Works in Progress

“My earliest memory of my mom is when I was about 5 years old. I was hiding under the kitchen table when an enemy North Vietnamese soldier came into our house and shot my mom.”

A soft gasp filled the church as Cathy continued on about her early life in Vietnam. She told how she was born Tran Thi Kim, on April 9, 1969. The Vietnam War was already raging, however she doesn’t remember feeling fear until the day her mom was killed. Cathy made it clear that, although she has a few of her own childhood memories, most of her knowledge comes from the people she grew up with, including the foster and adoptive parents, medical professionals, and older children she had contact with.

An American soldier had found her and another little girl, believed to be a relative, under the kitchen table. They were taken to an orphanage and became part of Operation Babylift. The girls made their way from Saigon to New York, for adoption. There are memories of sitting on the plane, with open boxes lined up in the middle seats, reserved for the babies. The adoptive families were waiting in New York. Although they didn’t end up with their original adoptive family, the girls went together to a family that included parents and their two biological children, a boy and a girl. It sounds like her story could end here, with a happily ever after, but it doesn’t.

As a part of the congregation that day, while Catherine Smith was sharing her testimony of how she went from living in a house on stilts, by a rice paddy, to a bustling town in the Northeast Corner of Ct, I knew that I had to find out the whole story and share it, as an inspiration to others.