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This month marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
In April 1975, President Gerald Ford authorized Operation Babylift, where thousands of Vietnamese children were hurriedly flown out of the country to be adopted in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.
Some of those planes stopped in Hawaii for refueling. It was there a Nebraska woman volunteered, along with hundreds of others, to meet the planes and help take care of the babies.
Gwen Phalen grew up Gwen Poyser on a farm near Orleans in south-central Nebraska. She and her husband, Tom, an Air Force captain, were stationed with their two daughters near Honolulu for four years. She was there when planes carrying Vietnamese children touched down at Hickam Air Force Base.
On the morning of April 8, 1975, after spending hours helping with babies, Gwen recounted her experience in an audio recording that she sent to her grandmother in Orleans.
She said there were about 300 military wives and about 100 doctors and nurses who boarded military buses at 10 p.m. the previous night to meet a planeload of orphans arriving at midnight from Saigon. On that plane were 191 babies under the age of 1, 100 children older than 1, and 70 adult sponsors on a DC-10 airplane.
When Gwen walked onto the plane, she said it was overwhelming.
“There were all of these hundreds of tiny little bodies strapped into the seats," she said on an audio recording. "They had cardboard boxes lying on the seats and the seatbelts coming up through the cardboard boxes and the babies were strapped in.”
Gwen, who passed away in 2021, described the boy that she took care of as about 4 months old, but the size of a newborn baby.
“He was very tiny, quite dehydrated and listless," she said. "I got him to drink a bottle of glucose and water and then he slept.”
Gwen recalled that he was sleeping so soundly she had a hard time waking him for the doctor to examine him. That doctor considered putting him in the hospital but decided to let him leave with a tag that said he was dehydrated, so Gwen put him back on the plane.
Gwen’s daughter, Susan Phalen, found Gwen’s audio recording in a box in her parents' basement several years ago. (Listen to the full recording above) She said that her mom talked often about Operation Babylift, but it was especially poignant to hear her then 27-year-old mom’s voice telling her grandmother about it. They were able to listen to the recording together before Gwen passed away.
“She sounds exhausted," Susan said. "She had worked until the wee hours of the morning and then came home to get us off to school...but talking in-depth almost like a reporter with what she had done helping those children.”
Susan said they have just one picture of her mom while she was volunteering. She’s holding the baby boy she described to her grandmother. Gwen always wondered what became of him. While her mom was still living, Susan posted that photo on a Facebook page for Operation Babylift. Two years ago, after her mom had passed away, she saw a photo that a man named Hung Ly had posted of himself as a baby on the day he arrived in the United States. Susan thought it looked strikingly familiar.
“I put the pictures next to each other on my phone and kept switching back and forth, and I thought it might be the same baby," she said.
Susan messaged him to ask about the date and location of his arrival, and it lined up with the plane that had been at Hickam Airforce Base the day her mom was there.
“And I sent him a message and the picture of my mom holding a baby and I said, 'I think this might be you based on the picture you posted of your adoptive mom holding you. What do you think?'" she said.
Ly replied that he thought it looked like him, but he would ask his mom. The answer came immediately.
"Yes, that’s you.”
Susan said being in touch with Ly was like being in touch with a long-lost brother.
“My mom had passed away and it was almost like this reach from the cosmos coming into my heart and saying yes, this is the kid," she said.
Susan, her dad and sister met Ly in Washington D.C. Ly had been adopted by a family in Minnesota and now lives in Florida. He was as eager to meet the Phalens as they were to meet him. They took him to Arlington National Cemetery where Gwen is buried, and he played his Native American flute to honor the woman who fed him, held him and worried about him since their chance meeting on April 8, 1975.
