1990s

Linda Lan Tran ’92

Linda Lan Tran ’92, an ­economist and financial analyst, was born Lan Nguyen Tran on March 12, 1969, in Haiphong, the port city of Hanoi, in North Vietnam. The youngest of eight children of parents born in China, her father, Dung Tran, was a boat pilot who, around 1975, led 41 refugees, including his wife, Anh Que Lam, and their four younger children, in fleeing Vietnam by sea. The family lived in refugee camps in Macao and then the Phillippines for a few years before a Vietnamese group sponsored them to come to the United States. Linda Tran was about 10-years-old at the time. They settled in New York City, where her father became a truck driver and her mother a street vendor selling trinkets and items made of beads in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They took up residence in the Bronx, where Linda was graduated in 1988 from Herbert Lehman High School.

Accepted into the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) at Hamilton, Linda Tran went on to matriculate at the College. She majored in mathematics and economics, and also took courses in Mandarin. She made numerous friends among those majoring in Chinese and kept in contact with many of them over the years. While on the Hill, she also studied violin for a time and learned to play tennis. Those who came to know her in those college days particularly remember her vibrant wit, energy and enthusiasm. Following her graduation in 1992, she continued her studies of economics at what is now Stony Brook University. There she earned an M.S. degree in 1998 and completed all the work for a doctorate except for the dissertation.

Linda Tran subsequently moved to Morristown, N.J., where she began her career in the telecommunications industry as an economic and statistical analyst for AT&T. She was later employed as a financial analyst for Verizon Communications and, most recently, an analyst for PNC Bank Corp. in Pittsburgh.

Linda Tran was residing in Princeton, N.J., when she died on June 12, 2014, after a valiant two-year battle with cancer. She is survived by her husband, Christopher J. Monroe, and their daughter, Katherine Monroe. She also leaves her friends from College Hill who kept in touch through the years and continued to visit her during her final illness.