editors: mary long jo marcotty barb cornell Sunday mciguzine inside: page four-books page five- perspective Number 6 - Page Three October FEATUR 26, 1975 ES One Vietnamese child: Six months in the US. By BILL TURQUE AMERICA BEGAN FOR Huynh Thach Lam, age nine, on a chilly, windswept April afternoon at Detroit's Metro Airport. One of the first 14 Vietnamese orphans to be placed with Michigan families, Lam was a child of last spring's emotionally charged and bitterly condemned Operation Babylift. Thoughts of that day evoke vivid memories. There were ugly rumors about the children's health. Some charged that the entire operation was a stunt to expunge national guilt about the war. Politicans sang 'a chorus of pomnous self- congratulation for opening Ameri- ca's arms to the beleaguered and homeless - ravaged by a war they had produced. But politics evapo- rated when Lam met his American parents, Paul and Lucille McKay of Flint. Their warm and easy un- ion suggested a classically hapnv ending to a grueling, ten-thousand mile odyssey. Six months later, Lam McKay squirms restlessly at his desk in Dolly Ribner's first grade class at the Brownell Elementary school in Flint. He sits apart from the other children, in front of the classroom facing the wall. Ribner says he is too rough with the others, and can relate to them only by hitting. Lam does well in math, but she does not know if he will learn to read this year. Lam's home, in a comfortable, predominantly black working class section :of town, is secure and sup-. portive but with hints of string- ent discipline. Paul McKay's small wooden paddle rests on a counter In the kitchen as a constant re- minder of how misbehavior is dealt with. Conversations with the McKays reflect a feeling that Lam's assimilation into family life was not as smooth as they would have liked. Sibling jealously com- bined with his own unruliness made for hard times in the early weeks. HE IS A HANDSOME child. His asiatic eyes and dark com- plexion, his father says, undoubt- edly makes him the offspring of a black serviceman and a Vietna- mese woman. Unceasingly active and energetic, his jet black hair is in a perpetual state of disarray. There is a quiet, tender side to his highly physical nature, as he clutches a visitor tightly by the arm, beckoning him to come watch TV, or to look at a picture he has drawn. He was born in February, 1966 in the town of Nhat Ram, just north of Saigon. When he was sev- en, his mother brought him to a Saigon orphanage run by Holt In- ternational Children's Services, where he stayed for the next 16 months. It is a place he refers to only as "the big house", "There were some adjustments," said Paul McKay, looking back ov- er the last six months. An articu- late, powerfully built man who is a supervisor at the Buick plant in Flint, he cuts a striking, even threatening figure. Lucille McKay works fulltime also, at the town's mammoth A. C. Sparkplug fac- tory. They both described Lam as ex- tremely nervous and anxious when he first came home, getting up ey-. ery morning at six and trying to absorb all that his new surround- ings had to offer. Mrs. McKay laughed heartily when she re- counted his first experience with snow, saying that he rushed out- side, kicked off his shoes, and plunged feet first into the strange new stuff. "He wanted to see everything," said Mr. McKay, "but we didn't go out of our way to show him things. If we were going some place and we took him, fine." Lam's restlessness grew into something more serious this fall in school, where Ribner describes him as a severe behavior problem. "He was terrible, just doing ev- erything bad to get attention," said Ribner, a patient young wo- man of whom the McKays speak highly. Although he sits away from the rest of the children, he par- ticipates in all class activities, and Ribner thinks he is getting better. She said the other two school age McKay children (Paul Jr., 10, and Tamara, 6) who she also taught were similar problems, though not as severe. WHAT WORRIES RIBNER is that Ms. McKay told her "Lam was lacking in compassion, and the on- ly way he can get through to Lam is by whipping him, and that's just not true." She cringes at the thought, considering McKay's phy- sical stature. Ribner was also told that the McKays were considering not keeping Lam, and that he has been too much of a disruptive influence on Paul and Tammy. Although all the legal paperwork on the adop- tion has been completed, a spokes- man for the state Department of Social Services indicated that it is usually a full year in Michigan be- fore adoptions become official. An evening at home with the McKay's reflected little of the tur- moil Ribner spoke of, and Mrs. Mc- Kav said the family has every in- tention of keeping Lam, saying that he. "has to learn to settle down." Of the whipping, she ex- plained that