One of my favorite places in the Fort Worth area is the Buddhist Temple in Keller Texas. Officially know as Wat Buddharatanaram, it is sometimes called Wat Keller for short.

 

It was a bright, sunny day and I through the bold colors of the temple would look nice against the blue sky. This is my favorite picture for March 3.

The temple complex is also a peaceful place to meander, or just to sit an meditate. I am not the only person to go there and ponder.

This woman said hello and then she asked me if I would take a picture of her and her granddaughter and send it to her. So I did this photo and got her name and address so I called mail a print.

The she asked me if she could share her story with me. It soon became apparent the story was going to be long, so I stopped her long enough to get a notebook and digital recorder. By the time she was done I had six pages of notes. Her life story is quite remarkable.

Originally from Laos, some members of her family were part of the government. Some of her family worked with the CIA. One of her relatives was in a communist concentration camp for 14 years. Her first husband and her uncle were killed by the communists. She had to escape through the jungle at night to keep from being killed and ended up in a refugee camp in Thailand. She eventually remarried. Her second husband also assisted the CIA. Due to her language skills she became a translator for the U.S. government at a variety of events around the world including a diplomatic conference in Geneva Switzerland. She and her second husband eventually came to the U.S. and became U.S. citizens.

They moved to Keller Texas and her husband helped build the Buddhist temple. She lives a block from the temple.

She asked me to take a picture of her at a small shrine to her husband on the temple grounds. She asked me to share her story. She wants what her family did for the U.S. government to be remembered. This is my second favorite photo for March 3.

The temple grounds are an interesting place to visit and take pictures. The address is 13089 Seha Payak Rd, Fort Worth, TX 76244. If this place looks familiar, I used the temple for a GPS test of four cameras.

Links

Series: Favorite Photos by Date – all about this series

Testing the GPS Accuracy of Four Cameras – at Wat Keller Texas