MY WORLD HISTORY - Page9
The Baby Lift - Ford
Larsen
Looking Back - Joe
Dantonio Maintence & Engineering Manager
The Baby Lift - Ford
Larsen
I have been asked to offer a
perspective on the 1975 Orphan Airlift from the Oakland
Station point of view. The “Home Station” for
any air carrier is an anomaly. This statement was
never more true than it was of World Airways Oakland.
As conditioned as we were to the exceptional, the Airlift
flights called for all the creativity we could muster.
(Click on the pictures above to enlarge)
The pictures provided actually
come from two separate arrivals. Those with a
discerning eye, will recognize both a DC-8 and a B727.
The DC-8 arrival was the first and the more dramatic.
This was the airplane that had departed Saigon in cargo
configuration, with the first group of children and
adults. The press showed up at the hangar in
legions. Every Federal Inspection Agency ever called
out for an international arrival, attended with multiple
representatives. The military, providing logistical
support, including buses, added to the numbers on the
ramp. It is difficult to imagine in this post 9/11
environment how many people we had on the AOA (Airport
Operating Area) without badges or direct supervision.
One of the many memorable moments of that evening came when
I had to threaten the thoroughly obnoxious little news
anchor from Channel 2 with physical extraction from
the airport if he continued lighting cigarettes under the
wing of Mr. Daly’s Convair.
The break-room at Hangar 110 was
the “Media Center” where Charlotte (Daly) Behrendt (Mr.
Daly’s daughter), Company officials, and the operating crew
was interviewed. For as many as had assembled, the
exodus was quick after the children were gone.
Early the following morning, I was
called to the Executive Office and asked to make myself
available at the California National Guard Armory on the
Presidio. There was an identified need for someone who
spoke airplane. I was met at the door of the Armory by
a very senior Sergeant , who was one of two full time Guard
personnel stationed there. He asked what I needed to
set up and provided everything within the hour. What I
found was a number of separate and distinct “groups”, all
pulling is different directions. There were the
society matrons, who were looking for their picture in the
paper. There were the flower children, from Haight and
Ashbury, (who became our 1975 equivalent of Nextel) eager to
help wherever they could. They were the message
runners, and an essential communications link. There
were the wonderful, compassionate, caring medical people
from Letterman Hospital. And, there was Charlotte and
her husband, Mel Behrendt, who were to stay on site
continuously for the next many days, providing assistance
wherever required. I set up a dispatch function with
the names of the participating airlines, TIA, PAA, AA, NW,
and others as well as the military movements heading for us,
and updated all information continuously. Inbound
flight number, air carrier, number of children, number of
adults, any known special requirements; all became essential
information. Laps were a commodity. When you
sent buses to the airport, you needed a specified number of
laps. Many of the orphans were babies or so
underdeveloped that you must have a lap to hold them for
their bus trip. By late afternoon of the first day,
many egos had been bruised. A couple, known to the
society people, walked in, evaluated the goings on and then
the lady took charge. She had just come from a
speaking engagement and quickly passed out assignments,
sending some home for rest, posting others to duty through
the night. She and her husband then left to return the
following morning.
Her name was Dorothy DeBolt and
with her husband, Bob, established a whole new order for the
second day and every day there after at the Armory.
Dorothy and Bob DeBolt founded ASK, which was Aid for
Special Kids. Between them, they had six children of
their own. They adopted a large number of
multinational children, all with physical
disabilities. The DeBolts contribution to the Presidio
event was great.
I spent the next two and a half
weeks at the Presidio, sleeping on a mattress on the floor,
just like our little visitors. When I didn’t have a
pending flight arrival, I fed, bathed, walked, rocked, and
hugged the little people. I was carrying one
particularly distressed little person around in the hopes
that my attention would relieve his anxieties. He was
very small and I could comfortably cradle him in my
forearm. I asked a doctor the age of the boy.
The doctor looked at the wrist band and replied “Two years
old”. I thought of my own sons who where close to the
same size when I first brought them home from the
hospital. The Presidio event was an emotional
experience then, as is the retelling of the story 30 years
later. The cooperation among the volunteers and the
medical professionals was outstanding.
