It's the last day of Women's History Month, and I realized I've barely mentioned a word about one of the strongest women I never got to know - whose stories I've only pieced together by bits and pieces from various family members - my great-grandmother. Her life story could be a novel on its own, but today, I'll try to skim the surface of a life memoir that runs as deeply as the turbulent Đà River that nourished her livelihoods.

By the age of 15, my great-grandmother had to drop out of school to take over the family trades. Higher education was only reserved for the male members of her family, and being the girl, she was responsible for financially supporting her brothers' educational pursuits.

Naturally endowed with business shrewdness, my great-grandmother quickly became a successful merchant. Every week, she would sail upstream along the Đà River with other merchants to buy and sell products from the city.

On this boat, my great-grandmother was the only one who could read. So instead of assigning her chores, her illiterate boat mates would ask her to read books of classic Vietnamese literature like "The Tale of Kieu" to entertain everyone on these long trips. From repetitions, my great-grandmother learned to recite these epic works from memories, and could analyze them better than any college professor - a skill she would later use to help her sons through their education. Imagine reciting "The Odyssey" and Shakespeares from memories. That's what she did.

By the age of 18, she married my great-grandfather, and her brilliant mind convinced her father-in-law to teach her everything he knew about the family’s Eastern medicine practice, which she would manage and grow for the next 25 years. Their business was the most successful in the region.

By the time she was 43 in 1947, their village and home were pillaged by the French troops. My great-grandmother took the children and ran to hide inside the jungle nearby. My great-grandfather, for whatever foolish reason, decided to stay behind to watch the house. As my grand-aunt recalled, when the French soldiers saw him, "they only gave one signal, and he was gone."

The French commandeered their house into a headquarter, and my great-grandmother was rendered homeless in the jungle with her children. Three months later, she gave birth to a daughter who did not survive the poor living conditions.

A close family friend named Uncle Trí quickly buried my great-grandfather's body in a farmland nearby. My great-grandmother could only formally retrieve him 2 years later. When Uncle Trí told my Dad the story decades later, Trí's eyes swelled with tears as he recounted how my great-grandmother calmly gathered her husband's bones into a copper pot as she collected all her strength to suppress the immense anger boiling in her chest.

In 1954, just days before the Geneva Accords were finalized, which would officially divide Vietnam into the Communist-controlled North and the Southern Republic, my great-grandmother quietly evacuated her children south of the 17th Parallel Line. She executed this plan with such masterful secrecy and calculating composure that not even her confused children knew what was happening.

In 1975, when Saigon fell, once again my great-grandmother and what family she had left had to make one more harrowing escape on a refugee barge. After 2 horrific days drifting at sea and facing imminent death by the hour, they were relieved to learn that US commercial ships were coming to rescue the refugees...in batches, starting with women and children.

Of course, my great-grandmother, her 2-year-old grandson, and her daughter-in-law were among the first group to be picked up, separating them from the men. Once they landed on the ship, my great-grandmother stoically told her daughter-in-law: “From now on, your focus is to raise and protect your son. You don’t worry about where your husband is.”

Keep in mind, her daughter-in-law's husband is her SON, whom she had devoted her life to. And the strength that it took her to accept the possibility of never seeing her son again, was probably the same strength she summoned to gather her husband's bones into a copper pot.

And as I learned the century-long saga that was my great-grandmother's story, I often pondered: “What could this woman have achieved for the world if she was allowed to reach her full potential?”