Ashland Daily Tidings
November 10, 2000

Savior of children goes back to work
By Myles Murphy

A quarter of a century after the fall of Saigon, a woman who saved hundreds of Vietnamese orphans in 1975 is at it again.
Betty Tisdale, the "Angel of Saigon," led an effort to airlift 219 children from An Lac orphanage in Saigon just before battles erupted in the city as North Vietnamese troops began to take control.
Tisdale, who lives in Seattle, spoke at the Mountain Meadows community center in Ashland this morning, drumming up support for her new effort, Helping And Loving Orphans (HALO).
HALO is a non-profit group raising funds to support orphans and orphanages around the world. Tisdale has had a number of speaking engagements in Southern Oregon this week.
Tisdale and a few others were successful in getting large numbers of children out of Saigon before full-scale violence erupted in what became known as the "baby lift." One of these children, taken out by Cherie Clark, a contemporary of Tisdale's, was former Ashland resident Jessica Medinger, 25.
"She was on the last plane out of Ton Son Nhut airport (in Saigon) before the rocket fire became so intense that they shut down the airport," said Ashland resident Larry Medinger, Jessica's adoptive father.
Jessica Medinger works in San Francisco as a writer today.
"I remember how small she was. I could hold her in my two hands," Larry Medinger said. "There's still a tremendous need over there."
Tisdale is trying to fill some of that need. One of her latest projects will raise money for an addition to an orphanage in Quang Ngui, which can only hold about 75 children presently.
"There are 50 to 100 children outside in the streets," she said.
Tisdale was recently featured on the news program "Dateline NBC," and she showed a videotape of the show as part of her talk this morning.
Before the famous "baby lift," Tisdale had worked tirelessly for An Lac orphanage, using her position as a senator's secretary to open doors for free donations of diapers, supplies, air transport and aid from the U.S. armed forces.
All the children she managed to get out of Saigon were adopted within the first month. Tisdale spent the following years raising her own family, which includes five adopted Vietnamese daughters.
Recently, her children have grown and left home, and she has been reconnecting with some of the Vietnamese orphans she helped.
"The children of An Lac began to come back to me and I realized my work wasn't done," Tisdale said. "I don't knit, I don't play tennis, or golf. Helping children is what I enjoy."
For more information or to make a contribution to HALO, call 608-2781

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