My World - Page 9

I have been asked to offer a perspective on the 1975 Orphan Airlift from the Oakland Station point of view. The “Home Station” for any air carrier is an anomaly. This statement was never more true than it was of World Airways Oakland. As conditioned as we were to the exceptional, the Airlift flights called for all the creativity we could muster.

The pictures provided actually come from two separate arrivals. Those with a discerning eye, will recognize both a DC-8 and a B727. The DC-8 arrival was the first and the more dramatic. This was the airplane that had departed Saigon in cargo configuration, with the first group of children and adults. The press showed up at the hangar in legions. Every Federal Inspection Agency ever called out for an international arrival, attended with multiple representatives. The military, providing logistical support, including buses, added to the numbers on the ramp. It is difficult to imagine in this post 9/11 environment how many people we had on the AOA (Airport Operating Area) without badges or direct supervision. One of the many memorable moments of that evening came when I had to threaten the thoroughly obnoxious little news anchor from Channel 2 with physical extraction from the airport if he continued lighting cigarettes under the wing of Mr. Daly’s Convair.

The break-room at Hangar 110 was the “Media Center” where Charlotte (Daly) Behrendt (Mr. Daly’s daughter), Company officials, and the operating crew was interviewed. For as many as had assembled, the exodus was quick after the children were gone.

Early the following morning, I was called to the Executive Office and asked to make myself available at the California National Guard Armory on the Presidio. There was an identified need for someone who spoke airplane. I was met at the door of the Armory by a very senior Sergeant , who was one of two full time Guard personnel stationed there. He asked what I needed to set up and provided everything within the hour. What I found was a number of separate and distinct “groups”, all pulling is different directions. There were the society matrons, who were looking for their picture in the paper. There were the flower children, from Haight and Ashbury, (who became our 1975 equivalent of Nextel) eager to help wherever they could. They were the message runners, and an essential communications link. There were the wonderful, compassionate, caring medical people from Letterman Hospital. And, there was Charlotte and her husband, Mel Behrendt, who were to stay on site continuously for the next many days, providing assistance wherever required. I set up a dispatch function with the names of the participating airlines, TIA, PAA, AA, NW, and others as well as the military movements heading for us, and updated all information continuously. Inbound flight number, air carrier, number of children, number of adults, any known special requirements; all became essential information. Laps were a commodity. When you sent buses to the airport, you needed a specified number of laps. Many of the orphans were babies or so underdeveloped that you must have a lap to hold them for their bus trip. By late afternoon of the first day, many egos had been bruised. A couple, known to the society people, walked in, evaluated the goings on and then the lady took charge. She had just come from a speaking engagement and quickly passed out assignments, sending some home for rest, posting others to duty through the night. She and her husband then left to return the following morning.

Her name was Dorothy DeBolt and with her husband, Bob, established a whole new order for the second day and every day there after at the Armory. Dorothy and Bob DeBolt founded ASK, which was Aid for Special Kids. Between them, they had six children of their own. They adopted a large number of multinational children, all with physical disabilities. The DeBolts contribution to the Presidio event was great.

I spent the next two and a half weeks at the Presidio, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, just like our little visitors. When I didn’t have a pending flight arrival, I fed, bathed, walked, rocked, and hugged the little people. I was carrying one particularly distressed little person around in the hopes that my attention would relieve his anxieties. He was very small and I could comfortably cradle him in my forearm. I asked a doctor the age of the boy. The doctor looked at the wrist band and replied “Two years old”. I thought of my own sons who where close to the same size when I first brought them home from the hospital. The Presidio event was an emotional experience then, as is the retelling of the story 30 years later. The cooperation among the volunteers and the medical professionals was outstanding.

Larry Soletti was to relieve me and by this time I was so involved, the last thing I wanted was to leave. As I was saying my goodbyes, the head of triage announced a total quarantine. He had identified indications of multiple contagious diseases. I went back to my tasks. After some time had passed, the doctor found me and said “Adios”. He had isolated the conditions to one little person and was comfortable that the condition had not wide spread. He did advise that upon my return to my home, I was to enter through the garage and bag all the clothing I had with me for cleaning by a commercial laundry. I was then to bath in the hottest water possible before touching any of my family. So it was done.

The 727 arrival was emotional in a different way. Polio still ran rampant in Viet Nam. No one there had ever heard of Jonas Salk or his vaccine. The result was some terribly disfigured children that found refuge in an orphanage run by an American Priest by the name of Father Crawford. As the infrastructure of Viet Nam collapsed, Father Crawford sought alternative arrangements for his charges. An orphanage in Oregon was closed and standing idle. Father Crawford and his entire flock, including the children, the Nuns, and other personnel were flown to Oakland by World Airways and transported to Oregon by bus. Many of these children were old enough to be suspicious of everyone in the strange environment they were entering. I was particularly impressed by the Mother Superior, who with exceptional dignity and warmth, dealt with everyone’s apprehensions. On arrival, one of the flight attendants felt compelled to converse with Mother Superior in academic French. Mother Superior was trying to console the children in Vietnamese and speaking to me in perfect English. Needless to say, French was soon eliminated from the communications circle.

The Father Crawford flight involvement spanned a comparatively few hours, but also left a permanent memory of how fortunate I have been.

