A JOURNEY OF HOPE IN VIETNAM.(Lifestyles/Spotlight)
A JOURNEY OF HOPE IN VIETNAM.(Lifestyles/Spotlight)
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
July 13, 2000 | Wolf, Mark
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Byline: Mark Wolf News Staff Writer
Vietnam was seared as deeply into the heart and mind of Cherie Clark as it was into the psyche of the rest of America. It was 1972 and she was married, a mother of four, a nursing student and politically active.
``I was chairman of McGovern-Shriver for Henry County, Ill., of which we proudly claimed 10 percent of the vote,'' she said of the 1972 election, which saw Richard Nixon win a landslide victory over George McGovern.
Seeking a more personal way to help, she and her husband, Tom, decided to adopt a Vietnamese child whose father was an American soldier.
``At the time, the placement of half-black American children was very important and very difficult,'' she said.
Eventually, the Clarks decided to adopt two more Vietnamese children, and Cherie flew to Vietnam in 1973 to work in hospitals and orphanages and to facilitate the adoption.
It was the beginning of a remarkable journey for Clark, who returned to Vietnam later that year with her family to help care for children in orphanages and hospitals until they were evacuated in the Operation Babylift flights, which brought 2,700 abandoned or orphaned Vietnamese babies to the United States at the end of the war, in 1975.
Today, while still a legal resident of Colorado, where the family moved after her husband was transferred here by IBM, Clark lives nearly full time in Hanoi. The agency she founded, International Mission of Hope-Vietnam, has built clinics and orphanages and facilitates adoptions of Vietnamese children.
``I have no idea why I was chosen to do this work, but I feel really blessed,'' said Clark, who was in Denver last week for a 25-year reunion of Operation Babylift in Estes Park.
The story of her early years in Vietnam and of Operation Babylift is recounted in her new book, After Sorrow Comes Joy (Lawrence and Thomas Publishing, $21.95).
She was initially evacuated to safety with her children near the end of the Vietnam War, but she returned to help others and again was airlifted from Saigon as South Vietnam collapsed.
``We went back the second time without visas,'' she said. ``We just walked off the plane and across the airport.
``They had bombed the presidential palace that day.''
When she returned to America, Clark was restless. She had stayed in touch with a woman she'd met on her return flight to Saigon, and the woman invited Clark to come to India with her.
``I met Mother Teresa and she changed my life forever. I knew I'd found something I could do with my life,'' she said.
Clark returned to India in 1977 with her eight children but without her husband.
``We spent 12 years in Calcutta, incorporated International Mission of Hope and started working with tiny premature infants. We found nursing homes filled with abandoned babies. At that time they estimated a million kids were abandoned every year. The jails in West Bengal were filled with children. They were found on street corners and put in jail for their protection,'' said Clark, who remarried in India and had two children.
She returned to Vietnam in 1988 at the behest of an old friend, Cheryl Markson, executive director of Denver-based Friends of Children of Various Nations, which facilitates domestic and international adoptions. When Vietnam began to open its doors to the world, FCVN was invited to return to offer humanitarian aid.
``One of the things I find remarkable about her is that she's not really a person who does confrontation well - except if it comes to kids, and then she seems to be able to take on the world and fight for the rights of kids,'' said Markson, executive director of FCVN. She and her husband, Denver District Court Judge Paul Markson, have 12 children, 10 adopted. ``She's tenacious about going after what she thinks should be done for kids.''
In Vietnam, Clark's group started an orphanage program. She didn't believe international adoption of Vietnamese children would ever be allowed, but she was encouraged by the Vietnamese government to find homes for handicapped children.
``The first one in 1989 came to Colorado,'' Clark said. ``She was a little girl with a very severe heart problem.''
Her funding - about $1 million a year - comes from donations.
``A lot of people who'd adopted children from Vietnam support us,'' she said. ``We managed to collect a healthy amount of churches who send us money. Without donations from the churches, we couldn't survive next week.''
In 1990 Clark's group built a clinic in My Lai, site of the 1968 massacre of civilians by U.S. troops. The U.S. government delayed but eventually authorized sending medical equipment and supplies to the clinic.
``Some people saw it as an embarrassment; I saw it as a way of healing. It seemed like a good way to make a statement that America had come back,'' Clark said. ``We continue to give them $500 to $1,000 a month to pay for the doctors and nurses, and we're hoping the community will eventually take over and run it.''
She said her organization has built more than a dozen clinics, orphanages and other facilities in Vietnam, is involved in feeding and caring for children and elderly people, helps with disaster relief and reforestation, and facilitates the adoption of 200 to 250 children every year. Five of Clark's children have joined her group in Vietnam, which has offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon). One of her daughters recently graduated from the United Nations School in Hanoi and will attend the University of Colorado in the fall.
Normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam ``has made our life easier,'' she said. ``Suddenly we have an embassy, an ambassador, and we don't have to go through the (U.S.) Treasury Department to do anything. We're very blessed to have a kind, compassionate ambassador in Pete Peterson, who was a POW for several years during the war.
``There's no way of explaining my love for Vietnam and its people. The longer I live there, the more I feel out of place here. I'm very much at home there. I always said, even back in the '70s, that I would live and work and die in Vietnam.''
INFOBOX
Cherie Clark
Age: 55
Education: Nursing degree from Black Hawk College, Moline, Ill.
Occupation: Executive director, International Mission of Hope
Family: Divorced; 10 children, four of them adopted; nine grandchildren.
Challenges of living in Vietnam: ``Food is always a problem there. For me the joy of coming back to Colorado is being in control. If I need a quart of milk, I can hop in the car and run down to the grocery store. Over there we don't have a steady electricity supply, which affects the water supply. It can get really, really hot and humid. McDonald's isn't there, but we do have KFC.''
On being a Broncos fan in Vietnam: ``We got up in the middle of the night, rented hotel rooms and watched the Broncos win their two Super Bowls. Half of Hanoi was rooting for the Broncos by the time we were done.''
Looking back at the war: ``I went into Vietnam very much a liberal and came out on one of the final airlifts feeling like we'd let the country down and deserted it. Life has taught me to mellow out. I don't think the people in charge knew a whole lot more than I did. I don't think it was malicious intent, that Nixon got some kind of charge out of hurting those people. I think he was doing what he thought had to be done.''
CAPTION(S):
Color Photo (2), Photo (2)
Book Cover / AFTER SORROW COMES JOY. Cherie Clark tells the story of her early years in Vietnam and of Operation Babylift in her new book, ``After Sorrow Comes Joy.''.
CAPTION: Clark is pictured at the 1990 dedication of a rural health care facility at the site of the massacre at My Lai. From book, ``After Sorrow Comes Joy''.
CAPTION: Cherie Clark and Mother Teresa meet in Calcutta, India, in 1975. ``She changed my life forever,'' Clark says. From book, ``After Sorrow Comes Joy''.
CAPTION: Clark talks with a survivor of the My Lai massacre. From book, ``After Sorrow Comes Joy''.
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