Uncommon courage in wartime

A love of humanitarian work re-awakened
Betty Tisdale was a grandmother now, surrounded by the children of the children she adopted, and by the memories piled deep in this old house in Seattle.

The end of the war, the babylift of Vietnam orphans, and her own part in it had been the most dramatic moment of her life—but then there was her own family to raise.

The memories were stored away in basement boxes and that part of her life was over.

And then Vikki came along.

Meeting with Vikki had stirred something familiar in betty.  Which had, truth be told, been bothering her for years....

Tisdale: I just feel empty if I don’t do something.

But what?

Sure, war or no war, she knew that there were still thousands of orphans in Vietnam. They needed somebody’s help.

And yet, here she was, a grandmother. Alone. No powerful boss or friends to lean on anymore.

But when she poked around in those old pictures of hers, the sentiment soon became resolve to know more..

Which then became full-out research, which forced her to learn the Internet, where, she decided, she could set up a Web site which would be at least a start.

She called it HALO—“Helping and Loving Orphans,”  a foundation of sorts. 

And that’s when she discovered she had not lost her talent for raising money or for begging—for supplies, and cash, and other people’s unused airline miles.

Tisdale: I’m a good one at asking for donations.

And with practically no idea of what she could or couldn’t accomplish, off she went, back to Vietnam.

We caught up with Betty, not an easy thing to do, more than 7,000 miles from the home to which she had once retired in Seattle.

Back in Vietnam
Vietnam is a very different country now, than the one Betty left in such a hurry in 1975. In many ways, an ultra-modern place now, and of course, communist too. And Betty had such ties to the repudiated past. Would an American grandmother be welcome here?

It didn’t take long to find out: The kids there greeted her there smiling.

A generation after the war, Vietnam, for all its rapid development, still has more than its share of orphans. They were happy, Betty discovered, to accept the help she offered.

Here, in a place called Quang Ngai, she turned over about $15,000 dollars in donations. The locals used it to build a brand new nursery.

It’s her first visit since the nursery was completed. She inspects each room carefully, making sure the babies’ needs will be met.

Betty stocks the nursery with items she has brought with her from the U.S.: vitamins, baby wipes, even handmade quilts. All the products are donated or paid for with money she raised at HALO.

From people back home who, she discovered, also wanted to do something.

Tisdale: I had 25 boxes in my living room and then Fed-ex called and said, did I have the forms filled out? I said “No, I can’t do this.” They sent three ladies from the Fedex office in Seattle and they spent two hours counting and listing everything that was in those boxes. And then the big truck came.

Morrison: All for free?

Tisdale: All for free, they just did it.

Morrison: How is it you’re able to get all these things for free, what do you do anyway?

Tisdale: I’m a great beggar, I think.

At the local market, Betty picks up items the orphanage hasn’t been able to afford. She is stretching every dollar to fill a seemingly endless need.

Morrison: Feel overwhelmed by all these things?

Tisdale: At first, yes, you become overwhelmed because there’s so much to be done.

Betty’s determination takes her to the heart of the roaring, crowded city that is Ho Chi Minh, once Saigon, to one of the biggest and oldest orphanages. There, in crib after crib, are cleft palates, crooked bones, hearing and vision impairments, heart defects, and HIV.

Morrison: How many babies do you have here at any one time?

Doctor: At this time we have 174.

Morrison: Wow.

Doctor: But it’s low, now. The time before, we had more than 200.

They are, says the medical director, life’s least likely to succeed.

Morrison: A lot of them are here because they have some problem.

Doctor: Yes, most of them are abandoned because they are handicapped.

Betty has arranged for a visit by a team of reconstructive surgeons. The doctors, from an American group called “Face the Challenge”  volunteer their services, working all day and into the night to give the children a chance at a normal life.

And Betty waits through every operation.

Morrison: What is the connection that you have?

Tisdale: It might go back to the fact that I was almost an orphan, I was raised by an aunt and uncle. There is something about children that I just can’t stay away from.

There is nothing left now of an Lac, the orphanage she supported during the war, home to so many children.

While some went to America, others grew up in Vietnam, like Xinm, now a mother of two, with her own stall in a bustling marketplace.

Each year now, Betty returns to meet the Lac orphans who stayed behind.

Tisdale:  In order to let me know that they haven’t forgotten me, they start singing.  And they sing “Jingle Bells.” It’s in the middle of August, you know. They’re singing “Jingle Bells.”

Morrison: And now they’re grown up.

Tisdale: And now they’re grown up.

Morrison: And they still do it.

Tisdale: and they still do it, for me. And that’s beautiful.

Remarkable, what one grandmother can do.

Except, that isn’t the whole story. Betty Tisdale is now supporting orphanages in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico.

She is jetting back and forth among them with air miles begged from a growing list of contributors.

And then she comes home and talks to kids who have, in comparison, simply everything.

Once she was a young secretary, and it didn’t make much sense to go running off to Vietnam, to tilt at windmills.

And now a generation later it’s as impossible as ever. Which is, one begins to suspect, the whole point.

Morrison: What would your life be like if you didn’t have this?

Tisdale: I can’t picture it, I can’t picture not doing this. This is me.

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