BATTLE CREEK ENQUIRER •
September 7, 2008
When Keo Sok, a custodian at Union City Middle School, traveled to Detroit to take his U.S. citizenship exam in July, it wasn't just the 100 history and government questions running through his head.
He had hopes of this small town riding on him.
"Keo mentioned how much pressure he felt because the community was behind it," eighth-grade social studies teacher Larry Bruce said, "and how if he would have went there and things wouldn't have gone right ..."
Sok finished the sentence: "Then I fail the whole town."
Sok, now a resident alien, was born in Cambodia and has been living in Union City for almost 28 years.
When teachers and administrators at this roughly 1,100-student district decided to help the 48-year-old become a U.S. citizen last winter, Sok, having failed once about 20 years ago, accepted the challenge with a bit of apprehension.
Bruce and Klaudia Fisher, a fifth-grade teacher, led the charge -- getting students to take the daunting citizenship exam themselves and posting new sample questions on a cafeteria bulletin board every day.
"Sometimes at lunchtime, I sit down to eat, and" the students "ask and I have to answer it," Sok said. "That's the only way I learn. When you get old, you hardly remember things, and if you have a kid asking over and over and over, you will be remembering."
The learning process went both ways. Students also learned about Cambodia's people and past. Sok was on hand to provide a harrowing history lesson himself.
In 1975, Sok's parents and siblings were executed by the Khmer Rouge, the radical Marxist group that controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The Khmer Rouge is blamed for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, murder and overwork.
"They lined them up. Kill them," Sok said. "It took me twenty-some years to get over it."
Sok's father was a high-ranking Cambodian military official with the previous regime. As Sok put it, his family "they said was a root that they pull out so it don't grow back."
Sok, who was living with his aunt at the time, changed his last name to hide his identity and escape what would have been his own execution.
In 1979, at the age of 18, Sok and three others escaped and started the 150-mile trek from Phnom Penh to the Thai border. From a Thailand Red Cross station, Sok and his new wife, whom he married after he arrived in Thailand, went to the Philippines and made it to the United States through the sponsorship of three Union City area churches in 1980.
While Sok has since separated from his wife, he has had the steady support of Union City, a small, rural town of about 1,800 people.
On July 21, Sok went to Detroit and took the test -- a 100-question oral exam given by an immigration official. His $675 application fee was covered by donations from Union City residents.
"I missed one question ... but that's it," Sok said.
He still must take his oath of allegiance, but, he said, "I got the hard part done."
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