The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution
March 20, 1986

Earning Hai grades in gymnastics
By Thomas Torrence

Former Vietnamese orphan survives to become a champion

A profile of Paideia School sixth-grader Andrew Hai Manson, 12, born in Vietnam and adopted by Steve and Bettye Manson of Decatur, who excels in gymnastics.

Andrew Manson appears to be a typical 12 year old. He loves fast food, firecrackers and rock music, especially Madonna and Sting. He's a big fan of the ``A Team" and Mr. T., and dons dark glasses and tools around the neighborhood on his bike, pretending he's "Miami Vice" star Don Johnson.

But "typical" is not the right word to describe Andrew's talent as a gymnast or his brush-with-death background. He has won numerous state gymnastic awards, and his coach, John "Butch" Poss, believes Andrew has the potential to compete at the collegiate and, perhaps, Olympic level.

Andrew's father says "a quirk of fate" is why his son is alive today.

A powerfully built, 4-foot-11, 85-pound, sixth-grader at Atlanta's Paideia Sc hool, Andrew came to America in April, 1975, in a "babylift" of Vietnamese children from the An Lac orphanage. It was one of several babylifts orchestrated in the 1970s by Betty Tisdale, a former Columbus, Ga., woman who has since moved to Seattle, Wash.

Andrew was born in a Saigon women's hospital on June 5, 1973, and was abandoned at the hospital within two days of his birth. From the hospital, he was sent to An Lac, the orphanage founded by Dr. Tom Dooley, the late American medical missionary famed for his work in the 1950s of establishing hospitals in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Malaya.

Andrew spent nearly two years at the orphanage and was given the name Vu-Tien Hai.  He was adopted by Decatur residents Steve and Bettye Manson, who already had a natural son, Jonathan, who was 6 years old at the time. Steve, 45, a physicist at Georgia State University and his wife Bettye, 41, a law student at Georgia State, had originally decided to have only one child, but wanted to adopt a child when they heard of the poor conditions in Vietnamese orphanages. They began the tedious adoption process in the autumn of 1974, and were able to get 2-year-old Vu-Tien out just after the fall of Saigon in the spring of 1975.

Like many of the orphans air-lifted from An Lac, Vu-Tien suffered from a number of physical ailments caused by malnutrition and poor health conditions at the orphanage.  He spent his first month in the United States at the University of Southern California Medical Center, gaining enough strength to make the trip across country to Atlanta.  Steve Manson will never forget his first meeting at Hartsfield International Airport with his new son, whom he named Andrew Hai Manson.

"He looked like a drowned rat," Manson recalled. "He had pneumonia. They all had malnutrition. He had various kinds of skin disorders. He had growths on his vocal cords. They were not sure if he would ever talk. Also, due to various vitamin deficiencies, he wasn't very good at walking."

Because he had lived mostly on a diet of rice and water, Andrew did not know how to chew. His new family taught him by feeding him diced apples. In time, the disorders, which had included cirrhosis of the liver, were gone.

Andrew, who says he doesn't remember anything about his life in Viet Nam, took to American life with a vengeance - especially athletics. He was riding a bike by age 3. At 5, Andrew played organized soccer and basketball, but a lack of size proved to a detriment.  "We used to say the reason that he didn't play basketball was that he tended to get dribbled because he was the same size, color and shape of the basketball," said Steve Manson. "Another thing we noticed, when he wasn't playing soccer and the ball wasn't near him, he would be on the field trying to do cartwheels, doing handstands. Sometimes the ball was near him, unfortunately. We figured that gymnastics would be something he would like, so we brought him here and he liked it."

"Here" is Gym America, a gymnastics school housed in a cavernous gym in Tucker. The school, owned and operated by Bruce McGartlin, offers classes for nearly 500 children ranging in age from 2 1/2 to 18, and sponsors seven boys and girls competitive teams. Andrew began taking gymnastics classes at the school in the fall of 1980 at age 7. Within a year he was competing. Rising in the ranks, he was state champion in the all-around, Class IV beginners' division in 1983; moved up to all-around, Class III where he won the state championship in 1984 and 1985; and last year placed first, all-around, Class III in the Southeastern Region Gymnastics championships and the State All-Star meet. The United States Gymnastics Federation classifies divisions by age groups: Class IV (7-9), Class III (10-12), Class II (13-15) and Class I (16-18). College gymnasts compete in the Elite class.

Today Andrew competes in Class II in the all-around competition, which consists of six events - floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, long horse vaulting, parallel bars and horizontal bars. Last weekend, Andrew placed fifth all-around in the Peachbasket Invitational. Last May, Andrew placed first in the Southeastern Region Gymnastics championships, where he also won all six individual events. Because of his finish in the regionals, Andrew was invited to train at the Olympic training camp in Colorado Springs, Colo. in November.  "It was pretty good," Andrew said. "I got to meet a lot of new folks, and I got to learn some new stuff."

Andrew likes to skate, ski, and he used to swim competitively before gymnastics took up most of his time, which means three-hour sessions Monday through Thursday and one weekend day, usually Sunday.

"He's probably better now than I was in college," said his coach, Butch Poss, 27, a former gymnast at Georgia Tech. "He can't do all the skills that I could do, but he's cleaner. His technique is better than mine was. For his body size, he's stronger than I was. He's more flexible than I ever was. He's probably a a better gymnast than a lot of guys I competed with.  "If he continues to work hard, be aggressive, and dedicated, I think he'll attain a high level of gymnastic expertise. Whether he'll go to the Olympics or not is a big question mark. But looking around me at kids his age and at our region of the country, the Southeast, I think he has as good a chance, if not a better chance, of anybody his age. He enjoys being in the gym. He loves to work. He's a workaholic."

It is that same work ethic that has made Andrew a good student, particularly in math. His father says it's not unusual for Andrew to come home from gymnastics practice and stay up until midnight doing his homework.

Although Andrew doesn't boast about his accomplishments to his friends or classmates at Paideia, his father and coach say he is confident - almost to the point of being a bit cocky - about his abilities. The letters "ATG," which stand for "Andrew the Great" are stitched on his warmup suit.

"He has at least a realistic, if not overinflated image of himself, but he will not parade it publicly," said his father. "That's something he knows internally. His gymnastic friends, they know. But his friends from school and the neighborhood have no idea what he does. All they know is that he does gymnasitics and that's it."

Manson says Andrew learned the virtue of humility from his brother Jonathan, 17, a junior at Paideia, and a competitive swimmer. Jonathan won the state high school championship in the breaststroke as a sophomore.

"He does not tend to show off," said Manson. "One of the reasons is that his brother is very much against displays of immodesty. It's OK if someone else does it, but you do not do it yourself."

During a recent practice session, Manson sat in the bleachers at Gym America and watched his son laughing and horsing around.

Smiling, Manson said, "It does my heart good to look at him and see how happy he is. Look at him, out there grinning. Had he not been brought to the United States, it's very likely he would have not survived to adulthood. That's simply a fact of life. On one hand it's scary, and on the other hand it makes me feel good."

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