Lam "gets it as much a the rest of them, but you can talk to him." AM WILL NOT say much about Vietnam. or his mother there, b'it h leaveC ouiet hints that he is indeepd a ghild of the war, having rnPnt nearly the first decade of his a in its midst. Mr. McKav said thIt when he first came home, T7,q incited on havino the door +n k"i r'onm einsed and the light on inside. McKay later learned that doorknobs in Nhat Ram were wir- ed with an electric charge. "They did it to keep the V.C. out. The V.C. used to come in there and kill people," said McKay. Lam enjoys to draw, sketching fighter bombers and helicopters in startling details, complete with weapons firing and stick figure soldiers inside. "I can draw them good," he boasts, grabbing a pad and pencil. He draws quickly and surely, as if he had done the same pictures hundreds of times before. He said he could "see the airplanes go high until I can't see them. He speaks a fragmented, halting En- glish. barely comprehensible to a newcomer, although his family understands him perfectly. Lam's health is good, McKay says. The better diet and medical care be has received here have agreed with him. But there was one problem that he brought with him from Vietnam: "When Lam first got here, he had a bad infection on the lower part of his leg. We got it fixed up, and later on when I asked him how he got it, he said somebody put a cigarette out there." VcKAY HAS HAD to answer questions at work about why he did not adopt a black-American child of Lam's age, of which there are many who need homes. He said if he did, "there's always the pos- sibility that he will want to go find his parents when he got older, which would hurt me very much." He was becoming tense with anger just thinking of it. "I would be giving up too much of myself to have some broad come up to me ten years after she gave the kid up because she didn't want to take care of him, and say that she wanted him back. There's one chance in a million Lam will go back to Vietnam. He doesn't want to go back. He doesn't have those hangups." An evening around the television set is a time for endless cajoling and wrestling for Lam, Paul Jr., Tamara, and 18-month-61d Athe- na, whom Lam delights in feeding with a bottle. It's peaceful, and amicable, but McKay says Paul Jr. hasn't been much of an older brother., "Paul's an individualist," he said. "He'll be teaching him some- thing, like basketball or football, and if Lam don't catch on quickly enough to suit Paul, he'll get dis- couraged and have nothing to do with him." It's a funny relation- ship. He won't let anybody else mess with Lam, but he'll punch. ,. Women's Programs: Fighting for legitimacy Daily Photo by KEN FINK him out himself." Paul doesn't have much to say about- his new brother, only that "he's always messin' and sayin' things about his sister. Goddam, he be laughin' all the time and be- ing like the people on TV." T AM HAS HAD a unifying effect on the McKay's over the past six months. His progress has given them a sense of shared experience that was not as strong before. Mrs. McKay has learned to prepare a couple of Vietnamese dishes which she frequently serves because Lam likes them, and also, because they are inexpensive. Lam's orphanage experience taught him to say grace before every meal, a habit he restored to the McKay's table after a long absence. "We used to be very split in our eating habits," said McKay. "I would be eating in front of the TV, the kids would be somewhere else, and that wasn't the way it should have been. McKay doesn't like the way Lam was taught at the orphanage, and he says it is hurting him in school now. "They programmed him like a computer. He can only memorize. You take the alphabet out of or- der, and he won't know it." Ribner says he has difficulty as- sociating letters with the phonetic sounds they make. This right now is his biggest detriment to learning to read. The deficiency is painfully evident as he goes through a read- ing exercise with his classmates, all mostly two or three years younger than him. He struggles with sentences like "Ben can run. Ben can run and hide. Run and hide." THE OTHER CHILDREN in the class like Lam, particularly the girls. But they are wary of his roughness, even though he is not much larger than they are. In the afternoon play period outside, few of the children will venture to the far corner' of the schoolyard to play with him. "Most of the kids want to like him," said Ribner, "but he is just too rough." Nevertheless, she feels that he is an essentially happy child, who enjoys praise, takes immense pride in the things he does well, and is not much different from any other disruptive child of his age. "His roughness has a little bit of mean streak in it, but other than that, no, there isn't much of a dif- ference." PAUL McKAY HAS a "for sale" sign in front of his