On a Humanitarian Effort

When the Vietnam War ended, what had been the nation of South Vietnam was in a panic. That nation, propped up by the United States, was overrun by troops from communist North Vietnam, and those who had collaborated with the US over the years were targeted for retribution by the victorious north and the Viet Cong resistors actively fighting in the south. Those of us old enough can remember the chaotic scenes of helicopters on the roof of the US embassy as a long line snaked up staircases to where the fortunate few were airlifted out of harm’s way at the last minute. Many didn’t make it.

Among those South Vietnamese who were evacuated during those tense days in 1975 were about 2,500 children. The orphanages in Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital city (now Ho Chi Minh City) were bursting at the seams with children who were the products of the liaisons between American servicemen and Vietnamese women. In addition, some families in the south had given their children to these orphanages, often run by American non-profits, knowing that the children would receive better care and have potentially a better future than they themselves could provide. The US government and President Gerald R. Ford decided to evacuate as many of these Vietnamese “orphans” as possible as the South Vietnam government collapsed.

Now, the program had obvious flaws and issues that had and continue to have echoes of colonialism along with some racist overtones. And some at the time bashed the program as nothing more than a publicity stunt for the folks back home at a time when almost no good news was coming out of a war that had cost over 50,000 US lives and billions of dollars–not to mention the first war that the US had not emerged from victorious (let’s call Korea a “tie” at best). So, the weary public’s response was lukewarm at best.

Interestingly, several celebrities at the time got involved in this story. A couple who took the lead in helping to evacuate these children were actor Yul Brynner and his wife, Jacqueline. As California was the first place where these children were brought to in the US, the Hollywood elite began to get involved because, well, they knew a good PR stunt when they saw one. But the Brynners and others were generally well-intentioned (the couple eventually adopted one of the children) even if their publicists made as much hay out of their involvement as possible. And, besides, these Hollywood types were well-connected to people who could move the children around the country to find families to adopt them. And that’s when, to me, the story gets more interesting. Because rich people own jets, you see.

So, a few phone calls were made. And a fleet of private jets was assembled. One of them came from a rather odd place and a rather unusual wealthy person. It was a long, black aircraft with a corporate logo in the shape of an animal on it. Onboard and to care for the children as they were transported back east to meet their new adoptive families were several absolutely beautiful young women. And the jet, filled with 41 soon-to-be-adopted children and their lovely caregivers, winged its way across the continent to drop off the kids in places like New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

Now, modern criticism of what the government called Operation Babylift is still ongoing as these children, today of course grown people with children and grandchildren of their own, try to connect with relatives back in Vietnam and grapple with the trauma of what happened to them almost 50 years ago. They find themselves asking the motives of those who completely changed their lives by taking them and placing them in a strange, new environment. That’s one of the risks taken when cultures collide, especially when one of the cultures is wealthier and more powerful than the other.

But regardless of the psychological and ethical considerations of Operation Babylift, it’s still odd and interesting to realize that publisher Hugh Hefner used his jet, dubbed the Big Bunny, to ferry children across the US with the help of several Playboy bunnies onboard.

On a Birth Mother’s Demand

When she became pregnant in 1954, Joanne had only one demand of potential adoptive parents for her unborn baby: They had to be college graduates. In Joanne’s mind, college graduates would insure that her child would also attend college, at least statistics said it made that possibility much more likely. Joanne herself had attended college. In fact, the University of Wisconsin is where she’d met her soon to be born son’s father. The father of the boy was a Syrian named Abdulfattah, himself the son of a wealthy family who’d paid for their boy to attend Wisconsin to obtain a graduate degree.

The pair fell in love, and the pregnancy resulted. However, Joanne’s conservative father refused to give his blessing to the union because of Abdulfattah’s Muslim background. So, Joanne traveled to San Francisco to have her son and to find what she considered suitable parents for him there. Soon, what seemed to be a dream couple entered Joanne’s life. The man was an attorney and the woman had agreed to forego her career and stay home to take care of the baby. But then, the couple discovered that Joanne’s baby was a boy, and they had their hearts set on a girl.

