As a 6-year-old, he saw soldiers lying dead on the streets of his hometown, casualties of the Tet Offensive.

At age 14, he watched as his father was taken away to a Communist "re-education" camp.

And before his 25th birthday, he found himself adrift on a crowded, leaking boat in the South China Sea without food or water, wondering if the war that had taken the lives of so many of his countrymen would now claim him as well.

The story of Huy Nguyen is one full of heartache, risk and sacrifice, but also one of perseverance and triumph.

Nguyen, now 40, who received his second Old Dominion degree in May, grew up in the city of Hue, South Vietnam, where war was an everyday fact of life. He was just a child when the Viet Cong launched their devastating Tet Offensive in 1968, an event that stole the innocence from many of the city's youth.

"It was sad," he recalled. "A lot of people got killed. It was the first time I saw dead people, and I was only 6 years old. I saw a lot of them.

"I didn't really witness the fighting myself, but you could hear all the noise, the bombs, the shell explosions. A horrible waste," he added, his voice growing quiet.

The takeover of his city by North Vietnamese soldiers lasted only a couple of weeks, but it was long enough for Nguyen's family to experience what life would be like under Communist rule. In March 1975, after hearing that the Viet Cong were again launching a major offensive, Nguyen and his family fled Hue. This time, however, the takeover of Hue, and ultimately all of South Vietnam, would be permanent. The South government was forced to surrender only a few weeks later.

It was not long after that Nguyen's father, who had worked as an officer in the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam in Hue, was sent to a re-education camp.

"We didn't hear from him for almost three years," Nguyen said. "Everyone who worked for the South government was put into a camp 'to learn about working for the new government.' He was told he would be spending only two weeks away from home. After we didn't hear from him, we thought he had been killed."

When he was finally allowed to contact his family by letter, the message contained only what his captors wanted him to say - "that he was well-treated and was learning good things, about how to be a good citizen," Nguyen said.

It was a year and a half more before Nguyen and his family got to see his father, and nearly another five years before he was released.

Life for Nguyen's mother and her nine children was difficult during that period. "No one would give my mother a job because she was my father's wife, and being his son, I couldn't go to college," said Nguyen, the oldest of the children. "The only choices I had were to join the Communist army to fight the Chinese in the north, or the Cambodians in the south. I could either do that or live illegally, like I did, working on my grandfather's farm near Saigon."

At age 18, Nguyen, and six of his brothers after him, took the required test to gain admittance to one of the country's universities, but they all "failed" because their father was a political prisoner.

After he was released from prison, Nguyen's father decided that he must get his family out of Vietnam, starting with his oldest son. His hope was for Huy to eventually make his way to the United States.

"He told me, 'I'm not promising you anything, I don't know if this is the right choice or not, but if you stay here there will be nothing for you, there will be nothing for the whole family.'"

Using the family's savings, he boarded a boat with 184 other passengers, headed for Malaysia. But what should have been a two-day trip took two weeks. Somewhere in the South China Sea the boat's engine stopped.

"We were floating on the water for four days, and that's when people started dying. There was no food or water. I could feel [death] coming. I thought everyone might die. There was no hope. There was nothing but water."

On the dawn of the fifth day, after four people had died from dehydration, the boat was boarded by Thai pirates.

"At least they helped us - they started the engine - after taking everything from us. But they also took the battery, so if the engine stopped again, we could never start the boat again," Nguyen recalled.

"We were lucky, though. People on other boats were not only robbed, but the women and young girls were raped and kidnapped and, I found out later, taken away as sex slaves or sold as prostitutes all over the world."

Pirates also had been known to kill the men on some of the boats they pillaged. "There were cases in which the pirates, after committing their most horrific, inhuman, violent acts, rammed the helpless victims' boats until they shattered and disappeared in the deep sea - to destroy all evidence and witnesses," Nguyen said.

For the remainder of Nguyen's ordeal at sea, he and others on board took turn bailing water out of the leaking vessel in an effort to stay afloat.

Eventually they reached a refugee camp on Malaysia's Bidong Island. After seven months in the camp, Nguyen learned that he was accepted for immigration to the United States and was then transferred to a camp in the Philippines for a six-month orientation, during which he studied English and learned about the American lifestyle.

"I was told that I got accepted and that I was going to Norfolk, Va.," he recalled. "It made no difference to me. I didn't know anyone anywhere."

With help from Catholic Charities USA, which loaned him the money to come to America, Nguyen moved in with another Vietnamese expatriate and began working for a typesetting company in Norfolk. He later got a job with Busch Manufacturing in Virginia Beach as a machinist and tool and die maker.

After Nguyen had been in the U.S. for a year and a half, he was joined by three of his brothers. "They came on the same boat, but they were luckier than I was. I think it took them four days. They went to Indonesia and were there about a year before they came here."

Finally, in 1993, his parents, sisters and two of his remaining three brothers paid for their passage to America under the sponsorship of the U.S. government.

"It was really great," Nguyen remembers. "I didn't think I would ever see them again."

When the first of his siblings arrived, Nguyen was thrust into the role of both brother and parent. He continued to work full time at Busch to help his brothers with living expenses and rent after they enrolled full time at Tidewater Community College. Nguyen also began taking a few classes, but he couldn't afford to quit his job and take a full load.

"I wanted them to finish school before I did because they were younger. That's how we were raised. If you are the oldest, you have the most responsibility. I didn't even have to think about it, it was just automatic. If you're the oldest, you're supposed to know more, you're supposed to understand things better, you're supposed to look out for your younger brothers."

Nguyen also later helped his other brothers and sisters. While his siblings worked part-time jobs in restaurants and went to school, he brought in the lion's share of the money to make the house payments and pay the bills.

With Nguyen's help, Son, his second brother, eventually earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Old Dominion in December 1999. His fourth brother, who also started out at TCC, will graduate next year from Baylor University with a degree in dentistry. Nguyen also has a brother studying pharmacy at Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and another studying computer science at Virginia Tech. One of his sisters, Thao, received her degree in dental hygiene this May at Old Dominion. Another brother and sister started out at TCC, but chose not to pursue a four-year degree program.

And Nguyen, who had earned associate's degrees in both engineering and computer science at TCC after many years of part-time study, finally got his chance to pursue his own baccalaureate degree on a full-time basis at Old Dominion.

He enrolled at the university in 1998 and completed his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in August 2000. With a 3.94 GPA, he was recognized as the top scholar among all the August and December graduates from the College of Engineering and Technology. He went on to earn a master's degree (with a perfect 4.0 GPA) in mechanical engineering, which he received at commencement this spring.

Nguyen said he would like to return to his homeland one day to visit his grandparents and his brother who stayed behind, but he's not yet convinced it would be safe to go back.

Looking back on a life full of struggle, sacrifice and determination, he said he is happy with where he is now and how far he has come.

"I'm glad my brothers and sisters turned out all right," Nguyen said. "This is probably the best country, the best system in the world. I know people complain a lot, but like some people say, you don't know what you've got until you lose it."

In January, Nguyen landed a job with Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and he has since devoted himself to being the best engineer he can be.

"It's my nature that in anything I do, I always try to do the best I can," he said. "When I worked as a machinist and tool and die maker, every part I made, I had to make it real good, real nice. And it was the same with my studies.

"I always have to do my best because everything I do represents me."