2009may01,0,2118030.story

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As the article goes on to say, he wasn't the last, but he was among the last.

[joeybee12]

1. Sounds like he looked out for his employees during the downfall...

...RIP.

[No Elephants]

2. I guess he was the light at the end of the tunnel. Well done. RIP