A Holt staff member walked with him into the airport terminal. A bank of bright lights from all the news crews waiting for the children suddenly blinded him. He heard cries of excitement on either side of him, and two small children ahead of him were scooped into the arms of their new families.
He searched the waiting crowd. What if the Steiners had changed their minds and didn’t come? What if they had decided they didn’t want him?
And then he saw them. He knew those faces by heart. The man and the boys reached for him, but he saw only her.
In one movement, he rushed into the arms of his new mother, and the two of them held each other so close that anyone watching them knew they would never let go again.
9
INTO THE EYE OF THE STORM
Long was safe in the United States. But in Saigon, no one was safe. The North Vietnamese army was closing in on every side.
Fear gripped the city. When the Communists arrived, who would they single out to punish? How hard would life be after the takeover? Rumors spread that whole families were choosing to commit suicide together rather than live under Communist rule.
Three days after John Williams and Glen Noteboom flew to the United States as escorts on the plane transporting the Holt children, they returned to Saigon. They still had work to do. Bob Chamness met them at the airport.
“We knew the danger of returning, but since our April 5 flight, thirty more children had come into Holt’s care,” John says. “We also had several children who had remained behind because they were too sick to travel on that flight. We were determined to evacuate all these children.”
John and Glen were surprised at how much Saigon had changed in just three days. At the airport gates they saw desperate Vietnamese begging and bribing the guards, hoping that once inside, they could get on a departing military cargo plane. The guards’ uniforms were stuffed with money. People with nowhere else to go jammed the streets, making it difficult to get anywhere. Barbed-wire blockades and checkpoints were everywhere, though no one really knew why.
At the Holt Center, a few Vietnamese staff members still reported for work. Most of the children in their care were Amerasians. They had been brought to Holt either by members of religious orders who ran area orphanages or by frantic parents certain that Communists would mistreat or even kill them because they were half American.
John, Bob, and Glen assessed the situation. During the war, many Americans had come to Saigon to work for the American embassy or for one of the companies doing business with the South Vietnamese government. Marines continued to guard the embassy. Americans still in the city awaited orders from the U.S. government to evacuate. Only a few American planes were still landing and taking off at the airport, but because of the U.S. government’s involvement in Operation Babylift, the men hoped they could arrange passage for the remaining children.
They began checking every possibility, not knowing how much time they had. Two weeks at most. A Catholic priest approached them and said he represented a group of American families who wanted to adopt Vietnamese babies. He was trying to find children to take back to the States with him. He had a satchelful of money and was going from agency to agency, offering any price for a child.
“He dared to ask us to turn over some of our children to him. I’m usually easygoing, but I was blind with rage,” John says. “These children were not for sale! We always tried first to help families find a way to keep their child. If we took a child into our custody, we did a careful home study on prospective adoptive parents before we approved them. We felt we owed this to our children.
“The priest couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t help him. But apparently a few desperate parents turned their children over to him—people were crazy with fear—because we heard a few days later that he had several children at the airport and was trying to get them on a plane. We also heard that U.S. embassy officials planned to stop him. I don’t know what finally happened.”
By late April, Holt had secured a flight for the thirty-three children in its care. Once they were safely on their way, everyone at Holt breathed more easily. Bob, John, and Glen now had to figure out how to evacuate the Vietnamese staff and their family members who wanted to leave—one hundred people in all.
The biggest hurdle was getting them past the guards and into the airport. The three Americans tried several times to drive staff members through the gates, but were always stopped. No Vietnamese were allowed to enter—at least not without paying heavy bribes. The Holt staff wouldn’t do that.
The situation in Saigon was extremely perilous. North Vietnamese rockets made direct hits on the city, adding to the growing panic. The president of South Vietnam resigned and fled the country. When U.S. President Gerald Ford announced that the Vietnam War was “finished as far as America is concerned,” he closed the door on additional military aid from the United States and sealed the fate of South Vietnam: it would fall to the North.
Even with the airport being shelled, crowds mobbed the gates, hoping to find a way out. Bob, Glen, and John tried everything they could think of to get their Vietnamese staff past the guards. With each attempt, they used different vehicles given to them by others fleeing the country.
Then it happened: one of the cars was allowed to pass through the gates.
“We realized it had diplomatic license plates,” John says. “Working as quickly as we could, we made trip after trip with this one car, taking as many people as possible each time. We were always afraid we’d be stopped, but finally we had everyone on the base.”
American marines directed the Holt Vietnamese staff and their family members to one of the few airport warehouses that still had space. The others were already overflowing with Vietnamese men, women, and children who were waiting for evacuation.
“We received assurance from American officials that our staff would get out,” John says. “Bob, Glen, and I were told that we must leave immediately or risk losing American protection, so we boarded another flight. That was on April 27.”
The men flew to Singapore, where they planned to catch a flight to America. But when they arrived in Singapore, a heartbreaking message awaited them. “For reasons we’ve never understood, someone from the U.S. embassy had showed up at the warehouse and made all our staff people get on buses. Unbelievably, they were taken back to the Holt Center. One of our staff members somehow managed to call our Oregon office, begging for help. But there was nothing anyone could do. Nothing.”
