Deputy inspires legacy of love, acceptance

OUR OPINION Bowling Green Daily News

Deputy inspires legacy of love, acceptance

“We have to do something.”

Marty Deputy uttered that simple sentence to her husband Kenneth while watching the news about the slaughter of more than a million Cambodians who died during the regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 after that country’s civil war. It was with that sentence that Deputy immersed herself in helping thousands of the world’s refugees escape genocide, persecution and civil wars.

Many call her “mom” and several who attended a Buddhist blessing ceremony by her bedside Wednesday afternoon after her death now think of her as an angel, their angel, who will live on forever by her many acts of unconditional love for all people. 

Thourn Deputy Sun of Cincinnati was one of two brothers who barely escaped death in Cambodia and who were the first refugees the Deputys sponsored to move to the United States. They arrived in 1979. Sun and his brother Bouray Sun lived with the Deputy family through the early 1980s. 

Starting out first as a volunteer helping refugees resettle in the United States, Deputy later became the executive director of the International Center, one of Kentucky’s refugee resettlement agencies, a job she held until her retirement in 2006. She and the organization she founded are responsible for assisting 10,000 refugees in creating a new life in the United States as free people, free to worship as they want, free from being hunted because of their ethnicity and free to pursue happiness.

Her work didn’t stop as soon as refugees reached Bowling Green. She saw to the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter and immediately began the process of teaching immigrants what they needed to know to live in the United States. She provided them access to tools for success while recognizing and embracing their cultural differences. Deputy didn’t want to change anyone. She wanted to provide refuge and help new immigrants learn how to make a life for themselves in America.

Many of the refugees she helped have gone on to become business owners, teachers, doctors and other professionals and American citizens.

Prior to Deputy’s work with refugees, Bowling Green was a mostly black and white community. Now there are multiple races, cultures, languages and religions represented in Bowling Green. The two public school systems here hold international days within their schools for children to learn about the cultures and customs of their classmates and celebrate their differences. From kindergarten, children here learn acceptance and begin gaining a global perspective on their world. They don’t know it, but they have Marty Deputy to thank for that.

Love and acceptance are Deputy’s legacies. 

Like a loving mom, she brought everyone to the table together in Bowling Green and she did “do something.”

Deputy will be missed but one need only look around at the ethnic restaurants, listen to coffee shop conversations occurring in multiple languages or look into the tiny face of a refugee child, to see where Marty Deputy’s spirit of love and acceptance lives on.