Seniors earn a 'faithful' citizenshipTuesday, August 26 (updated 8:45 am)
By Jeff Mills
Staff Writer

GREENSBORO — Dressed smartly in a white linen shirt with a blue vest and slacks, K Puih Hluanh bowed slightly to the crowd after shaking the mayor’s hand.

A suitable-for-framing certificate and a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution recognized the 68-year-old Montagnard man’s hard work to become an American citizen.

But Hluanh had little time to linger over celebratory cake and punch Monday morning at the Senior Resources of Guilford Center.

He had to get to class.

Hluanh and 11 other Montagnard and Vietnamese immigrants were honored for successfully passing U.S. citizenship tests during the past year. All 12 of the new Americans are senior citizens: the youngest is 65; the oldest is 82.

Many of them went straight from the ceremony down the hall to Conference Room No. 1 for Norm Wren’s class in English as a second language. For them, the course work and the drive to improve did not end with a passing grade on the citizenship test.

“For most of the women in here,â€