10 questions with Van Ha To-Cowell

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Van Ha To-Cowell is one of the last original teachers at Wagner Elementary Holt School in Stockton.CLIFFORD OTO/The Record

On Monday, Van Ha To-Cowell marks a grim anniversary.

It will have been exactly one year since her husband of 30 years, Dana Cowell, lost his fight with cancer.

Keeping her spirits up is her day job as a fourth grade teacher at Lodi Unified's Wagner-Holt Elementary School in Stockton and her night job as a Lincoln Unified School Board trustee.

No stranger to struggle, To-Cowell's life has been a journey marked by tenacity and fierce determination.

She came to the United States from Vietnam as a college student in the 1970s. After Saigon fell to the Communists, her father was interned in a re-education camp where he died in 1983.

She met her future husband at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. They married and raised two sons together - Evan, 25, and Andrew, 21 - while she pursued her goal of becoming an educator.

Today, she's focused on learning how to live happily as a single person. It's a slow process that this empty nester is taking one day at a time.

Question: How are you handling the grief?

Answer: I have my ups and downs. Sometimes I can go through days without crying, and then something triggers my emotions. Weekends and holidays are hard. When I want to feel close to him, I look at his pictures, our pictures together. I found a box of his old letters to me when I was cleaning out our closet over the holidays. They gave me a good cry when I reread them, but they somehow lifted me up through the holidays. There's so much love in them. Right now, I'm preparing for his first death anniversary with my family. I'm combining our Vietnamese's Buddhist way to commemorate our loved ones and the Methodist way. He was Methodist. Instead of incense, we'll use candles. We'll say our quiet own personal prayers when we light the candles. There will be food offerings to the altar. For the kids, they're going to release balloons.

Q: What do you miss most about your husband?

A: I tell my sons that I don't think there is another person who is so sweet and gentle. He was always so calm and thoughtful. I miss most our conversations we would have. He was so accepting and supportive.

Q: What is your favorite childhood memory?

A: In the back of our house growing up, there was a big man-made pool - like a lake. Our friends would come over and we would pump up inner tubes and float all day. At night, the fireflies would come out.

Q: Tell me something your students are going to learn about this year?

A: I love social studies in the fourth grade. They are going to learn all about California missions. I like to teach about the importance of community and paying it forward.

Q: If you could have anything you want for your classroom, what would it be?

A: Money for field trips. We have this jar of money in our classroom that we are saving up for a field trip. It costs about $700 for a field trip. So many of my students don't have the opportunity to go anywhere. I want to give them experiences and take them to a play or to the symphony.

Q: It took a long time before someone hired you as a teacher but you didn't give up.

A: It was frustrating because I really wanted to be a teacher. Some people suggested that it would be easier if I changed my name to something American or tried to lose my accent. But I don't let people define me. I always know exactly what I can do and I know that I can get there by hard work.

Q: Did you always know what you wanted to be?

A: When I was growing up, I would secretly tutor kids in the neighborhood and I adored my fifth-grade teacher. But my father thought I should be a doctor and I always did what he said. Then the war ended and I lost contact with him and my family. I couldn't afford medical school and my father wasn't there to tell me what to do. So I changed my major and I never regretted it.

Q: How did you put yourself through school?

A: I knew my parents sent me here to get my education so I took it very seriously. I worked two or three jobs and kept my grades up. I cleaned people's homes, worked in the cafeteria, babysat. I even delivered newspapers.

Q: What compels you to serve as a school board member?

A: I never thought about going into politics. I just thought of it as an opportunity because as a teacher, I saw things that I felt needed to be fixed. And this was a way to become a policymaker, so when I was asked to run, I did.

Q: What makes you happy these days?

A: My favorite thing to do is to hang out with my girlfriends when they are not busy. We text each other, go on walks, and go to movies. I also appreciate time with my younger sister, Ly Ha, who comes to visit from Sacramento. We cook and do chores together.


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