Sa Thi Nguyen, the grandmother of former Dallas Cowboys star Dat Nguyen, turned 100 on December 28 and had a celebration with her family, reports the Corpus Christi Caller-Times here.
Dat Nguyen, born in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas a few months after his family landed in the U.S. in 1975, is the first Vietnamese American to play pro football. After a stellar career at Texas A&M where he won the Lombardi award and led the Aggies to a Cotton Bowl championship (back when there was no BCS and the Cotton was a powerhouse bowl), he played middle linebacker for the Cowboys for five seasons. Dat Nguyen is now their assistant linebacker coach.
Sa Thi Nguyen fled with Dat’s parents to the U.S. when the North Vietnamese communist forces overran South Vietnam. The family opened a Vietnamese restaurant in Fulton, Texas, naming it Hu-Dat after little Dat and his brother Hung Nguyen.
The chain now has four locations, all family-run; the original in Fulton, two in Corpus Christi and one in Ingleside.
