Home, Coming from Korea

Right off the plane, meeting mom and dad.

While working as a flight attendant for Eastern Airlines in the 70s and 80s,  I made dozens of trips to India and Korea with Americans for International Aid to bring 'home' children adopted by Americans from abroad. Here are photos of Chung, the very first boy I took to his new parents on November 10, 1977. Chung's family sent these pictures to me in a thank you letter several months after his arrival.  I had shared with them that Chung was very outgoing and had talked non-stop during the flight (of course, I understood not a word). His parents wrote:

  "We thought perhaps you would like to see how 'motor mouth' has changed. Grown six inches and   gained five pounds. Still active and still conning everyone he can."

In his parents arms as I catch a flight home.

                                 They were in the process of adopting again, this time from the US.

While in Korea I often went for overnight visits to Father Keane's St. Vincent's Home for Amerasian Children in Byu Pyung. I slept on the floor alongside the children. (See Amerasians: "Dust of Life"). I watched Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding back in 1981on a tiny black-and-white television with several of the younger kids sitting on my lap. I thought, rightly so, "I'll certainly remember this moment in years to come."


The term 'Amerasian' refers to children born of Asian mothers and (mostly) US soldiers stationed Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian nations. They face discrimination by other nationals, often finding it difficult to find legitimate work. Why? They are considered American, not Korean or Vietnamese, and are sometimes denied citizenship rights. Outcast, abadoned, most never know their fathers and find life difficult.

A photo I took of Natasha in 1978 at Father Keane's

While viewing a TEDtalk recently I saw a link to a story told by photographer  Rick Smolan of a little Amerasian girl in South Korea.  Rick had met the girl, Natasha, while on assignment to photographh Amerasians in 1978 for TIME Magazine. Though only 28 and unmarried, he helped find her a home in Atlanta when her grandmother, Natasha's sole caretaker, died. I immediately recognized Natasha as a little girl as I had met at Father Keane's during one of my many visits.  Natasha's story as told by Rick is, to use a cliche, 'heartwarming.'

Lunch time at Father Keane's

 Over the years I probably escorted over 100 children from Asia and South America to their new homes in the US. I would spend anywhere between 20 hours and two days with the children depending on flights and connections. I rarely know what happened after  I handed the children over to their new families in Buffalo, Minneapolis, or Portland and hopped the next flight back to my home base. I did receive an occasional letter from a grateful parent within months of our arrival, but I wondered how they adjusted, what was school like, and what did they become?

While I was not in any way part of Natasha's story, it is wonderful to see what a beautiful and self-assured woman she has become and to hope that all of the children I escorted found happiness, security, comfort, and worth, in their new lives in America.

Here is "The Story of a Girl" by Rick Smolan.

Foreign Adoption Dutch Style - from America

CNN profiled recently how the Dutch are at the forefront of foreign adoption  - of black American children. Dutch parents are often the first and only choice of mothers considering placing their black children with another family. The mothers are often in difficult circumstances - poor, in jail or addicted to drugs - and they hope for a better life for their children. Placing their children with families in the Netherlands seems a very smart choice.

On the United Nations Gender Equality Index , the Netherlands is number one, followed by Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland, Slovenia, and France: the US is ranked at 42 (just behind Albania and tied with Hungary). In addition, the US has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world (25% of the world's prisoners are in the US), while the Netherlands ranks 163. Moreover, blacks, mainly males, make up one million of the 2.3 million in US jails, imprisoned at six times the rate of whites. While the US is building prisons, the the Netherlands is closing them. For mothers placing their black children with new 'forever families,' based on this information, their belief in chances of a better life in Holland vs. the US looks well-founded.

The Netherlands also boasts less income inequality, as do other developed nations in comparison to the US (see below). In addition, efforts to increase racial inequality in the US is a continuing story. A CNN Money infographic shows blacks at the lowest end of the racial wealth income gap. Lack of home ownership and financial investments are contributing factors.

Of course, white families in America do adopt black children too - including, recently, several well-known celebrities like Charlize Theron and Sandra Bullock. In these and other families, most kids do just fine; but, in others, adopted children may face problems in sorting out their racial identity.

Darron Smith, author of "White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption," believes that few Whites are truly equipped to help Black children prepare for survival in America. Smith is quoted as saying, "You would need to change your circle of friends, move to an integrated neighborhood and unlearn the racist history you learned about being an American."  In addition, while the National Association of Black Social Workers  no longer oppose transracial adoption, they are concerned about keeping black families together.

Which brings us back to Holland.

Despite their often limited educational and financial circumstances, American mothers who place their children with Dutch families are keenly aware that their children will probably face less racial stigma and gain more social and economic opportunities living abroad in what they see are 'exotic locales.' After they are adopted, these mothers often have more open contact with their children and their new families. Regarding the placement of their black children with white families, these mothers also do not face the scrutiny of American blacks or whites whose history of racial relations is still evolving. From the looks of it, the choice of these mothers to 'go Dutch' seems like a very wise decision.

Click here for Sophie Brown's report, "Overseas Adoptions Rise - for Black American Children."
Or, continue reading below.

