The diminutive Ho was one of the “boat people” who fled Vietnam to first a refugee camp in Malaysia, then the United States heartland after an Arkansas church sponsored her family to America, then California, with the husband who was her childhood sweetheart, and finally Kings Mountain as a local resident and mosaic artist.
Ho made a stamp on Kings Mountain that will debut at this year’s art fair.
  
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The results can be seen at the fair from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 5 to 7 in the mountain’s community center and along adjacent trails: five benches with intricate mosaic mountain and fair scenes and a mosaic decoration on the nearby Verizon cellular tower.
“I always loved to do something for my community,” said Ho, who lives near the local center.
For nine years now, she can be found among her mosaic wall hangings and sculptures in the fair’s Mountain Folk Art section, which showcases handmade art by mountain residents.
“I thought about how to apply my skill” for the community, she continued. “The idea was based on feedback from (elderly visitors)” who wanted spots to sit along the trails.
“They do need benches in different locations,” Ho said. “They enjoy the fair, but there’s no place to rest.”
She took her idea to fair administrative assistant Carrie German, who pinpointed locations. “She knows the traffic,” said Ho.
Ho then approached the board of the Kings Mountain Volunteer Fire Brigade, traditionally the fair’s chief beneficiary. The idea was approved, and Ho sought to actualize it in true Kings Mountain style: a volunteer effort including everyone.
First, $2,000 was raised through community donations. Then a five-member design team came up with 10 design templates. The fire brigade board selected five, and Ho bought supplies at 10 locations from San Jose to San Francisco.
Then, on five Saturdays, two Fridays and a Sunday over seven weekends, 34 adult and four teen local volunteers set to work.
Ho purchased three new ceramic benches and refurbished two more, and led volunteers in drawing the templates and securing the ceramic pieces into the designs with clear tape. Volunteers then transferred them in sections into wet cement on the benches.
The finished benches, with mountain and fair scenes, were permanently installed near the center. “It felt wonderful to get the support of the Kings Mountain residents,” Ho said. “It was rewarding after the project was done because we can do something for the community that was useful.”
To me the mosaic benches represent the concept of community — a group of people working together for a common goal,” said German.
Summing up how the community center, fire house and art fair began and have grown for more than 40 years out of the collaboration of the members of the small mountain enclave, she added that “the benches are proof that still, with inspired and articulate leadership, good things can be accomplished — whether preparing for the future, responding to an emergency or simply adding objects that are both practical and beautiful for neighbors and strangers to enjoy year-round.”
That work was nothing compared to Ho’s journey to Kings Mountain.
In 1978, her two sisters, two brothers and wives, five children from age 3 up and 22-year-old Ho, then a medical student, opted to leave, following a sister who fled to Arkansas in 1975. The parents stayed behind; “we didn’t want to lose the whole family,” said Ho.
They made the trip on a boat with 126 people fearful of pirates and capture. “We were on the boat for four days and three nights without food,” said Ho. “It was really bad.”
Finally, she said, the boat was intercepted by a Malaysian naval vessel and escorted to a refugee camp, where they stayed for six months until the sister got the First Presbyterian Church in Little Rock, Ark., to sponsor them. In March 1979, they got to Arkansas.
“It was wonderful,” Ho said. “We finally got to the freedom country.”
Her parents followed soon thereafter.
Finding the American educational system different from that of Vietnam, Ho switched from medicine to information technology. She stayed in Little Rock until her childhood sweetheart traveled from San Francisco to marry her in October 1979. They moved to California, settling on Kings Mountain in 1998.
Until then, Ho had little interest in art. But while vacationing in Spain in 1997, she was inspired by famed Spanish mosaic artist Antoni Gaudi. She enrolled in a College of San Mateo mosaic class and “fell in love” with mosaic.
“I came to Kings Mountain and found my passion” in art, she said.
Now she can be found in the Mountain Folk Art section. And while walking there, visitors can rest on benches she helped create.
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