My Nonprofit Reviews

In 1974 we adopted twin boys from Korea through the Pearl S. Buck agency, Welcome House. We thought our family was complete, but not so. Soon, just one year later, a traumatic event happened that again changed our lives.The event was the sudden, chaotic end of the Vietnam War. Armed, victorious Viet Kong soldiers were rapidly approaching Saigon’s airport.

Pearl S. Buck International had a Welcome House orphanage in Saigon in partnership with a local Saigon organization. The orphanage was directed by Welcome House staffers Victor & Malini Srinivasan with local Vietnamese help. Welcome House informed the U.S. Embassy in Saigon about the orphanage ,and the Embassy alerted Victor to be prepared for an emergency evacuation in the next 48 hours because Viet Kong soldiers were getting close.

The next morning, April 28, 1975, with gunfire all around them, several Marines went to that orphanage They loaded 67 orphans, Viktor and Malini, and all the relevant qualification paperwork into trucks and raced back to the airport. The situation there had become desperate. There were three airplanes ready to take off, one directly behind the other. The Marines crammed the Welcome House group into the second plane - a C-130 cargo plane carrying heavy military equipment. No seats. No toilets. The group sat or lay on the metal floor of that plane. There was no Air Traffic Control either - everyone for themself. Meanwhile, the Viet Kong soldiers with their weapons had reached the airport. The first plane then raced down the runway and took off. They were unlucky. As they gained altitude, the Viet Kong soldiers shot heat-seeking missiles at the plane. One missile hit the jet’s engine. The plane exploded and crashed. Tragically, all 154 on board died, including 64 children.The C-130 cargo plane with the Welcome House orphans group, full of fear and panic, then took off at almost an 80-degree angle. They were lucky. The Marines had found heat flares which they shot into the air near the plane. These intensely hot flares attracted the heat-seeking missiles which basically were diverted into the plain air. So the plane was safe. It headed to Clark Airbase in Manila, then (after fueling) continued on to Anchorage, Alaska - its destination.

The people at the Pearl S. Buck HQ in Perkasie, PA, anxious to learn the fate of their Welcome House orphan group, finally got word that the cargo airplane had successfully taken off. However, they had no idea how many orphans were actually on it, what their medical condition was, etc. Also, they had the challenging task of figuring how to get the orphans from Anchorage to Philadelphia, and how to assemble a group in Philadelphia of Welcome House nurses, social workers, and volunteers to organize, treat, and take care of the orphans once they arrived. By now the national TV news channels were giving non-stop coverage of the story of these orphans and their gripping saga, identifying Pearl Buck/Welcome House as the orphanage and Perkasie as its HQ location. Pearl Buck started receiving numerous phone calls in Perkasie from people throughout the country who expressed a desire to adopt one of the orphans on the plane, asking how they should proceed. But the Welcome House team in Perkasie did not know these people. The clock was ticking. So they immediately began calling families who had already adopted a child through Welcome House, and where that prior Welcome House adoption was working well. Donna was home and answered the surprising call from Welcome House (John was in a Procter & Gamble meeting in Cincinnati). A caseworker explained the chaotic situation to Donna, stressing that they needed a decision from us within 24 hours on whether we would take one of the orphans. Donna called P&G, and John took the next plane from Cincinnati to NYC. When John got home, we quickly made the decision to adopt one of the orphans. Donna called Welcome House, said yes, and also expressed our desire (if possible) to have our new child be young and be a girl.

When the cargo plane arrived in Anchorage, two things happened. First, the orphan contingent was “inventoried” and individually matched with the paperwork by people recruited by Welcome House. The Welcome House people back in Perkasie then began assigning orphans with the adopting parents. Soon, Welcome House called us in Wilton and said – great news! - they had matched us with the youngest person on the plane – a beautiful 3-month old girl named Nguyen Thi Kim Anh.

