'Babylifted' to America, adoptees are thriving For reunion, Vietnam memories

By Marilyn Elias
USA Today

April 26, 1975: U.S. nurse Cherie Clark recalls the last, desperate day, the climax of a frantic drive to save the youngest victims of the Vietnam War.

In just three weeks, more than 2,000 orphans had flown out of the country to safety, most on U.S. government cargo planes, as part of a "babylift" ordered by President Ford.

By April 26, "we were left with no food, no milk, no money," says Clark, who still had 180 children at her Saigon orphanage. Two days earlier, the South Vietnamese government abruptly withdrew permission for them to depart. But on April 25, "they told us, if we could make it onto a U.S. military airplane, they'd look the other way."

She gathered her charges at dawn. It took 2 1/2 hours for their buses to reach the nearby U.S. air base. Crowds rushed the buses as they drove. "People tried fiercely to get their children on," she says.

The caravan arrived at the air base at 8 a.m., then waited.

"It was scalding hot. Babies were dying in our arms as we sat there," Clark remembers. But it wasn't safe to take off.

Finally, in the evening, "one of the military guys said, 'This is it. We're taking you out.' "

Virtually all of the 2,204 children airlifted out -- most of them infants and toddlers -- were adopted within a few months of leaving Vietnam, officials say.

At a watershed moment in American history -- tainted by anger, sorrow and shame -- the babylift stands as a humane landmark. If they hadn't been evacuated, many orphans would have died. "There was hardly a child in our orphanage that wasn't ill or severely malnourished," says Sister Mary Nelle Gage of Friends for All Children, one of about 10 agencies serving orphans in Vietnam.

Now the fragile babies have grown into young adults, and they'll gather this weekend for a 25th reunion in the Baltimore-Washington area.

Although the adoptees aren't problem-free, "overall, they're a very well-adjusted group," says Barbara Holtan of Tressler Lutheran Services, a Baltimore agency that helped find homes for the kids.

A Tressler survey of 200 families a few years ago found that the Vietnamese adoptees enjoyed better mental health than many other international and "special needs" adoptees.

Holtan says the reason may be the way they were treated before they were adopted. "Maybe it's the Asian culture. They automatically pick babies up and carry them around so much."

Also, the children were given up mostly for economic reasons in the chaos of war. "They weren't victims of terrible child abuse, parental alcoholism or schizophrenia."

Several hundred adoptees and American family members are expected at the reunion. Adults who cared for the babies and helped get them out safely will tell their stories. Adoptees also will meet and talk about their lives.

And there will be ceremonies at the Vietnam War Memorial, including one to honor 60 U.S. civilian women who died during the war; 38 were on the first babylift flight April 4, which crashed, killing 98 orphans.

Adoption agencies have sponsored periodic reunions of the airlift children and their families. But many adoptees are just now feeling an intense desire to learn more about their origins and heritage.

Says Gage: "When they were 10 or 12 years old, their parents would say, 'Something about Vietnam comes on TV, and he leaves the room.' Or 'We wanted to go downtown to a Vietnamese restaurant for the Tet celebration, and she didn't want any part of it.'

" 'We say, "You come from a very beautiful and valuable culture," and he says, "I just don't want to be different." ' . . . Now they are accepting the differences, even embracing them."

Finding that others share these differences can be reassuring, says adoptee Loan Shillinger, 28, who for years has become depressed on her birthday. At a similar reunion in 1995, "I found out for the first time that others felt the same way."

Birthdays remind some adoptees of the painful questions that still haunt them. Many babies were "assigned" approximate birthdays and even parents of record because nobody knew the truth.

"It was the only way to get them out," says Betty Tisdale, who now lives in Seattle. Tisdale has been dubbed "the angel of Saigon" because for many years, as the wife of an Army pediatrician and a persuasive humanitarian, she raised nearly all the money and supplies needed by Saigon's An Lac orphanage, which housed 400 children. "The government said we could only bring children if we had birth certificates and parents for every child. So we filled in blank certificates."

Jennifer Noone, 25, says she was never interested in searching for her birth parents and always felt American. As a preschooler, she even made numerous appearances on Sesame Street.But some have treated her as less than American, she says. "People will say, 'Where are you from?' And when I say, 'Long Island,' they say, 'No, where are you really from?' Or they'll compliment me on how well I speak English (she came to the USA at age 4 months).

"I've never been made fun of because I'm adopted, but I have felt racial isolation because I'm Asian."

Some adoptees have returned to Vietnam on guided "heritage" tours, visiting their old orphanages or their home villages, looking for relatives and sometimes even searching for their true identities.

Holly Wells, 25, a Minneapolis social worker, brought her baby picture and wristband on a two-week tour led by Gage this month. She hoped older orphanage staff members "would help me figure out where I came from."

But nobody recognized her. "Now I realize I may never know, and that is so hard. . . . Still, I'm very glad I went. I made such great friendships on the trip -- we really bonded. I want to go back, but I'd like to have at least one of my parents with me."

Holtan says her 26-year-old son, Tim, an airlift adoptee, recently spent two years volunteering at a Vietnamese orphanage. "On one of our many expensive phone calls to Hanoi, he finally said, 'You know, Mom, I always wondered if I was an American or Vietnamese. Now I know. I'm American.' "

He came back.

Tim Holtan is among a growing number of Americans who have found a modern adoption crisis unfolding in Vietnam.

The need for adoptive homes is urgent, says Cherie Clark, who is based in Vietnam again. Her International Mission of Hope (IMH) agency helps to find children for U.S. adoptive families.

Many healthy infants are available, she says, and the greatest need is for families to adopt baby boys.

Poverty still is a key reason that children are given up for adoption. But today much more usually is known about the birth parents. Sometimes even members of the extended family are known.

Patrick Maskew, 12, the youngest of a large family, was 5 when his birth mother died. His maternal grandfather placed him in Hanoi's Tu Liem orphanage at age 6 because the family couldn't afford to care for the boy any longer. Three years later, Patrick was adopted by Trish and Mike Maskew of Columbia, Tenn.

Patrick keeps in touch with birth relatives by letter -- the Maskews supply his Vietnamese clan with addressed envelopes and stamps.

He made his first visit back (with his American dad) last month. "I still feel really close to my Vietnamese family and definitely want to go again, but I'd always want my mom or dad to be with me," he says.

The Maskews also visited a youth center in Patrick's old neighborhood, which just got a library and gymnasium addition, thanks to fundraising efforts directed by Trish Maskew on behalf of Clark's IMH. More money is needed for computers and books, they say.

IMH also is raising funds to repair the overcrowded orphanage where Patrick spent three years; it was badly damaged during the winter's torrential floods. And IMH has built a health clinic at the site of the My Lai massacre, where about 500 civilians reportedly were slain. Ongoing funding is needed for the projects, Clark says.

"We want to give back to the country our kids are from. We feel it's the right thing to do," Maskew says.

At the national reunion this weekend, Holtan hopes there will be some closure that allows those involved to move beyond the horrors of the war years.

"There was such tragedy and loss then," she says, "and God knows our country screwed up badly. But these kids are something good that came out of the darkness. It's a healing thing."

Full Text: Copyright USA Today Information Network Apr 26, 2000