Lanon Baccam is a combat veteran, former USDA official, and candidate for Iowa’s third Congressional district.

On this International Women’s Day I’m thinking about the nine incredible women in my life. My wife, three mothers-in-law, four sisters, and my mom—Bounmy Baccam—the bravest, most loving, and generous woman I know.

My family’s story traces back to Laos and is deeply impacted by the Vietnam War. A conflict so violent that to this day Laos maintains a notorious distinction of being the most bombed nation on earth. Two million tons of ordnance were dropped on Laos—the equivalent of an entire planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years on an area the size of Oregon.

The front lines of this war and the bombings displaced countless numbers of people—including the Tai dam—a small ethnic minority that exists in Southeast Asia to which my father, Inh Baccam, belongs. In the 1960s my dad worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to identify where these uprooted groups would gather to find safety. He coordinated with USAID to drop humanitarian supplies down to these groups to help them meet their basic needs as they fled the war.

The very existence of the Tai dam people was being threatened and my family was forced to escape from Laos. My Dad was a marked man for his efforts aiding the Americans, so he set up an escape route for my mom. She was pregnant and had my three sisters with her all alone. They walked miles through rice paddies in the middle of the night to reach the banks of the Mekong River that separated Laos and Thailand. Opposing forces were entrenched on either side of the river.

Exhausted, they sat waiting for a boat to take them across. The chimneys from the farmers’ huts began to blow smoke and dawn was about to break when a man approached my mom. Scared and with nothing but the clothes on her back she offered him her jewelry thinking he was there to rob them. The man said he was there to transport my mom and sisters across the river.

My mom and sisters were rushed into the boat. As they started to cross my mom realized my sister Lanoune was still sleeping on the bank of the river. Mom pleaded with the driver to turn around to get Lanoune but he said they’d be caught and killed. But with the strength and commitment every mother has for her children, my mom said she’d scream at the top of her lungs and they’d all die right there unless he turned around. The driver quickly complied, picked up my sister and everyone made it safely to Nong Khai, the refugee camp in Thailand.

My mom was willing to sacrifice everything to give her family a chance at a better life, and she found it here in Iowa. With the hasty exit after the Vietnam War, President Gerald Ford and his State Department determined it was necessary to help as many of the persecuted communities and American allies as possible. The Tai dam were included in that group because of a brave American governor who believed it was his moral duty to help. That governor was Iowa’s Robert Ray.

Governor Ray worked to create a new model of refugee relocation focused on bringing the Tai dam people to Iowa as a group, rather than the federal government’s traditional method of dispersing them around the country. Community organizations were critical in this effort, serving as sponsors for the hundreds of new Tai dam families moving into small towns across Iowa. That’s how my family arrived in Mt. Pleasant.

Today, my parents still live in the house they moved into in 1980. They both spent decades working at the local envelope factory in Mt. Pleasant but have since retired. Dad still tinkers and engineers things, while mom gets to do what she loves most: cooking for family and friends, gardening, and spending time with my daughter.

Thank you, Mom. I love you.

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