Larry Soletti was to relieve me
and by this time I was so involved, the last thing I wanted
was to leave. As I was saying my goodbyes, the head of
triage announced a total quarantine. He had identified
indications of multiple contagious diseases. I went
back to my tasks. After some time had passed, the
doctor found me and said “Adios”. He had isolated the
conditions to one little person and was comfortable that the
condition had not wide spread. He did advise that upon
my return to my home, I was to enter through the garage and
bag all the clothing I had with me for cleaning by a
commercial laundry. I was then to bath in the hottest
water possible before touching any of my family. So it
was done.
The 727 arrival was emotional in a
different way. Polio still ran rampant in Viet
Nam. No one there had ever heard of Jonas Salk or his
vaccine. The result was some terribly disfigured
children that found refuge in an orphanage run by an
American Priest by the name of Father Crawford. As the
infrastructure of Viet Nam collapsed, Father Crawford sought
alternative arrangements for his charges. An orphanage
in Oregon was closed and standing idle. Father
Crawford and his entire flock, including the children, the
Nuns, and other personnel were flown to Oakland by World
Airways and transported to Oregon by bus. Many
of these children were old enough to be suspicious of
everyone in the strange environment they were
entering. I was particularly impressed by the Mother
Superior, who with exceptional dignity and warmth, dealt
with everyone’s apprehensions. On arrival, one of the
flight attendants felt compelled to converse with Mother
Superior in academic French. Mother Superior was
trying to console the children in Vietnamese and speaking to
me in perfect English. Needless to say, French was
soon eliminated from the communications circle.
The Father Crawford flight
involvement spanned a comparatively few hours, but also left
a permanent memory of how fortunate I have been.
WORLD
AIRWAYS TO HOST FLIGHT TO VIETNAM, COMMEMORATING
30TH ANNIVERSARY OF 'OPERATION BABYLIFT”
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April 1, 2005
“Operation
Babylift – Homeward Bound” to Return
Former Orphans For Visit to Their
Homeland in June PEACHTREE CITY, Ga.
– World Airways is commemorating its
historic “Operation Babylift”
airlift of 57 Vietnamese orphans
from Saigon 30 years ago with a
special flight that will return 20
former orphans for a visit to their
homeland. The commemorative flight,
“Operation Babylift – Homeward
Bound,” will depart from Atlanta on
June 12, 2005, stopping at the
company’s former headquarters city,
Oakland, Calif., before heading on
for a two-day visit in Ho Chi Minh
City. The guests will tour the city
and will be honored at a special
banquet in the Unification Palace.
“The historic World Airways flight
from Tan Son Nhut Air Base on April
2, 1975, epitomized the courage and
determination of the company’s
employees and its leadership,” said
Randy Martinez, World’s president
and chief executive officer.
“Despite the obstacles, World pilots
Ken Healy and Bill Keating followed
the orders of Ed Daly, the company’s
dynamic president at that time, and
lifted off the unlit runway late at
night in a DC-8 cargo aircraft,
carrying those 57 children over the
Pacific Ocean to new lives in
America.”
That flight
to California led to an even larger
Operation Babylift effort by the
U.S. government throughout the month
of April 1975, rescuing
approximately 4,000 children. World
Airways contacted 20 of those
children, now adults, who were
adopted by U.S. families 30 years
ago, and invited them for this
special trip aboard one of World’s
modern MD-11 wide-body passenger
aircraft, specially painted with the
company’s former red and white
design and logo from 1975. Some of
the invited adoptees were on that
historic World flight April 2, or
were on one of two additional
voluntary flights World operated
that month. “Thirty years ago, World
Airways opened a door that led me to
a new life in the United States,”
said Jeff Thanh Gahr, one of the
young passengers on that daring
flight April 2. Gahr is now an
engineer for The Boeing Company, and
will be one of the participants in
Operation Babylift – Homeward Bound.