Global Income Inequality


The Great Recession has widened the wealth gap, and race is a major factor.

Role Models

1979, with Moon Sung, from Seoul, Korea to Buffalo, NY

In 1977 I learned about Jodie Richers and Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIA) in Atlanta, GA, a group of airline volunteers who used their travel privileges to bring adopted orphans back from foreign countries to their new parents - saving these families thousands of dollars in airfare and hotel expense. I was a flight attendant for Eastern Airlines living in Miami at that time, I became a volunteer, and my relationship with AIA opened up a new way of seeing the world.

From 1977 to 1987, I made six to 10 trips a year on my off days to Korea, India, Afghanistan, Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia and Thailand, taking donated supplies to orphanages and refugee camps and picking up children (two babies plus a couple of 'walkers' per escort) to bring home to the US.  Sometimes I escorted children who had been in the US for  medical care: some were severely burned, or had congenital heart ailments or other types of birth defects that could not be treated in their home countries.

With Deepta, Calcutta airport, 1979 

After 12 years as a flight attendant, I quit flying for Eastern in 1987 and continued my volunteer work with Healing The Children, NE, Inc., as a foster parent, board member and volunteer administrator on dozens of international surgical missions. Along the way I had a family of my own, adopting one child and birthing two, and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Connecticut. I can say with honesty that every choice I made in my life, personal, educational and professional, was influenced by the time I spent with AIA and Jodie in Atlanta during the 70s. Often I flew to Jodie's house to pack the many suitcases of supplies that we would take with us on our trips to bring back the children. Jodie had started her volunteer work with orphans in Vietnam working with adoption agencies and orphanages to help process the departure of hundreds of children as Saigon fell.

Packing supplies at Jodie's, 1977

It was during our endless conversations while packing suitcases of supplies or drinking coffee and smoking too many cigarettes that I first heard about Betty Tisdale and saw photos in Jodie's home of An Lac Orphanage. Betty's story of courageously arranging the departure of 219 orphans out of Vietnam was made into a movie in 1980 starring Shirley Jones called, The Children of An Lac.  Betty, in my mind, joined Mother Theresa, (who I met in 1979!) as my role model for humanity.

At Jodie's, I could and did listen for hours about the last days of the Vietnam War, of desperate mothers leaving their children at the gates of orphanages, especially if those children were 'Amerasians' (fathered by Americans). There was no formula, no diapers, not enough cribs for all of the children in those last chaotic moments of 1975.

While volunteering, I met many of the personalities in these stories who continued their work of helping children in other countries after that war. I became friends with Cherie Clark who founded International Mission of Hope, first in Calcutta then, in 1988, in Vietnam. I escorted a pretty little girl named Sohini from Bombay to the US for Helkie Ferrie of the Canadian Kuan Yin Foundation. I met other women in other countries too who had in some way been moved to humanitarianism through their work with children and orphans in Vietnam. And finally, just two weeks ago, 35 years after first hearing about her heroic effort in Vietnam, I met Betty Tisdale, right here in Danbury, Connecticut!

Betty and Audriana, May, 2012

I now teach cultural anthropology at Western Connecticut State University. One of my students asked to be excused for a week from school this semester as she was volunteering in Colombia at an orphanage, but she would most certainly make up the work. I asked the student, Audriana, to please bring me a brochure or something about the organization she was traveling with as a reference. Audriana said, "Have you ever heard of Betty Tisdale?" Wow. Had I ever.

Betty now has a non-profit organization, H.A.L.O., for 'helping and loving orphans,' and she raises money to help a variety of NGOs around the world, one of those in Bogata, Colombia, Luz Y Vida, where Audriana volunteered. On June 1, Betty will travel to Afghanistan where she is supporting projects run by Parsa. Did I mention that she is traveling alone and that she is just shy of 90 years old?

A month or two after Audriana's trip, Betty came to  our area to attend a fund raiser. She visited WCSU with Audriana and I had the most wonderful pleasure of having lunch with Betty followed by and an entire afternoon of conversation and stories at my home. We even checked in with Jodie - they serve together on the board of AIAA and on that afternoon Jodie was Betty's proxy at their meeting. Betty told me about her inspiration, Dr. Tom Dooley, and I told her that I had taken a three-month leave of absence from Eastern Airlines in 1981 to be a 'Dooley Girl' in Nepal (I volunteered on a vaccination team for the Tom Dooley Foundation/Intermed in Gorkha District).

Life does has a way of coming full circle. I met Betty and it was amazing. I offered to travel with Betty on June 1 (you know, so I could learn to be more like her!), but the cost to fly to Afghanistan is crazy. Anybody with frequent flyer miles out there? If not, all's well as I'll be traveling to the Himalayas next June with an anthropology/medical team organized by the Himalayan Health Exchange - I will teach medical anthropology on a three-week trek to remote villages in the Indo-Tibetan borderland. Must be that 'circle' again!

PS: Over the years my own feelings about humanitarian efforts in foreign countries by Westerners has taken shape - but that is for another blog!

Below, check out a clip about Betty from ABC News with Diane Sawyer and on the Nightly News.