Secret Ability to Fly

This is me in one of the seats from the C-5A plane that crashed. 

 

I was one of those babies on the plane.

 

I don’t have a baby book or a hospital bracelet. I have front- page newspaper articles and my name on a survivor manifest. 

 

Operation Babylift // New Perspectives is an exhibit showcasing the evolution of my personal story through the medias narrative..

 

I had grown up telling the Operation Babylift story, which I knew from the newscasts, papers, documentaries, magazines, and books.  No wonder I shape my life around facts, science, and information.  

 

As the years passed, memoirs were published, independent films were released, Vietnamese Adoptee community pages, and personal websites appeared. I began to get an insight into a new community.  We had individual stories and a shared history.  The early 2000s brought social media, released records, and individuals began telling their stories.  

 

I decided to delve into mine.

 

“This here, is not you.”  

 

“Say what?”

 

”This here -  is not you,” Mary Nelle said, pointing to my adoption paperwork. We were in Vietnam on a Motherland Trip in 2005. “You are Ngnoc Tran Anh. You were born in Vinh Long but were a registered baby, either born in a hospital or brought to one shortly thereafter.”

 

I had always thought that I was a stray cat. You find it, pick it up, and look at it: female, 3 weeks old. Tabby.  Apparently not.

 

”Your birthday is December 28, 1973.”

 

”????”

 

The ambiguities of adoption are a part of the chaos of war.  Evacuation in dire circumstances does not allocate time when you need to get the hell out. 

 

That same year, in 2004, a friend invited me to dinner with his family.  His dad gave me an original copy of the San Diego Tribune from April 5, 1975.  The headliner article was 178 Killed in Crash.  It was my plane crash. 

 

I have been collecting information about Operation Babylift and the plane crash for as long as I can remember.  It has been my subject for school reports, essays, and interviews and integrated into the curriculum for media classes I taught at the University of Utah. It was all based on the mainstream media that I had found. 

 

Until last year. 

 

As the 50th year since Operation Babylift, the plane crash, and the fall of Saigon approached, I wanted to find a way to express my gratitude to those who cared for me on my journey from Vietnam to my family and home in Hawaii. I decided to collect thank you notes of gratitude and resilience and compile them into a book for them. After it gained no traction, I realized that the “Secret Ability to Fly” was my story and not everyone else’s,  So it was back to the drawing board. 

 

As I was connecting with people.  I contacted Linda Boris, who wrote “Every Sparrow that Falls.” She emailed me a pdf of the survivors of the plane crash. 

 

It was the first time I had ever seen my name in print.  It actualized me BEING in that place and that time.  Proof.  Me. On that list.  Right there.  My orphanage name is Mimosa, second to the last on the list.. 

 

That was the entry to the rabbit hole. 

 

Sr. Mary Nelle Gage,  who has worked with Friends for All Children and the pilot of the C-5A plane,  Col. Bud Traynor, didn’t need thank you books of letters. They needed to find a future home for their records and files. “I don’t want this history to disappear when I disappear,”  Bud told me. 

 

”These records are their (the adoptee's) life, and they need access to them.” Mary Nelle said.

 

“I can do that,”  I answered, and it began.

 

We began to go through the boxes. The Record Book is a handwritten ledger that was the intake record for arriving children. There are boxes of correspondence from the Friends For All Children agency, professional correspondence, and legal and personal letters between the caregivers and friends that write letters of courage, fear, exhaustion, frustrations, and hope. There are boxes and boxes of adoptee files.  “Is mine in there?” I asked Mary Nelle.

 

”Somewhere,” she replied, going to the basement to get a few file folders. She brought them back up and plopped them on the table.  

 

I reached for the stack and opened up the first folder.

 

”MOMMY!”  

 

It was my mother’s handwriting.  Very distinct,  very mom.  Of course, I know my mother’s handwriting. It was my file. It held the story of me before I was theirs. The handwritten note was the application letter from my mom to be considered to adopt a child. It had the home studies, background checks, legal paperwork, checklist for paperwork, medical notes, correspondence, pictures, and follow-up letters…a receipt. This was all me. 

 

The journey in this past year has shifted my priorities and time. I left a career to pursue a rabbit down a hole. It has presented crazy opportunities for exploration, discovery, and serendipitous connections. As Mary Nelle said, when we found my file at the top of the stack, it was “divine intervention.”

 

She had given me a gift last spring when I was launching the Secret Ability to Fly project.  It was a framed piece of insulation- actual insulation from the C-5A plane that crashed with me onboard. 

 

“Babies in Paper Boxes” was a framed limited edition photo that my friend Axel’s grandmother bought 45 years ago from a local photographer, Bill Kurtis - who just happened to be a war correspondent.  She hung it in her home, then her daughter’s home, then Axel’s, and now it will be mine. 

 

As this story grows, so does the awareness and questioning about the past.  As I went through the slides, videos, administrative files, and letters, I realized this was big. Really big. It involved people and sharing sensitive, potentially life-shifting information. I needed to learn more. I needed to know how to do this. I needed help.

 

When looking for a repository for the files, we met with the archive team at Regis University.  They were interested in the files and the history. The Center for the Study for War Experiences offers a spring course focused on the Stories of War: Vietnam in Spring 2025 and asked if we wanted to do a presentation.  Ok, I can do that.

 

How about an exhibit? 

How about in February?  

(It was just after Thanksgiving.)

 

This exhibit is an opportunity to share what I have discovered from the time I was doing school reports until now.  I hope to share these resources to fill in some of the unknowns for those involved and to create awareness of our perception of the war and transnational adoption.  

 

The exhibit includes images of the plane crash with commentary from Col. Bud Traynor, the pilot, stories from Friends For All Children, newscasts, files, books, and reports from the military and USAID, correspondence and images as President Ford greeted the children upon arrival at the Presidio, picture boards from the FFAC, artifacts from the adoptees and the opportunity to learn and share our own stories.

 

It is the story of Operation Babylift // New Perspectives.  It takes facts and reveals multiple possibilities. It takes the captions and expands the story. The names on the lists have become real people with loved ones who miss them daily. We find stories that tell the tale of friendship and kindness, not just Hollywood war. Files stored for half a century offer me a piece of my history.  

 

This is the power of identity through archives.  

Created by what surrounds us. 

Shaped by who we are.  

 

It is as if the narrow lens through which I have viewed my life has exploded into fractals. 

The same but different. 

Every time I shift or move, it changes, but still a part of the whole.  

 

I call this The Kaleidoscope of Truth.