Lan was with the staff members trapped in Saigon. Though she had lost her daughter, Tai, who had gone on the Babylift flight with Long, she hoped she could escape to safety and live somewhere in freedom. When she realized that the Holt group could not leave, she decided to try one last possibility. She knew an American living in Saigon who worked for an international firm. He had once told her to contact him if she ever needed help. She did not know if he was still in the city, but she put through a call to his office. Both electricity and phone service had become so undependable, she could hardly believe it when the call went through and the operator put the man on the line.
“I’ll try to help,” he said when she explained her plight. “My company has a private plane leaving tonight. Maybe I can pull some strings and get you on it, provided you can get into the airport. Go to my apartment immediately and wait for instructions.”
It took Lan two hours to make her way through the mobbed streets. She found a note on the American’s apartment door addressed to her, stating that she was to go to a nearby school, where a car would meet her. Only half believing this, she hurried to the school. Within minutes, a car pulled up. The driver verified her identity and told her to get in. Traffic on the main streets was at a standstill, but the driver knew the side streets and got to the airport. At the gate, the car was waved through without stopping. The driver told her to go inside the terminal and wait until she heard her name called. She had only one small suitcase and her travel documents with her. She had no food or water and did no
t know any of the people who packed the terminal waiting room. She found a place against a wall and stayed there. Everyone looked nervous and upset. Some paced around and some cried, especially when they heard explosions outside. Lan could see smoke and fires on the runways from the Communist shelling, which increased every hour.
At three A.M., after nearly nine hours of waiting, she heard her name called. She was rushed aboard a small plane. She collapsed into a seat, and moments later, the plane lifted into the air. Once the plane was out of range of the rockets bursting around them, she looked out a window. She could see fires burning all around the city.
“I did not even know where we were flying to,” she says. “I had no family left in Vietnam, but I had no one anywhere else, either. When I realized I had escaped, I was overcome with both joy and sorrow. I was all alone. I no longer had my daughter or my country, and I did not know if I could stand to live in the world without them.”
* * *
On April 29, the American embassy finally began Operation Frequent Wind, the official evacuation of Americans still in Saigon. When the American radio station played “White Christmas,” followed by the announcement that “the temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising,” Americans knew to hurry to their assigned evacuation sites.
The streets of downtown Saigon were cluttered with abandoned cars, clothing, and suitcases dropped by desperate people still hoping to escape. Discarded uniforms of soldiers, who had deserted the South Vietnamese army and now were trying to blend in with the general population, littered the landscape. Rioting and looting were creating destruction throughout the city.
It had become too dangerous for planes to leave from the airport. Helicopters were the best way out. They could land on flat roofs and needed no runway to take off. One helicopter evacuation site was the roof of the American embassy. Frantic Vietnamese mobbed the walled embassy compound, begging to be evacuated. American marines had to beat them back or even threaten to shoot them so arriving Americans could get inside.
Desperate Vietnamese try to scale the fourteen-foot wall surrounding the U.S. Embassy, hoping to be evacuated by helicopter from the embassy roof
Americans, other foreign nationals, and select Vietnamese lucky enough to make it to the embassy roof were crammed into helicopters and flown to U.S. Navy aircraft carriers waiting miles away in the ocean. One after another, throughout the afternoon and evening of April 29, helicopters landed and took off from the embassy roof, filling the air with the whup-whup-whup sounds of their whirring blades.
* * *
On April 30, 1975, the world awoke to the news that South Vietnam had surrendered. The long war was over. Very early that morning, the last remaining American marines boarded the final helicopter, carrying with them the American flag that had flown over the embassy. The Americans were safely out of the city. Left behind were thousands and thousands of terrified Vietnamese who had counted on their American friends to take them along.
Several hours later, North Vietnamese tanks rolled through the silent streets of Saigon. Instead of a bloodbath, over the next few months, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who had opposed the North were rounded up and sent to “re-education camps,” where they suffered terrible hardships. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the North’s longtime revolutionary leader. A curtain of silence descended upon the newly reunited Vietnam, closing it off from the West.
* * *
Lan was taken to Clark Air Force Base, in the Philippines, then several weeks later was flown to Camp Pendleton, in California. Thousands of Vietnamese refugees were there, waiting for American sponsors who would help them start new lives in the United States. Still grieving for her daughter, Lan called the Holt office in Oregon to report that she had made it to the United States.
Then a miracle occurred. Lan learned that Holt had not yet placed Tai with an adoptive family. She was still in foster care.
“She’s with a family in San Francisco,” they told Lan. “She’ll be waiting for you.”
Lan will never forget the best moment of her life, when her plane landed in San Francisco in June 1975 and she ran to embrace her daughter, Tai—a heartbroken little girl, who, until that moment, had thought her mother was dead.