Martinez and several invited guests
will travel with the group on the
flight. Healy, Keating, other
members of the original crew and
several ground support employees who
participated in Operation Babylift
also have been invited on the
special flight. They will be joined
by Ross Meador, who placed the 57
children on the 1975 flight from an
orphanage he managed for Friends of
the Children of Vietnam (FCVN), and
Shirley Peck-Barnes, author of “The
War Cradle” who has kept in touch
with many of the adopted children
and their families over the past 30
years. “Many of the 20 former
orphans have never had the
opportunity to return to Vietnam and
see their homeland,” Martinez said.
“We expect this to be a very
emotional and fulfilling voyage for
the adoptees, their family members
and our own employees. That dramatic
effort epitomized the humanitarian
culture World Airways has continued
to foster over the years.” World
Airways, a wholly owned subsidiary
of World Air Holdings, Inc.
(NASDAQ:WLDA), is a
U.S.-certificated air carrier
providing customized transportation
services for major international
cargo and passenger carriers, the
United States military, and
international leisure tour
operators. Founded in 1948, World
operates a fleet of 16 wide-body
aircraft to meet the specialized
needs of its customers. For
information, visit
www.worldairways.com.
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'Operation
Babylift' orphan to return to Vietnam
------------------------------------------------
Georgia
woman says she's on a journey to find her 'beginning'
By ERRIN
HAINES
Associated
Press
ALPHARETTA,
GA.
- Tanya Bakal has spent much of her life running from Nguyen
Thu Kim Phung. Three decades ago, she left that name in
Vietnam, along with her biological mother and her culture,
when she was airlifted out as part of the wartime "Operation
Babylift." Next month, she hopes to find them all.
Bakal's
search will take her more than 9,200 miles away to Saigon,
now renamed Ho Chi Minh City, with 19 other orphans from the
first wave of the effort that eventually brought more than
3,000 Vietnamese children to the United States. They don't
speak the language, many of their names have changed and
some — including Bakal — don't even know their real
birthdays. "Everyone has a beginning," said Bakal, who
believes she is 31. "I want to find mine."As a toddler,
Bakal was among the 57 children — mostly babies, all
orphaned or given up by their parents — on the April 2,
1975, flight made by Ed Daly, former president of World
Airways. The plane took off from a pitch-black runway, and
its lights were kept off in the air to keep the Vietnamese
military from shooting it down.
A plea to
save kids
News of
the flight traveled quickly, and the next day, President
Ford was deluged with telephone calls to do something to
save the children of Vietnam. The government brought
thousands more children out of Vietnam as Saigon was falling
that April. Shirley Peck-Barnes, author of The War Cradle,
which documents the legacy of Operation Babylift, calls it
the greatest humanitarian gesture of the last century. "This
is the one thing about the Vietnam War that made Americans
feel relief," she said. "They were saving children." The
Vietnam flight next month was arranged by Atlanta-based
World Airways for 20 of the orphans on the first flight.
Bakal almost didn't make that trip. She had been set to
board a C5-A cargo plane that crashed a few days later,
killing almost half the 330 adults and children on board.
Instead, she was among those hastily boarded on the World
Airways flight. Until recently, Vietnam was just a
birthplace for Bakal, her journey out of Saigon simply a
footnote in her life, not a defining moment.
Feeling
different
She was
adopted by a white couple, Reed and Laura Dilbeck, a flight
engineer and a hypnotherapist, and grew up in the then
mostly white Atlanta suburb of Marietta trying to blend in,
wanting a face to match her Southern twang. As a teenage
cashier working at a grocery store, she was called a "gook"
by a war veteran. She spent years wishing her eyes were
wider, rounder, more Caucasian. "All my life, I never wanted
to find them," she said, referring to her Chinese mother,
who lived in Vietnam, and father, whom she believes was an
American soldier. It was a feeling shared by many of the
Vietnamese adoptees growing up, said Peck-Barnes. "A lot of
the kids still feel a great loss of their culture. Many have
Americanized and don't want to go back," she said. Vietnam
War adoptee Wendy Greene, who will be on the flight with
Bakal next month, has been to Vietnam before and is making
the trip with her adopted mother, Cheryl. She says she's not
searching for her biological roots. "I never really needed
to go down that road," said Greene, 30. "I want to thank all
the heroes that got us over here. That's what's most
important to me. We really are all miracle babies."
