Spurred by Gratitude, 'Bomb Lady' Develops Better Weapons for U.S.

"I remember clutching my little bag full of pictures of teachers, childhood friends, of my cat and dog that I had to abandon, and a few pieces of my best clothes, crying the whole time," she recalled in a speech at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, where she worked before moving to the Pentagon.

Eventually Duong and her family were transferred to a Vietnamese boat, which pulled alongside a U.S. Navy ship. One by one, they jumped.

"Each would have to wait for the right moment, the short period when the waves would bring the boat and the ship closest," Duong said. "I was standing in line for that jump, when my cousin, who was ahead of me, made his jump at the wrong moment. Even today I can still picture him sliding down the side of the ship while everyone on the other side was trying to catch his hand . . . while my aunt was screaming."

Her cousin, dangling, his feet nearly crushed between the two hulls, was hoisted on board. "Someone shouted in my ear that I was next," Duong recalled. "Only after I made it to the ship and found my father did I break down."

Duong came to Montgomery County in 1975 by way of refugee camps in the Philippines and in Pennsylvania. The First Baptist Church of Washington sponsored her family.

"Her life story is at the heart of her commitment," Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter said in an interview. This fall, he presented Duong with the 2007 Service to America National Security Medal from the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service (PPS). Backstage, as Winter listened to Duong's account of her escape, he took a deep breath and, he said, "I'm thinking, 'Gee whiz, am I going to be able to do this without choking up?' "

PPS president Max Stier said afterward, "Americans sometimes forget the important role their public servants play. Immigrants don't."

Certainly not Duong. "My life is payback: I'm indebted to the soldiers and to Americans," she said. "I was enraged when I found out how Hollywood portrayed my American heroes and my American friends as women- and children-killers. How dare they?" As a teenager, Duong went to see "The Deer Hunter." She walked out in the middle.

Duong is still angry, though no longer helpless. "I'm here because in Vietnam, we ran out of bullets. I don't want to ever be in that position again," she said. "By building bombs, the other guys realize they shouldn't mess with us. If you have a gun, I have a bazooka. If you have a grenade, guess what? I have a bomb."

At Indian Head, in the 1990s, Duong headed the development and transition of 10 explosives into 18 different U.S. missiles, bombs, torpedoes and gun projectiles, a record in the field, according to the PPS.

In 2001, Duong led nearly 100 scientists at Indian Head to build a thermobaric, internal-blast explosive so powerful that critics called it "thermo-barbaric." It was designed for use in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom to penetrate enemy caves. Her team compressed years of work into 67 days.

Duong's colleague, Karen Burrows, a fuse specialist, recalled how she and Pam Carpenter, the chief chemist, sat in meetings with Duong, calculating the optimum heat and pressure to billow around corners and rip through tunnels. Male colleagues called the women, all mothers of young children, "the knitting club."