10
A REAL AMERICAN BOY
As soon as he met them, Long felt at home with the Steiners. They called him Matt. This took a while to get used to, but he willingly accepted it. The name Long would be part of his past. Now he was Matthew Ray Steiner, Matt for short.
His first night with the Steiners, he slept sixteen straight hours. When he awoke, he was famished. Mary Steiner said later that for the first few weeks, her new son’s appetite was ravenous. She was a good cook, and because she had lived in both Thailand and Vietnam, she knew how to prepare foods Matt liked, though he still added hot sauce to everything.
To his surprise, he was a media celebrity. People already knew who he was because of the widely reprinted article by the reporter who had interviewed him at the Holt Center. Cards and letters from well-wishers all over the country began arriving at the Steiner home. Television and newspaper reporters came for interviews.
“Matt loved it,” recalls his mother. “It was a little harder for Dan, Doug, and Jeff to see this new family member getting so much attention, but they were good sports.”
Matt immediately took to his new brothers, especially Doug, who was fifteen. “He went out of his way for me,” Matt says. “As soon as I arrived, he gave me a toy truck and played with me. He took me under his wing.”
Ironically, it had been Doug who had voiced concerns about his parents adopting a child. “But Doug was born in South Vietnam and maybe that’s why the two became close friends,” Mary Steiner says.
Gradually Matt grew close to Dan and Jeff. “We had our ups and downs, as any brothers do,” Matt says, “like the time Jeff said something that made me mad and I threw a sandwich at him, making a mess on the floor. We did stuff like that. But mostly we got along fine.”
Long, now known as Matt, with his new family, the Steiners, two weeks after arriving in America
The Steiners thought Matt would know very little English and were surprised that he could handle simple communication. They also were surprised that he knew how to tie the shoelaces on his first pair of sneakers. Matt remembered the day his friend Ky had taught him this strange skill, and now he was glad that he had spent time learning it.
He eagerly wore the clothes they bought him, willing to do anything that made him look more American—though these clothes took some getting used to. “In Vietnam, I wore shorts and a shirt every day. I never wore underwear. Often I was barefoot. Now I had to wear shoes and socks and underwear, and then layer on a T-shirt, an outer shirt, a sweater, and finally a coat. I had never experienced cold weather, and had to get used to it. The first time I saw snow, I was excited and mystified. My mom explained that every flake had a unique pattern. I couldn’t get over that. I spent a lot of time trying to catch the flakes so I could examine them.”
The Steiners’ home was average in size but seemed huge to Matt, who had always lived in small, crowded spaces. Until he could get used to being alone in his own bedroom at night, he shared a room with thirteen-year-old Jeff. That still wasn’t enough company for Matt. For the first few nights, he found his way to his new parents’ bedroom, wanting to sleep on the floor by them, only to have them gently steer him back to his own bed.
Then there was the family dog, Moose, a mix of German sheepdog and collie. The few small dogs Matt remembered from his mother’s village were not pets and never went into anyone’s house, but Moose went anywhere he wanted. And the moment he saw Matt, he bounded over, ready to play. Matt drew back in fear. Gradually he realized that the dog just wanted to bestow sloppy kisses on him. Before long, Matt and Moose were good friends.
Matt’s new brothers loved sports. They were eager to introduce him to all sorts of outdoor activities, especially golf, which everyone in the family p
layed. Within days of his arrival, Matt knew how to hold and swing a golf club. Soon he was an avid player, practicing his swing in the big yard surrounding the Steiners’ house. That yard seemed vast to Matt, who was used to city streets and playing inside a walled courtyard. He grew to appreciate all the space once he mastered his brothers’ three-wheeled motor scooter. This was better than a bicycle! He spent happy hours riding it, Moose running beside him.
Matt’s new brothers, Dan, Doug, and Jeff, teach him how to play basketball
His first trip into West Liberty, Ohio, was a revelation. Most of the fifteen hundred residents already knew who he was and called him by name. At the grocery store, Matt was wide-eyed. This was no Saigon street market. Instead of live ducks and chickens, meat was packaged in plastic and ready to cook. There weren’t many fruits and vegetables, at least not by Vietnamese standards. Where were the mounds of rice and potatoes, and all the fresh fish? Where were the coconuts you could cut a hole into in order to sip creamy milk through a straw? And nobody bargained over prices. Americans just paid whatever the sticker demanded.
Having a mother again was the best part of Matt’s new life. Before he started school, he spent all his time with her, going with her on errands and helping her around the house. Mary read to him and worked with him on his reading and spelling. She did everything she could to help him understand his new life.
Matt took his time getting to know his new father. Jim Steiner understood this need and did not push. He was a man devoted to his family and to the practice of medicine, giving of his skills to help others. He believed in living simply. He had an inquisitive mind, and he talked to Matt about everything going on in his new son’s life. He always made it clear how proud he was of Matt. Over time, Matt learned to love his father deeply.
“One day Dad invited me to go jogging with him, something he did regularly,” says Matt. “I became a runner and often went out with Dad. I prize those memories.”
Escape from Saigon Page 6
