Por & Seng Vanlo
They’re doing good deeds
Por and Seng Vanlo of Iowa City never know when they might need help. So, whenever they can, they help others.
“We figured, we’re going to be living next door to each other, we might as well help,” Seng Vanlo said. “You never know when you need help.”
Their neighbor, Susan Campney, said last fall when her sidewalk needed repair, Por Vanlo offered to fix it when he was fixing his own. He and Seng Vanlo broke up the squares, mixed the cement and made new ones.
Campney said another day when she pruned her trees, she left a pile of branches in her yard to take to the landfill.
When she came home from work, they were gone. She thanked her son for taking them, and he said he didn’t do it.
Por Vanlo, without saying anything, had taken them away for her.
On one holiday, Seng Vanlo came over and gave Campney a pan full of homemade eggrolls and rangoons. The Vanlos regularly invite Campney over for backyard parties, she said, and are wonderful company.
“For me, for all our neighbors, we help each other out,” Seng Vanlo said. “I’ve been lucky. If we need anything or she needed anything, we’d help each other.”
Vanlo said Campney watches out for them, too.
“When we are gone for a weekend, she wonders where our kids are,” she said, laughing.
Seng Vanlo said she grew up in a big family in Marengo and her mother always made sure her children were kind and polite.
“I had a big family,” she said. “If there was something going on, my mom always made sure we helped.”
Campney said there are probably many other examples of the Vanlo’s generosity that she isn’t even aware of. They never ask for anything in return, she said.
“Por and Seng are true examples of what it is to give and serve,” she said.
— Kathryn Fiegen
