ITT Industries
In The News
Flourishing After the Jungle
By Amy Reeves
Investor's Business Daily
Refugees from many war-torn countries look to the U.S. for hope. In the 1970s, it was the boat people - poor, under-fed Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees jam-packed onto rickety boats hoping to make it across the Pacific to America.
Lapthe Flora was one of those people.
He's come a long way since then. Surviving a harrowing escape from the communists and braving the open sea while still a teen, Flora has become a top engineer and the only Vietnamese American ever to receive the Army National Guard's Gen. Douglas MacArthur Award for Leadership.
Flora is currently a Major in the Army National Guard and serves as the Battalion Executive Officer of The 1-116th Infantry, 29th Infantry Division (Light).
The Vietnam War was already raging when Flora was born in Saigon in 1962. He and his family survived the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese army in 1975. But that year, he and two of his brothers were old enough for the NVA to impress into service for its push into Cambodia.
Joining the NVA meant near-certain death for child soldiers. To save themselves, the three fled into the jungle to avoid the NVA. They stayed there in hiding for four years. Focused on survival, the brothers hacked out a plot of land from the forest with machetes and grew rice, beans and corn. During the rainy season, they hunted game and foraged for edible plants.
Ever hopeful, they risked their lives to stay in sporadic contact with family members. Finally, Flora's sister raised enough money to buy Flora and one brother a space on an illegal boat out of the country.
Voyage To The Unknown
More than 500 people were squeezed onto the 30-yard-long boat. No one had room to move, much less clean up the trash and excrement that built up over the five-day voyage.
Flora wound up in a teeming Indonesian refugee camp, where he spent a year hoping and praying for a sponsor to take him to the West. His prayers were answered when a church funded his voyage across the Pacific. In 1980 he found himself in Roanoke, Virginia, to meet his sponsors.
Once at the church, Flora met a couple who invited him to stay with them. Eventually they legally adopted him, giving him his non-Asian last name.
But his trials weren't over. Communication was difficult. Flora spoke almost no English, and there were no local classes for immigrants to learn English. Determined to master the language, the teenaged Flora had to attend an elementary school to learn the basics. With concentrated daily study and practice, he became so fluent that the next year he entered the ninth grade. In another three years he had his high school degree.
Flora knew that education would open more doors to him and he wanted to go to college. But, he said, "I knew nothing about the American university system." So he opted to go with a school he knew by reputation: his adoptive father's alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute. There, he earned a bachelor's degree in pre-med studies.
Enthusiastic Service
VMI required graduates to serve in the military - the same situation Flora had fled to the jungle 10 years earlier to avoid. But Flora says he didn't mind at all this time.
"I felt it was my duty to pay back to this country that had given me so much," he said.
That sense of duty became an enthusiasm. After serving his required stint in the National Guard, he opted to continue serving, including seven months of active duty in Bosnia. It was, he said, a win-win situation: "After 16 years of service, I've benefited as much from the Guard as it has from me."
When he joined the Guard, Flora set his sights on achieving as much as possible. In this way, he worked his way through the officer ranks.
Far from pursuing rank with blinders on, Flora tried to learn as much as he could from each position. While he was responsible for the training and discipline of young recruits, for instance, Flora says he gleaned much about organization and working with people.
He also relied on his experience in Vietnam to inform his leadership. "From my early years in Vietnam, I learned a hard work ethic, giving more than the minimum required of me," Flora said. "Also perseverance - never give up."
Flora admits it was difficult keeping his spirits up sometimes during his difficult journey. But he'd remind himself that it could be worse.
"In the jungle, sometimes you wanted to scream out loud, blame the world for all the misery you're in," he said. "At the same time, you always know there are all those people out there in a worse situation than you are in, and that gives you hope."
Flora needed that perseverance after poor test results dashed his dream of becoming a doctor. Instead of throwing in the towel, he marshaled all the knowledge of chemistry and physics that he'd gained as a pre-med to land a job in ITT Industries' Night Vision unit.
Night Vision makes gear that helps soldiers see in the dark. ITT put him in an entry-level position working with phosphors, but saw his potential for more.
"One thing ITT is very good at is developing employees," said Flora. "They spent over 1,000 hours on me, on my training to become an engineer."
Up The Ranks
Once again Flora strove to give nothing less than his best. And as he rose through the ranks at ITT, he was doing the same in the National Guard.
In 1995 his battalion commander nominated him for the MacArthur Award, noting that Flora's job performance and life story illustrated the award's values of "duty, honor and country."
In May 1995, on the day before his wedding, Flora went to the White House to receive the award. "It was the highlight of my life," he recalled. "For doing something I liked to do - for my duty, my obligation - I got rewarded with such a distinguished honor."
ITT also rewarded his loyalty and hard work by putting him in management. In 2002 Night Vision decided to create a new department for business development. So the firm created a new unit to deal exclusively with customer development and technical support. Flora's experience and management abilities garnered his bosses' attention, and they put him in charge of the new unit.
Accentuate The Positive
Flora says the new job involves a lot more customer contact than he's used to, but it's turned out to be "very interesting, very rewarding."
Despite his hard-won success, Flora is humble. About his ascent at ITT, he said, "they've given me more than I deserve."
He's also loyal. He says he hopes to keep rising through ITT's management and ultimately run a division. And while he knows some see that as extremely challenging, he sees only the possibilities.
"You have opportunities everywhere (in this country)," he said. "Things might be difficult, but not impossible."