Searching
for her roots
Long
before talk of a return to Vietnam, Bakal, now a mother of
three, began searching for information about her birth
mother. She has collected mementos from her past: her
original passport from Vietnam, the picture of her as a
smiling baby, newspaper clippings recounting her story. For
weeks, she has run an ad in a Vietnamese newspaper with her
baby picture, hoping her biological mother would recognize
it and come forward. Bakal is hopeful that her return will
also mean a reunion, or at least answers to questions she is
now ready to ask. "I took this for granted when I was
growing up, but now I really feel ike I'm a part of
history," she said. "It would be so neat to be out there and
actually meet my mother."
Brought to
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Looking Back - Joe Dantonio Maintence &
Engineering Manager
Milly & Joe Dantonio
Looking back, I started working for Ed Daly in July 1959 when
Ed Daly hired me to consult & rep his first C-54/DC-4
(79A) , first time Overhaul at the Oakland Airport's
Lockheed Hangar 4#
I had the pleasure of meeting Ed Daly at Cal Eastern Airways
(1955), while a Inspection Supervisor of Inspection in
charge of 79A Aircraft Re-Certification (DC-4 Santa Monica
Report) aircraft was guted, we had to rewire,strip and reseal
the fuel tanks, and accomplish all the FAA Requirements, and it
took spent several months to complete. This aircraft had the
responsibility of Bob Truitt, (Ed Daly's brother-in law as
a A & P Mechanic) to assemble, jury rig
and prepare a FAA Ferry Permit from England to Oakland.
Before Bob Truitt Passed away couple years ago, he told me
what he had to do and accomplish to get that
aircraft to Oakland.
This aircraft 79A and another DC-4, 26V purchased from Trans
Ocean Airlines, departed to fly the Inter-island Operation for
couple years and then came back to Oakland's Lockheed Aircraft
Facility to be Overhauled
THIS WAS WORLD AIRWAYS DC-4'S, FAA'S PART
42 FIRST COMMERCIAL OPERATION, IN THE PACIFIC.
WHAT REALLY STARTED WORLD AIRWAYS IN FEBRUARY 1960 WAS
WHEN ED DALY CALLED ME UP AT THREE IN THE MORNING TO HEAD
FOR AMERICAN AIRLINES IN TULSA TO PICK UP TWO DC-6'S (N781 &
N782) & BRING THEM TO NEWARK, N.J. TO FIND SOMEONE TO
CONVERT THE DC-6A TO A/B'S .
AFTER IT WAS DETRMINED THAT FLIGHT ENTERPRISE'S IN CONN. WAS DO
TO THE FIRST TWO DC-6'S.
GEORGE MERRIL AND I DEPARTED FOR OAKLAND TO GET A
FAA DC-6A/B OPERATING CERTIFICATE
WHICH WAS ACCOMPLISHED IN RECORD TIME .
WITH OUR NEW FAA OPERATING CERTIFICATE IN MARCH 1960.
AFTER THESE FIRST TWO DC6 A/B'S CAME SEVERAL, DC-6A/B'S,
THEN CLOSED DOWN THE DC-4'S, THEN THE DC-6'S TOOK OVER THE
LOGAIRE, AND THE NIKE RUN
WE THEN PICKED UP 1049H CONNIE'S FROM TWA (FORMELY CEA,
31C,32C,33C & RESORT'S 101R), ONE OF THE CONNIE'S ON THE
NIKE RUN
THEN TO HAMBURG FOR FOUR 1649 CONNIES., TWO WERE CONVERTIBLES
AND TWO WERE NOT. AND AFTER WE RECEIVED THE 707'S, ALL RECIPS
WERE REMOVED.
THEN CAME NEW AIRCRAFT, NINE BACO 707-373C, AND SIX BACO
727-173C FOR THE FAR EAST OPERATION, INCLUDING MIDDLE EAST.
