Vietnam Center recalls
1975 Operation Babylift
As one adoptee put it, ‘We all woke up one day and became Americans’
By Darlene Diebold
Correspondent

JERRY WOLKOWITZ Susan Leon, of River Vale, holds her son, Elias O’Connor, whom she adopted from Vietnam, during Saturday’s program on the 1975 Operation Babylift at the Vietnam Era Education Center in Holmdel.

HOLMDEL — This weekend, people went to the Vietnam Era Educational Center to remember and celebrate an unusual military airlift at the end of the Vietnam War — Operation Babylift, which rescued 2,000 Vietnamese orphans from Saigon.

The 1975 military plane evacuation, which was approved by President Gerald Ford and known as Operation Babylift, which gave the malnourished children a chance not just to survive but to thrive.

The program, presented at 2 p.m. Saturday by the N.J. Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Education Foundation, not only celebrated the past but the present as well as the future.

The speeches were sad, joyous and thought-provoking all at the same time.

JERRY WOLKOWITZ Sister Susan McDonald, St. Louis, Mo., keynote speaker at Saturday’s Operation Babylift program at the N.J. Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Education Foundation in Holmdel Saturday, stands by pictures from a reunion of the first generation of Vietnamese adoptees.

Tiffany Goodson, a babylift adoptee, said she was really enjoying the reflections. "I was adopted by a loving family in East Peoria, Ill. It was really hard because nobody there looked like me.

"I used to wish that I was white with long blonde hair so that I could fit in. In college, I decided to find out who I really was. Programs like this help. This is a special day for me. I get to meet people from all over the country who have had the same experiences."

Jared Rehberg, also a babylift adoptee, agreed, noting, "It’s an amazing experience to be around people who lived a life so similar to my own. We all woke up one day and became Americans."

Some of the families of newly adopted children from Vietnam also spoke.

"Being there, and meeting people there, for me this was important," said Kathy Malloy, talking about her new daughter, Margaret Tobey. She discovered that there was no dismay on the part of the people there to the fact that she was "essentially taking one of their children away."

They really were very happy for her, she said. "Lucky baby. That’s what they say. But I’m the lucky one. We went through a day and a half of a very disconnected plane trip. We flew half-way across the world to bring her home."

Keynote speaker Sister Susan McDonald, of St. Louis, Mo., reflected on her years spent in Vietnam and what it was like assisting in the evacuation of 200 children, as well as the first plane that tragically crashed. McDonald said that she was particularly interested in the children of Vietnam because "there were always photos of street children and children in understaffed orphanages."

Being a registered nurse, she decided to do something about it. After writing to nine different organizations, her application was accepted and she was on her way.

"It was never a matter of a mother not wanting or not loving their baby. Due to extreme poverty, the mother was unable to take care of her baby. This was their chance to live."

But being in an orphanage did not guarantee a good life, only the hope of one. McDonald explained that the infant mortality rate was estimated at one in every 10 births, whereas in an orphanage, it jumped to 90 percent. Children were malnourished, and there just was not enough food to feed them all in the war-torn country. Many children died. But luckily in April 1975, President Ford said the military would provide transportation for the orphans.

Tragedy struck when the first plane, carrying orphans and Americans, crashed just outside of Saigon because of faulty back doors. There was little time for anyone to mourn though.

"We needed to find another plane for the children," McDonald said. "We were able to charter a Pan Am 747. On this plane we boarded all the children who were well enough to travel. We couldn’t be sure of the future. We couldn’t rely on the possibility of getting another plane."

Three weeks later McDonald left Vietnam on another flight with 200 additional children. When the plane landed in America, she said, "It was like landing in heaven."

There were ambulances, doctors and parents awaiting their arrival, she recalled. "I was overwhelmed that I was back in a place where every baby was expected to live. In Saigon I had to bury a baby on the average of every two weeks."

McDonald was asked after she returned home why she took children from their culture. She always responded, "Because it gave them a chance for a better life." She told the audience that her years in Vietnam, from May 1973 to April 1975, "were among the most precious of my life."

Adam Pertman, a Boston Globe reporter, also spoke of the babylift and what those adoptions have meant to America. "Nearly all of the children airlifted out of Vietnam 25 years ago were adopted," he said. "And nearly all of them, all of you here probably, were adopted by white parents. Which means you contributed, and contributed significantly, to the ongoing transformation of the United States into a more multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial society. I see you’ve contributed mightily, even though your numbers are relatively small."

In between speeches two traditional dances were performed by the Vietnamese Buddhist Youth Association, Hoc Sinh (The Student) and Thuyen Hoa (Flower Boat).