Making the Rounds with the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV

Making the Rounds

October 5, 2021 Issue 297

Friends & Colleagues,

In today’s newsletter, we turn the spotlight on Elaine Aromin, the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine Manager of Contracts. In her position, she oversees the contract process, ensuring that contracts are accurately processed for appropriate final execution. Over 40 years ago, Elaine was in a much different position -- an 8-year-old child who was one of hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. What Elaine and her family endured and how she now reacts to the current plight of Afghan refugees strongly argues against xenophobia and hatred aimed at those forced to leave their home countries due to war, violence, or fear of prosecution as a result of race, religion, sectarianism, nationality and certain ideas, beliefs or political opinion. We must keep in mind that nearly all of us came to the U.S. from somewhere. In a sense, we are a country of immigrants and refugees.

Marc J. Kahn, M.D.

Dean, Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV

Medicine By The Numbers

Eye Cancer

The American Cancer Society’s estimates for eye cancer in the United States for 2021 are:

3,320 new cancers (mainly melanomas) of the eye and orbit: 1,750 in men and 1,570 in women

400 deaths from cancers of the eye and orbit: 220 in men and 180 in women

Primary eye cancers can occur at any age, but the risk for most types increases as people get older.

Cancers that spread to the eye from another part of the body (secondary eye cancers) are more common than primary eye cancers.

Most cancers of the eye and orbit in adults are melanomas, but this cancer starts more often in other parts of the body. More than 9 out of 10 melanomas start in the skin.

Melanoma of the eye is much more common in whites than blacks, and is slightly more common in men than women.

Source:

www.cancer.org

Current Plight Of Afghan Refugees Hits Close To Home For School of Medicine Employee

Elaine Aromin, Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV Manager of Contracts.

To anyone without a heart of stone, the scenes from Kabul Airport of desperate Afghans seeking to escape the Taliban were moving, upsetting, disturbing. For Elaine Aromin, who serves as the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV Manager of Contracts, it was all that and much, much more.

It brought back memories of when she and her family -- Aromin’s birth name is Phung Vuong -- were among refugees who fled Vietnam by boat following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. While the number of Vietnamese boat people who arrived safely in another country totaled nearly 800,000 -- the migration and humanitarian crisis was at its highest in 1978 and 1979 -- the United Nations High Commission on Refugees reported as many as 400,000 boat people died at sea on small overcrowded fishing boats, either at the hands of pirates or during storms.

“Seeing and hearing the plight of these Afghans brought me to tears,” says Aromin.

Unable to speak a word of English when she arrived in Las Vegas in 1980 at the age of 8, Aromin and her family first escaped from Vietnam to Indonesia on a fishing boat. The family was then resettled in Nevada by U.S. authorities.

Upon becoming a U.S. citizen in 1989, Phung Vuong changed her first name to Elaine, and became Elaine Aromin in 2009 after marriage to Raymund Aromin.

“I feel the desperation of the Afghan people,” Aromin says. “People don’t leave their country with only the clothes on their backs because they want to. It’s all about survival. They don’t want to die or end up in prison. They want to give a better life to their children.”

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese, more than 130,000 Vietnamese associated with United States-backed South Vietnam were quickly evacuated, with the majority resettled in the U.S. Aromin’s family was not among those who were fortunate enough to get out then.

The turmoil in Vietnam, along with an exodus of refugees trying to escape severe hardship, would continue after the war. Up to 300,000 people, particularly those associated with the South Vietnamese military and government, were sent to reeducation camps, where torture and starvation were common. Increasing tensions between Vietnam and China -- China would invade Vietnam in 1979 -- resulted in repression against the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, people who ran much of the retail trade in South Vietnam and who were unjustly suspected of being a security threat by the North Vietnamese. This included Aromin’s family.

In the three years following the Vietnam War, Aromin’s parents and brother lived in the remote countryside of Vietnam while Aromin lived with her grandmother and uncles, one of whom owned a steel plant, in the city of Saigon.

“This was because my dad had previously been a driver for one of the U.S. Generals and the North Vietnamese were hunting for anyone that aided the U.S,” Aromin recalled. “My family lived in constant fear of my father being captured. My family would sneak out and visit a few times annually to see us with the help of close friends, relatives and neighbors.”

By late 1978, Aromin said the treatment of ethnic Chinese in the country, coupled with the concern about her father’s capture, forced her family to escape. “The country was beginning to be unbearable for Chinese descendants. The Vietnamese wanted to cleanse the country and felt that if you were anything but Vietnamese, you shouldn’t be there.” Because of her father’s relationship with the U.S. military, Aromin said leaving the country was especially hazardous.

“These Afghan migrants are leaving their homes and many of their loved ones behind to come to an unknown place. They will want, like my family did, to succeed, and will do whatever is necessary to move forward. But we must remember that most of them have nothing now. I can tell you that kindness and compassion go a long way in helping a refugee at a difficult time in their lives.”

Elaine Aromin

Two attempts at escape by her immediate family were unsuccessful, though on both attempts family assets were confiscated by authorities, who greatly profited from the outflow of the refugees. “By our third attempt, we were out of money and resources. Luckily members of my family were fishermen and my dad knew how to navigate the South China Sea. So my dad bargained for his services to get us out. After four days and three nights with 140 people on a 140 foot boat, we arrived on the shores of an Indonesian island. Passengers had been packed like sardines in the hull. We were on the upper part of the boat, but had to remain horizontally at all times.” People often became sick during the voyage, Aromin said, and the ship’s bathroom consisted of going off the side of the vessel.

The time on the Indonesia island, Aromin says, was “exactly like the show ‘Survivor.’ We built our own shelter with banana leaves and ate fruit and seafood. I was so malnourished at one time that my belly bloated bigger than my head. My parents thought I might die. We survived by trading. My dad was very entrepreneurial. Because he knew how to build a shelter with banana leaves, we were paid with clothing, medicine and other essentials.”

After a few months on the island, Aromin and her family moved to a refugee camp with metal buildings in inland Indonesia. “Each person was given 36 inches to live on so as a family, we got a 12 foot section of the platform.” After a few months there, the family received sponsorship to come to the U.S.

Members of Aromin’s paternal family had already set roots in Las Vegas and with the help of Catholic Charities, Aromin and her family were sponsored and came to Nevada to reunite with them. They ended up living in a one-bedroom apartment near the Stratosphere.

Refugee camp in Indonesia where Elaine and her family stayed before being resettled in America (Photographer unknown)

“My parents had the bedroom and my brother and I had the living room,” Aromin remembers. A few years later, they moved into government housing and then a house. “My dad had multiple jobs as a busboy and my mom also had two jobs as a maid. My parents and my aunts and uncles especially paid a high price for us to be successful. In Vietnam, my maternal family had a steel plant. My mom was the bookkeeper and did administrative stuff. But here in the U.S., she cleaned toilets. They were willing to do what was necessary for me and my brother. They worked hard to become card dealers, which made more money.”

By junior high, Aromin was at the top of her class and graduated from El Dorado High School with high honors. She earned her bachelor of science degree in hospitality management at UNLV and completed her MBA in health sciences at Roseman University.

Before joining the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine five years ago, she worked for Dignity Health and as an account executive with the World Market Center Trade Show Leasing department.

“I love this country,” Aromin says. “It has given me the opportunity to become the person I am today. I will never forget the compassion of the people of this country, how they reached out to help me in school.”

Aromin believes that with the type of kindness she received from Americans, Afghan refugees will also be successful in the U.S., helping the nation become even stronger.