My Name is Life - Holt International

Vietnam
Early April 1975—At Holt International headquarters in Eugene, Oregon,
Holt Executive Director Jack Adams gathered staff to pray. For several days no
calls or communications could get through to Holt’s Vietnam office, and news
out of Vietnam was ominous. The last message said that Holt’s DaNang Center
had been abandoned and the children evacuated to Saigon.
As the staff prayed, the receptionist excitedly got Adam’s attention...
it was a call from the Holt office in Vietnam.
Over the following few days, Holt mobilized a massive effort to evacuate
children from Vietnam. Adams put all Holt staff on round-the-clock work to
complete the necessary documents and arrangements for children in Holt care
to be flown to the United States.
When Executive Director Jack Adams sent a Holt survey team
to Vietnam in 1972, the situation for children there was similar
to those in Korea at the time of Harry Holt’s initial visit. The
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, which began in 1973, left
thousands of mixed race children—Amerasians or, as the Vietnamese
called them, buidoi, the dust of life.
By June 1973, Holt had established a reception center in Saigon
and set up an extensive foster home program so that children
could have the individual attention of a family while Holt worked
at finding homes for them. Holt set up two childcare centers in
Saigon and one in DaNang. At that time, some authorities estimated
that Vietnam had over 900,000 orphan children, 25,000 of
whom lived in orphanages and were in desperate need of permanent
homes.
In the final chaotic hours of the war, as it became apparent
Saigon was about to fall to the North Vietnamese, Holt leadership
chose to use its own chartered flight—a decision that kept Holt
children from being among those who died in the crash of a U.S.
government jet that was part of what became known as the “Baby
Lift.”
Before mid-April, Holt transported nearly a thousand children
from Vietnam to the United States. Most traveled on a chartered
PanAm jet with a volunteer crew—a jet for which Holt had to
purchase special insurance for the one hour it would spend on
the ground in a war zone.
Holt staff refused to take children from desperate parents.
Only children who had been carefully screened and legally
relinquished for adoption were sent to the United States.
Holt’s bold decisions and steadfast commitment to ethical
practice protected the lives of children and saved families
from the anguish of correcting wrongs.
Except for a minor role in uniting Amerasian children
with birth parents in the United States, Holt was gone from
Vietnam for the next 15 years. Holt returned to Vietnam in 1989
at the invitation of the government of Vietnam.
Today, Holt’s efforts in Vietnam stretch from Binh Duong in
the south all the way to Hanoi in the north. And like its earlier
version, the new Holt-Vietnam program serves through a steadfast
commitment to do whatever is best for orphaned, abandoned and
vulnerable children.
Facing page: In the 1970s Holt responded to the needs of thousands
of abandoned and vulnerable children in Vietnam, many of
whom were ending up in institutions.
Above, clockwise from bottom left: Holt’s initial work in Vietnam
ended dramatically in April 1975, when Holt evacuated nearly a
thousand children who had been legally freed for international
adoption.
Today Holt’s work in Vietnam encompasses a wide range of services,
including efforts to help at-risk families stay together.
Holt’s commitment to the children of Vietnam was recently evidenced
when Holt maintained its programs and services throughout
a moratorium on international adoption.
Foster care enables homeless children to benefit from the generous,
attentive care of loving foster mothers and fathers until a permanent
family can be found.
18 50th Anniversary 2006
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