His life was hell because he looked different than the other boys that played in the streets of Saigon.

His light skin, light hair and light eyes.The father he never knew.

These were all reasons that made Hugh Nguyen the target of bullies who mocked him for being an “Amerasian,” — though they used more deragatory terms — a child conceived in wartime by a Vietnamese mother and an American military father fighting abroad.

Not fully belonging to America or Vietnam, these kids were commonly dismissed as “children of the dust,” leftovers of an unpopular war. They were left discarded by both governments and left to be taunted by schoolmates who teased them for their features that resembled the face of the enemy.

Most never knew their fathers.

“They disliked us tremendously,” Nguyen said in an interview with USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee. “We were treated like garbage. We were talked down to and looked down on.”

All Nguyen was told about his father was that he was an 18-year-old American soldier, stationed at the base in Nha Trang. On a one-night leave, he had met 16-year-old Van Nguyen, who worked in a tourist area selling coffee and snacks to soldiers.

She got pregnant but when she went looking for the soldier at base, she learned from his friends that he had died in combat.

Until he was 7, Nguyen was tormented. Then he came to the United States where he grew up in California and eventually became the Orange County Clerk-Recorder, the country’s first Vietnamese-American in such a role.

Through it all though, he said he wondered what his life would’ve been with a father. Finally, more than 50 years later, he decided to try to find out. The decision to do so, culminated in a big family reunion in Cookeville last week.

Escape to America

In early April 1975, Saigon was falling to Communist troops from the north. President Gerald Ford announced Operation Baby Lift to evacuate thousands of orphans, many of them Amerasians.

By this point, Nguyen’s mother left him and his little sister, whose father was also an American soldier, with their grandparents. They made the painful choice, Nguyen said, to give the children a better chance at life by placing them up for adoption to be taken to America through the program.

“But my grandma felt guilty. She changed her mind the next day,” Nguyen said. She sent his aunt to pick them up, giving up their seats on the first official flight out of the crumbling region.

“We were lucky she did,” he said. The plane crashed in the rice paddies outside Saigon, killing all 144 people on board, most of them children.

Despite the crash, the evacuation program continued. Nguyen and his family were lucky a second time when they just missed a bombing at Tan Son Nhut Airport where they were suppose to fly out of.

Finally, the kids, their grandparents and three aunts, were placed on one of the last helicopters airlifting people out on April 30, 1975 — the Fall of Saigon.

Nguyen and his family sailed to California on the USS Midway.

His mother stayed behind.

Driven to find answers

Next, it was the American kids who teased Nguyen and his sister for their looks.

“They were mean. I got called a lot of good names,” recalled Nguyen, now 51. “We were still outcasts.”

His family moved to Orange County in 1979 and in high school, Nguyen was the captain of the varsity basketball team. He married his high school sweetheart and they have a daughter and son.

He was being interviewed by a TV reporter in 2015 when it was pointed out the irony that as an official in charge of records, he didn't have any on his father or know anything about who he was.

“I thought he was dead, but I wanted to learn more about who he was,” Nguyen said. “That’s when I got started looking into this.”

He was driven to find answers, so he decided to take a DNA test through Ancestry.com in hopes of finding a match for any family members on his father's side.

Then he had to be patient.

“It took two years,” Nguyen said. “I’ve had some close calls but they didn’t pan out. It wasn’t until September that I got the connection.”

The test had finally led him to Sherry Stokes, a second cousin, who thought she knew who his father might be. That’s when he learned that the father he never knew, who Nguyen had grown up thinking had died in Vietnam, was alive.

Roy Wayne Patterson, of Cookeville, had served in Vietnam around the time Nguyen was born.

'I never thought I'd find him alive'

At first, Patterson, 71, who had been married when he had met Nguyen’s mother in Vietnam, denied paternity.

But when Nguyen sent him a photo of his mother when she was young during the Vietnam War, Patterson said he recognized her.

He bought a ticket to California right away before Nguyen slowed him down.

“I was thinking ‘Let’s stop there for a second,’” he said with a chuckle. “I sent them to Nashville to so we could do a test to make sure.”

The results: Patterson was a 99.9995 percent match.

“I never thought I’d find him alive. I just wanted to know who he was,” Nguyen said. “Imagine my surprise. It’s truly been a blessing.”

His first question to his newly discovered father was why his mother had been told he had died.

His friends never told him, Nguyen said. “We were boys. Eighteen. I think they were covering for me,” his father told him.

Patterson and his wife had recently celebrated their 54th anniversary when Patterson learned about Nguyen. They had been just married with an infant son when Patterson was deployed to Vietnam for a one-year tour.

She learned of her husband’s affair and son all at the same time. She has since forgiven him and been supportive, Nguyen said.

His mother, who has since been sponsored by the family and lives in the U.S, never spoke of Patterson. When shown his photo, Nguyen said she didn’t recognize him.

“I don’t press it much,” he said, explaining how he understands that there were many awkward and difficult situations during the war. “I don’t hold it against either of them.”

A growing family in Cookeville

There’s no official count of how many Amerasians were born, and ultimately left behind, during the decade-long war in Vietnam. The country’s conservative society embraced premarital chastity and ethnic homogeneity. Children born of liaisons with foreigners weren’t registered.

For years, both the U.S. and Vietnamese governments failed to take responsibility for this side effect of war. But in 1987, Congress passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which allowed children in Vietnam who were born of American fathers during the war years to immigrate to the U.S.

A report by the U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that between 20,000 and 30,000 Amerasians lived in Vietnam in 1987, but by 1994, more than 75,000 had moved to the U.S.

It’s estimated that perhaps fewer than 5 percent have been reunited with their fathers.

“I want our story to motivate others from the war to take a test to see if they can find more about the family they never had the chance to know,” Nguyen said. “I know not every story can have a happy ending but for them to just know could make a difference.”

Nguyen’s sister and her research led to finding out her father died several years ago.

Patterson and Nguyen finally met in September and embraced when they saw each other for the first time in California.

“It was emotional for me. To touch him and hug him. I finally found my father,” he said, pointing out that they have similar "go-getter personalities" and both excelled at basketball in their youth.

Nguyen spoke by telephone while standing on the Patterson’s porch in Cookeville on Friday afternoon. The two had already squeezed in a game of HORSE on the basketball court.

Nguyen had flown in with his family for the weekend to meet his entire extended paternal family for the first time. Patterson has 22 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren.

“It’s going to be a big reunion.” Nguyen said. "Look how big my family got!”

He chuckled as he realized that it was exactly a year ago when he visited Nashville.

“To think that my father was just down the road, an hour away … I’ve been blessed.”