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	Courtesy Photo Don Brewster Sr., a successful Frederick businessman who died in September, was at one time detailed to the National Security Council at the White House as a Vietnam specialist.

He was a cultural attaché and translator, speaking Vietnamese at local functions. In that capacity, Brewster attended black-tie events, and was "the interface with the people," said his son, Don Brewster Jr. "He was the mouthpiece for America."

But American support for the Vietnam War had changed. Brewster Sr. was left believing he had misled the Vietnamese people to whom he represented the United States.

"He was so disillusioned," Brewster Jr. recalls.

"My father had translated all the promises (to the Vietnamese). ... We promised to defend them from communism."

Don Brewster Sr. died Sept. 2, at age 75, in New Canaan, Conn. He lived in the Frederick area from 1975 to 2001. His life, according to his son, is a good story for the times.

"He was a fantastic man," son Don Jr. said.

A simple death notice states that among Brewster's positions, from 1970 to 1973, "he was detailed to the National Security Council at the White House as a Vietnam specialist."

In April 1975, Brewster was one of the last to leave in the frenzied evacuation of Saigon before it fell to the North Vietnamese.

Despite his disillusionment, Brewster Sr. made the most of his life and "managed to make himself a great American again," his son said.

"Life deals you bad cards ... you suck it up," Brewster Jr. said.

The globe

Brewster's international life began with the spin of a globe in Boston.

Born in 1934, Brewster came from a family of five siblings that struggled to make ends meet. Working with the railroad as a stevedore, his grandfather in Boston "unloaded fruit his entire life," Brewster said.

In those days, Brewster Sr. learned from his father good basic business strategies.

Brewster Jr. said his grandfather made pure profit by collecting discarded materials around the railroad, repairing them and selling them. He got extra work by offering a lower price to pick farmers' crops using his whole family.

In 1959, Don Brewster Sr. graduated from Lowell State College with a bachelor's degree in education. He taught elementary school in New Hampshire and became a principal.

Still, he wanted to see the world. He spun that globe and put his finger down on Vietnam, his son said.

That was in 1962.

A rise in fortune

Brewster went to Vietnam as a team leader for the International Voluntary Service in Saigon. He returned to Washington in 1964 to join the agency for International Development.

Brewster served in D.C. and South Vietnam. It was in Washington in 1965 that Brewster met Huong Buu Nguyen, who was working for the Vietnamese Embassy, and who had been educated in Paris.

That same year they were married in Saigon.

Their son was born in 1967. A girl, My-Linh, followed in 1969.

By 1970 Brewster was the deputy chief of AID's Washington Training Center and the Vietnam program manager for the center. An expert on Vietnamese language and culture, he was the right man for the right time.

A July 1970 National Security Council memorandum to Gen. Alexander Haig mentions Brewster as an ideal candidate for council adviser.

A copy of the memorandum from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum stated that Security Council members John Holdridge and Dick Smyser identified Brewster as the person whom they would like to have "as the third man in the Vietnam Information Group, as a result of Dr. (Henry) Kissinger's approval of expansion of the group."

Brewster joined. In 1973 he accepted the embassy position.

The fall

In five years Brewster's career reached great heights. At the embassy in Saigon, the family enjoyed all the perks of diplomatic service -- for example, three nannies and a military tank outside the residence.

Then, in April 1975, the rug was pulled out, Brewster Jr. said.

With Saigon facing attack, Ambassador Graham Martin and staff arranged for as many Vietnamese allies, friends and relatives to get out of the country as they could.

Two CH-46 helicopters flown by Marine Capt. Gerry Berry and his wingman were the last still in the air after 3 a.m. April 30.

The helicopter landed on the roof at 4:59 a.m. Berry said his job was to get the ambassador.

Brewster Jr. said his father told him he stepped into the helicopter right behind the ambassador.

At the very end, April 29 and 30, more than 70 U.S. military helicopters spent 37 hours rescuing people from the embassy roof, according to Berry, flight leader during the mission.

Berry retired from the Marines in 1985 and is now president of Covenant Aviation Security in Lake Mary, Fla.

The pilot believes the ambassador delayed leaving to get as many Vietnamese out as he could, or to make some final diplomatic effort. But after that it was all Marines evacuated. Hundreds of South Vietnamese waited at the embassy in vain.

"It was a very sad time," Berry said.

The State Department offered Brewster a position at Wake Island helping process Vietnamese refugees, "a huge demotion," his son said.

Brewster Sr. did not accept the post. It would be like going from being "the lieutenant governor in Vietnam to being a traffic cop."

Most important was that family could not accompany him to the post at Wake Island, Brewster said. The family had spent six months apart before the April 1975 evacuation and did not want to be separated further.

After Vietnam, as someone who stood for America, "My father found himself totally isolated," Brewster said. "It totally changed him."

The rise

Entrepreneurial ventures interested him. He looked in newspaper ads for something like a franchise operation or ice cream parlor, Brewster said.

Three months after the fall of Saigon, Donald and Huong Brewster bought Frederick Discount Liquors at 531 N. Bentz St. It had an upstairs apartment for the family: no nannies, no embassy parties. No tank.

Brewster Jr. and his sister attended North Frederick Elementary. He recalled great times playing baseball at local parks.

Mostly he remembered his father and mother working in Frederick and dealing with reality.

"We were robbed a dozen times," he said. One time, his mother's arm was broken. Business went on.

His father remade the store into a convenience market, like 7-Eleven, adding candy and basic necessities to its inventory.

Federally subsidized apartment housing was built across Bentz Street, providing ready customers, Brewster said.

"He grew it to a booming business," Brewster Jr. said. The Brewsters refurbished the apartment.

Frederick Discount Liquors cost the Brewsters approximately $56,000 in 1975, according to land records. It sold for about $111,000 in 1981.

"His little investments paid off," Brewster said.

In 1978, the family moved to a house in Middletown . Mrs. Brewster started a 20-year career with State Farm Insurance.

Retirement was not enough for her husband. For a year he taught Vietnamese language at the Sanz School in Washington. Then another business opportunity opened up. He bought a coin laundry in Charles Town, W.Va., The Laundry House.

His son helped, counting quarters. "It was a daily grind," Brewster said. "Those 10 years taught me the fundamentals about business."

Soon the family had other successes to count.

Don Brewster Jr. and My-Linh both won places at West Point: Don graduated in 1989, My-Linh in 1991. Don Jr. served in Desert Storm before starting ITA, a Virginia business worth millions.

At West Point My-Linh graduated with a degree in mathematics, distinguished herself as a cadet captain, captain of the women's track team and recipient of the superintendent's award. She served as a commissioned officer in Germany.

"He was so proud to have us serving," Brewster Jr. said.

Retirement

In the 1990s, dementia started to trouble his father. In 1996 his father sold the laundry business and retired for real.

In 1987, he and his wife had moved from Middletown to Frederick , then to Florida in 2001. In 2009, Don Brewster Sr. entered an assisted-living facility near his daughter's Connecticut home.

At Brewster's funeral in September, 101 people attended whose lives had been saved one way or another by the former attaché. Brewster Sr. had helped evacuate 52 members of his wife's Vietnamese family in 1975. The North Vietnamese likely would have killed them, the son said. One uncle who did not leave was imprisoned. His fate is unknown.

Of the evacuees or descendants and spouses at the funeral, 14 hold doctorates, and five are multimillionaires, Brewster said.

The father's story "is what America is all about," Brewster Jr. said.