house. He says that as soon as he makes a deal, which might be before Jan- uary, his family is moving to the conimtry. -Te wants room for his kirk to move around. "Yeah," said Mrs. McKay, "we're gonna raise cows and pigs, and the whole thing." Asked if he thought this would be another disruption By ELAINE FLETCHER WHEN BETTY FRIEDAN put in a. day-long appearance in Ann Arbor to talk about the feminist future and ask "Where Are We, Where Are We Going?" leaders of the movement on campus retreat- ed home with second thoughts on the subject at hand. For many, Friedan's Utopian vi- sions served only to gloss over the- future facing those women, who up to now have, been fighting a battle on two campus fronts, the classroom as well as the sports arena. For while verbal acceptance of feminist ends has begun to trickle -then flood out of every faculty chamber and athletic facility on campus, what lies under the word- age in terms of dollars and cents actually committed to women's programs? Not a whole lot, say women around campus. Although Women's Studies is being allowed to run as a full major this year, the days of tuition hikes and budget cuts have forced the staff to fight especially hard for the monetary sunport which means legitimacy and re- cognition. "And we're not com- pletely over the hump," comments Elizabeth Douvan, professor of psychology and a member of the Women's Studies steering commit- tee since the program's inception. s- - - - - - ......J-l.of-. ...1... fi nt. our greatest strengths." But now that an awareness of women's issues is hopefully as in- tegral a part of many freshwom- en's mental equipment as writing skills for term papers, Tilly sees a need to delve deeper. "Personally I'd like to get back into the re- search in disciplines. There are too many people writing without a sound basis in that. So I see my job as trying to weaves the femin- ist activist history and the re- search in disciplines together." While research efforts will prd- bably assume an important new role in Women's Studies' future, others are clamoring for the pro- gram to take a more active politi- cal role on campus, "The question is whether Women's Studies can. be in the position of a spokesper- son for women on campus. That concept is not built into the pro- gram now and though I think it can usefully act as such in some situations, the program can't be set up to do that, its main purpose is elsewhere." comments Tilly, "The whole things hinges on le- gitimacy." adds Clint McCane, the only male women's studies major in the program, "Until Robben Fleming and the Board of Regents recognize it as legit, until you can say I majored in Women's Studies and its doesn't seem like basket weaving, we're just hanging in present now no one knows what will really follow. The present short term glow could serve only to blur future hardships in the eyes of many, deflecting their energy away to other interests. Stagna- tion may follow. YET MOST feminists on campus see a different shadows of col- or in the pattern emerging. "I foresee a sort of settling out period after the sixties," says Ann Fraser a sophomore and facilitator of a Women's Studies 200 level course. JF STAGNATION WITHIN the Women's Studies program is to be avoided, any direction is prefer- able to no direction at all, some students maintain. However, in suite of monetary concerns and an increasingly large assortment of cliches that seem to be wearing thin, in the name of "Women's Lib" both researchers and activist- oriented students agree that the problems of the poor, minorities and other nationalities need fur- ther careful consideration and dili- gent analysis in class as well as in practical application. "At the Betty Friedan Cocktail Party," McCane relates "they were all there paying five bucks apiece. It was all white middle class wom- en, dressed un in their white mid- dle class neighborhood, just like a women's circle in church." As hart of Women's. Studies' cur- rent attempt to alleviate this too Daily Photo by KEN FINK Louise Tilly, Women's Studies Director stay, old and study herself enough to do it ble budget. smart enough to and important with a sizable, sta- To raise someone's consciousness is one matter, to convince that consciousness to shell out large amounts of money ,to women's sports and women's studies is quite another. In order to provide a solution to this dilemma, as well as direc- tion to the Women's Studies pro- crats. However, the question that looms large in everyone's mind is: can that transition be achieved without sacrificing the vitality of the political committment to change that has characterized the program through its earlier years? And can it do this before the wide- spread interest and acceptance of the women's movement dissipates into a vogue that is already fill- ing up with cliches and half won battles.