The next couple that applied for the child was in no way acceptable to Joanne. Neither prospective parent had attended college. Paul was a repossession man and Clara was a bookkeeper. Clara had had a troubled pregnancy earlier, and they were eager to adopt. They didn’t mind that Joanne’s child was a boy. But Joanne refused to sign the child over to this couple. They begged her and pleaded with her. While their jobs weren’t glamorous or high paying, the work was steady in San Francisco and would definitely provide a secure future for her son. Paul and Clara made Joanne a promise. They would send the boy to college when he was of age.

With that promise in her hand, Joanne reluctantly signed the adoption papers, and Paul and Clara gladly welcomed the boy into their home. Clara feared for some time that somehow, the boy, whom Paul and Clara named Steven Paul after his adopted father, would be taken from them because of Joanne’s hesitancy. But he was never taken from them. Instead, the couple indulged the boy as he grew, they also adopted a sister for him, whom they called Patricia.

Well, true to their word, when Steven came of age, he did indeed attend college, enrolling at Reed College in Oregon. However, the boy, while incredibly bright, didn’t fit in with the college environment and dropped out after one semester. He would move back home with Paul and Clara in 1974 and find work as a computer game technician. He and a friend from high school (a guy also named Steve but whom everyone called Woz) would tinker with the games and work on improving them.

And that’s how Steve Jobs came to create Apple.

On an Adopted Son

Adopted children are special. I know this first hand. My sister’s son is adopted, and my own son is, too. Unlike children related by blood, adopted children are selected to a degree; their choosing by the adoptive parents, at least to me, means that they are special and beloved even before the adoption paperwork is completed. That is a bond that transcends blood relation. And, sometimes, love and marriage bring a son or daughter into a parent-child relationship that can often be a wonderful thing for both.

Take the case of Leslie Lynch King, Jr. He was born in 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska. His mom, Dorothy, had married Leslie King, Sr., the son of one of Omaha’s richest families. But the marriage wasn’t a happy one. The husband was a spoiled rich kid. He often beat Dorothy. He even threatened to kill her and her unborn child. Once her son was born, Dorothy secretly left Omaha and the senior Leslie and moved first to her sister’s house in Illinois and then into the house of her parents in Michigan. The wealthy grandfather of Leslie junior eventually provided child support, so Dorothy didn’t have to worry about money while raising her boy.

However, by the time the son was three, Dorothy had met a wonderful guy in Michigan, a man named Rudy. Rudy was not wealthy, although he made a living as a worker in his family’s paint store. Unlike her first husband, Rudy wasn’t a spoiled man who didn’t consider other people when he made decisions. He was kind and hard working and appreciated the love that Dorothy had for her son. And Dorothy knew that Rudy would make the perfect adopted dad for her young Leslie.

And that is exactly what he proved to be. Rudy took Leslie under his wing. He taught the boy the meaning of hard work, of patience, of being appreciative of others and aware of their needs and of his own shortcomings. He taught his adopted son sports–something that Leslie soon found he liked and excelled at– and encouraged him to join the local Boy Scout troop. Leslie loved scouting, and, as he grew, he climbed the scouting ladder until he reached Eagle Scout–the highest ranking a scout can obtain.

Dorothy and Rudy had three other sons, but the bond between Rudy and Leslie was unmistakable. One day, Leslie asked Rudy why he had a different last name than his step-father. Leslie tugged at his chin. “Well, would you like to have my last name, son?” he asked. “Yes, sir,” the young man said. So, with Dorothy’s smiling approval, Leslie Lynch King, Jr., took on the name of the man who was not his biological father but rather of the man who was his dad, the man who raised him, and the man who made him who he became.

That’s why you knew him as President Gerald R. Ford.