Joua Bee “Joe Bee” Xiong

He was born on August 10, 1961, in Muong Cha, Laos, served as a child soldier in the CIA-backed Secret War, crossed the Mekong, lived in a Thai refugee camp, and arrived in Eau Claire in 1980 with no English. He entered Memorial High School as a teenager who spoke none of the language and graduated at twenty-one.

He studied computer science at Chippewa Valley Technical College and criminal justice at Mount Senario, later earning a master's degree. He worked as a reserve police officer, a county social worker, and director of the Eau Claire Hmong Mutual Assistance Association, and he was a clan leader. He was also a qeej master who played funerals and ceremonies and took the bamboo pipes to the 1998 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. In 1996 he won a seat on the Eau Claire City Council, the first Hmong American elected to municipal office in the country, and served two terms. A 2004 run for the Wisconsin Assembly fell short.

He died of heart complications on March 31, 2007, while visiting Laos. Thousands attended a three-day traditional funeral. The legislature passed a joint resolution in his honor, and Eau Claire renamed the street he had lived on Xiong Boulevard.