The second wonderful thing that happened was that Welcome House contacted the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, who agreed to raise $200,000 from its members to lease an Alaskan Airlines 727 plane to bring the orphan group to Philadelphia. Welcome House met the flight on May 4, and brought them to Media, PA where a large private home owned bya former Welcome House adoptive parent had been organized by Welcome House to serve the needs of all 67 orphans. Furniture had been removed to accommodate all the cots, cribs, bassinets, diapers, medical stations, etc. that were needed. Waiting doctors and nurses checked out each orphan. Donations of food and clothing were handed out by Welcome House volunteers.

We adoptive parents had been told by Welcome House that we could pick up our child at the Media home the next day. Remarkably, Welcome House had found places for all 67 children at the homes of families who had previously adopted a child through Welcome House. Donna and John arrived in Media on May 5, and it was quite a scene. Welcome House volunteers were playing with the children, helping to keep them entertained and in some cases helping them deal with the trauma they had just gone through. Many were suffering from malnutrition. Some were sleeping (jet lag) or watching the first TV program they had ever seen. Doctors and nurses were tending to the sicker children. Two Vietnamese translators recruited by Welcome House were relaying questions or requests from the children to the volunteers. A couple of newspaper photographers were taking pictures. Volunteers were handing out snacks, fruit, and baby formulas in the kitchen. Some children were playing with dolls which had been donated. And adoptive parents were arriving to pick up their child. A processing station had been set up in the dining room to handle the necessary paperwork and to escort the parents to meet their child. The entire scene was seamlessly organized by Welcome House. While walking to the processing station, Donna and John noticed a woman on a cot gently and lovingly rocking an infant in a cradle. Lo and behold, a few minutes later a Welcome House administrator introduced us to that woman and then pointed to the child in the cradle and said, “Here is your daughter, Nguyen Thi Kim Anh!” Wow! After completing the necessary paperwork, we drove immediately to Wilton CT where our pediatrician was waiting to give our daughter (now named Karen Anh) a medical exam, prescribing anti-biotics to treat her broken eardrums and malnutrition. Then we went home. Our family was complete! However, little did we know the surprising, despiriting development that lay ahead of us. It began when we applied for an I-600 “preferential visa” on September 24,1975 to make Karen a permanent member of our family. We followed the same petition procedure we had successfully done for Alex and Jason, enclosing all the required forms and using the same attorney to handle the legal paperwork in the Doylestown court. Then came the surprise. Unexpectedly, on May 13, 1976 the Immigration & Naturalization Service (part of the U.S. Department of Justice) informed us, in a letter, that our petition was denied. They explained to us us that Section 204c of the federal Immigration & Nationalization Act stipulates that no more than two such petitions (to make a foreign person a permanent member of a family) may be approved per family, and we had used up our two petition approvals already for Alex and Jason. No one had ever told about this restrictive federal law. We were devastated. On May 26, 1976 we appealed this decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, enclosing a new set of forms and also a written Brief consisting of our humanitarian rationale and supported by wonderful letters from some of our friends, John’s employer, and Welcome House. However, the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected our appeal, stating the same Section 204c rationale. We then exercised our right to make a final appeal to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California, where all cases involving Vietnamese orphans were being aggregated. After some time, we received their decision that they too rejected our appeal, citing the same 204c rationale. We were out of options, facing the prospect of having only temporary custody of Karen. But then a miracle happened. We met our local CT Congressman Ron Sarasin, who together with our Ct Senator Lowell Weike sponsored legislation through their Judiciary Committees that exempted us from Section 204c. We quickly got that coveted "preferential visa" for Karen. Our family was complete!

Pearl Buck had the vision of helping desperate orphans receive help. Her powerful legacy, Welcome House, changed our lives and the lives of over 7,000 Asian orphans and their adoptive families forever. We, the Ferries family will always be grateful. Current Pearl S. Buck International humanitarian programs in Asia and Africa continue that amazing legacy.

Donna & John Ferries
10/1/22