THEN WE RECEIVED AND OPERATED FOUR DC-8-63B'S SOME FOR R/R'S AND
THE CAMBODIA AND FAR EAST OPERATION.
THEN CAME THE NINE DC-10 CF AIRCRAFT STARTING A SCHEDULED
OPERATION
THEN TWO BACO 747 CF NOSE LOADERS, ONE LEASED TO KAL THE OTHER
TO PAN AM FOR FIVE YEARS, THEN OH'D AT OAKLAND AND WOA
OPERATED.THAT 747 (MUCH ENGINE PROBLEMS)
WOA THEN PURCHASED A USED B-747 WITH SIDE LOADING.
WOA GAVE US AN OPTION TO RETIRE IN OCTOBER 31, 1985, WHICH I
TOOK FOR PERSONAL REASONS. (WORLD AIRWAYS INTERNAL PROBLEMS, THE
TAKE OVER, INCOMING BAD PEOPLE OR THE DALY PEOPLE,
ME, I WAS DALY PEOPLE.)
GATX APPROACHED ME AFTER RETIRING AS A RESULT OF MY QUALITY
CONTROL BACK GROUND FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS., HAD TO RETIRE DUE
TO A BYPASS.
STRANGELY, AS A GATX REPRESENTATIVE, I MADE THE TRANSFER TO
WORLD'S FIRST MD-11 AT THE MOHAVE DESERT TO WARREN VEST AND
JACK BROWN ON A THREE HOUR ACCEPTANCE FLIGHT
HERE ALL THEM YEARS WITH WORLD, I WAS PRETTY MUCH RESPONSIBLE
FOR ACQUIRING AND GETTING WITH THE FAA ON ALL
THESE AIRCRAFT AND PLACING THEM ON WORLD'S OPERATING
CERTIFICATE.
BEFORE SETTLING DOWN IN OAKLAND WITH THE LONG HOURS I
INHERITED, I.E. IT TOOK ME FOUR (SOME AT HOME) YEARS TO
BUILD THE GP & P MANUAL USING TWA MANUAL AS A REFERENCE. ED
DALY GAVE ME A PNC FOR THAT.
BEGINNING OF THE NIKE OPERATION PAUL PYSTOR AND I SPENT WEEKS IN
HONULULU SETTING UP LONG HOURS TO SET UP THE NIKE
OPERATION. ALSO,
THE 1961 FRANKFURT OPERATION OUT OF McGuire AFB, I WAS
REPONSIBLE UNDER WOA SNR VP BILL BOYD TO TURN AROUND OUR
1049H CONNIES FROM NJ TO FRANFURT, AVERAGING SOMETHING CLOSE TO
17HOUR'S PER AIRCRAFT DAILY.
IN 1966, TOM RIPA AND SPENT SOME TIME IN THE FAR EAST OPERATION,
TOM STAYED, I LEFT AND CONTINUED MY GP & P MANUAL TRAINING
IN THE FAR EAST WHERE ALL MX REPS AND F/E PERSONAL WERE
LOCATED. THIS MISSION WAS THE SAME ON THE LOGAIRE
OPERATION WHERE I RECEIVED MY PERMANENT BACK INJURY IN FEBRUARY
1965 (THATS ANOTHER STORY)
DICK THIS IS PART MY STORY AND THERE IS A LOT MORE TO BE TOLD.
TODAY, MY ONLY COMPLAINT WITH WORLD AIRWAYS, I GOT BEAT OUT
OF (LIKE THOUSANDS OF HOURS) TIME OF OVERTIME PAY THAT ED
DALY PROMISED ME.
AND HAVE THE LUMPS TO PROVE IT AT MY 86 YEARS.
THIS IS MY MANUSCRIPT I HAD WITH WORLD, (ALL TRUE) I KNOW
THERE'S MUCH MORE. BUT, I THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS.
Thanks, for the opportunity to go over what I contributed
to this airline. -
Joe
To My World :-)
Rev. 3/1/2024