[Florida's] Cambodian refugee passionate about dancing, sharing life story

By Isadora Rangel
Posted April 12, 2012

Thany Lim grew up in Cambodia, dreaming of learning how to ballroom dance and visiting the U.S. she saw in Hollywood movies.

Her dreams were postponed by civil war and an oppressive regime that almost killed her and her family in the 1970s. Only after a journey to escape her war-ridden country and violence by the communist guerrilla Khmer Rouge was she able to move to the U.S.

And 13 years ago, she finally learned how to dance.

Lim, 52, knows 18 types of dance — from cha cha to fox trot — and has been teaching dance classes in Martin County since 2003. She and her dance partner, Martin County High School Assistant Principal Jack Valerio, are well known in Stuart for their salsa lessons.

"Thany must have been amazingly strong to survive," Valerio said. "I don't see any signs of post-traumatic stress disorder."

Lim was raised close to Cambodia's border with Vietnam, from where she could hear bombs dropping during the Vietnam War.

"I was born in a country where it was difficult for girls to have hobbies and to go out by yourself to dance," Lim said.

But still, growing up on her side of the border was happy and peaceful.

That changed when a civil war erupted between the U.S.-backed Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, which eventually took over the country, ruling it from 1975 to 1979. The communists, in an attempt to create a self-sufficient agrarian society, were responsible for confiscating private property and killing an estimated 1.7 million people through forced labor and execution camps.

Lim had just graduated high school when she was separated from her family and sent to a work camp. She would walk hours in the rain forest to a site where she dug dams and canals.

When the Khmer Rouge discovered her family had connections with the country's old government, she was sent to an execution camp, where she joined her mother, siblings and an uncle. She discovered her aunt and cousins already had been executed.

But Lim said she didn't think she was going to die.

"I always felt I was going to live through this and would share my experience with the world," she said.

Her ticket out of that certain death was a fashion design course she took at age 13. Her sewing skills landed her a job making a custom Jeep top for a top communist commander, Lim said. As long as they needed her skills, her family could stay alive.

Lim and her family escaped the execution camp after Vietnamese forces overthrew the Khmer Rouge, which continued to fight as guerrillas on the west side of country. She opened a textile business and looked for family members across the country. More than 30 of her relatives died during the Khmer Rouge years, but none in her immediate family.

Then, in 1980, Lim fled Cambodia by herself to ask for asylum at the U.S. embassy in Thailand. She didn't tell her family she was leaving, fearing they could suffer persecution. She sent her first letter to her mother two years after she fled Cambodia. Her family had assumed she was dead.

"(For a long time) Cambodia was out of connection from the world. There was no mail service," Lim said.

While in Thailand, she lived at a Red Cross camp, got married and had a daughter. In 1983, after a brief period at an immigration camp in the Philippines to learn English and American history, she moved to Rhode Island.

In 1989, she came to Stuart in part because she had heard Florida had weather and vegetation similar to Cambodia.

Lim worked in a suit factory and then opened two sewing businesses in the U.S., one of them in Palm City, which she closed a few years ago. But her great passion is teaching others how to dance and sharing her life story as a guest speaker for local organizations.

Although holidays still make her sad because she thinks of the relatives she lost, Lim said telling her story helped her overcome any trauma she had. She hopes one day to make that story into a book.

"It's therapy to talk (about it)," Lim said. "At first, I used to get emotional and through times, I gained my strength."