News of the flight traveled quickly, and the next day, President Ford was deluged with telephone calls to do something to save the children of Vietnam. The government brought thousands more children out of Vietnam as Saigon was falling that April. Shirley Peck-Barnes, author of The War Cradle, which documents the legacy of Operation Babylift, calls it the greatest humanitarian gesture of the last century. "This is the one thing about the Vietnam War that made Americans feel relief," she said. "They were saving children." The Vietnam flight next month was arranged by Atlanta-based World Airways for 20 of the orphans on the first flight. Bakal almost didn't make that trip. She had been set to board a C5-A cargo plane that crashed a few days later, killing almost half the 330 adults and children on board. Instead, she was among those hastily boarded on the World Airways flight. Until recently, Vietnam was just a birthplace for Bakal, her journey out of Saigon simply a footnote in her life, not a defining moment.

She was adopted by a white couple, Reed and Laura Dilbeck, a flight engineer and a hypnotherapist, and grew up in the then mostly white Atlanta suburb of Marietta trying to blend in, wanting a face to match her Southern twang. As a teenage cashier working at a grocery store, she was called a "gook" by a war veteran. She spent years wishing her eyes were wider, rounder, more Caucasian. "All my life, I never wanted to find them," she said, referring to her Chinese mother, who lived in Vietnam, and father, whom she believes was an American soldier. It was a feeling shared by many of the Vietnamese adoptees growing up, said Peck-Barnes. "A lot of the kids still feel a great loss of their culture. Many have Americanized and don't want to go back," she said. Vietnam War adoptee Wendy Greene, who will be on the flight with Bakal next month, has been to Vietnam before and is making the trip with her adopted mother, Cheryl. She says she's not searching for her biological roots. "I never really needed to go down that road," said Greene, 30. "I want to thank all the heroes that got us over here. That's what's most important to me. We really are all miracle babies."

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Looking Back - Joe Dantonio Maintence & Engineering Manager

Milly & Joe Dantonio

Looking back, I started working for Ed Daly in July 1959 when Ed Daly hired me to consult & rep his first C-54/DC-4 (79A) , first time Overhaul at the Oakland Airport's Lockheed Hangar 4#
I had the pleasure of meeting Ed Daly at Cal Eastern Airways (1955), while a Inspection Supervisor of Inspection in charge of 79A Aircraft Re-Certification (DC-4 Santa Monica Report) aircraft was guted, we had to rewire,strip and reseal the fuel tanks, and accomplish all the FAA Requirements, and it took spent several months to complete. This aircraft had the responsibility of Bob Truitt, (Ed Daly's brother-in law as a A & P Mechanic) to assemble, jury rig and prepare a FAA Ferry Permit from England to Oakland.

Before Bob Truitt Passed away couple years ago, he told me what he had to do and accomplish to get that aircraft to Oakland.

This aircraft 79A and another DC-4, 26V purchased from Trans Ocean Airlines, departed to fly the Inter-island Operation for couple years and then came back to Oakland's Lockheed Aircraft Facility to be Overhauled

THIS WAS WORLD AIRWAYS DC-4'S, FAA'S PART 42 FIRST COMMERCIAL OPERATION, IN THE PACIFIC.

WHAT REALLY STARTED WORLD AIRWAYS IN FEBRUARY 1960 WAS WHEN ED DALY CALLED ME UP AT THREE IN THE MORNING TO HEAD FOR AMERICAN AIRLINES IN TULSA TO PICK UP TWO DC-6'S (N781 & N782) & BRING THEM TO NEWARK, N.J. TO FIND SOMEONE TO CONVERT THE DC-6A TO A/B'S .
AFTER IT WAS DETRMINED THAT FLIGHT ENTERPRISE'S IN CONN. WAS DO TO THE FIRST TWO DC-6'S.

GEORGE MERRIL AND I DEPARTED FOR OAKLAND TO GET A FAA DC-6A/B OPERATING CERTIFICATE
WHICH WAS ACCOMPLISHED IN RECORD TIME .

WITH OUR NEW FAA OPERATING CERTIFICATE IN MARCH 1960.

AFTER THESE FIRST TWO DC6 A/B'S CAME SEVERAL, DC-6A/B'S, THEN CLOSED DOWN THE DC-4'S, THEN THE DC-6'S TOOK OVER THE LOGAIRE, AND THE NIKE RUN

WE THEN PICKED UP 1049H CONNIE'S FROM TWA (FORMELY CEA, 31C,32C,33C & RESORT'S 101R), ONE OF THE CONNIE'S ON THE NIKE RUN

THEN TO HAMBURG FOR FOUR 1649 CONNIES., TWO WERE CONVERTIBLES AND TWO WERE NOT. AND AFTER WE RECEIVED THE 707'S, ALL RECIPS WERE REMOVED.

THEN CAME NEW AIRCRAFT, NINE BACO 707-373C, AND SIX BACO 727-173C FOR THE FAR EAST OPERATION, INCLUDING MIDDLE EAST.

THEN WE RECEIVED AND OPERATED FOUR DC-8-63B'S SOME FOR R/R'S AND THE CAMBODIA AND FAR EAST OPERATION.

THEN CAME THE NINE DC-10 CF AIRCRAFT STARTING A SCHEDULED OPERATION

THEN TWO BACO 747 CF NOSE LOADERS, ONE LEASED TO KAL THE OTHER TO PAN AM FOR FIVE YEARS, THEN OH'D AT OAKLAND AND WOA OPERATED.THAT 747 (MUCH ENGINE PROBLEMS)

WOA THEN PURCHASED A USED B-747 WITH SIDE LOADING.

WOA GAVE US AN OPTION TO RETIRE IN OCTOBER 31, 1985, WHICH I TOOK FOR PERSONAL REASONS. (WORLD AIRWAYS INTERNAL PROBLEMS, THE TAKE OVER, INCOMING BAD PEOPLE OR THE DALY PEOPLE, ME, I WAS DALY PEOPLE.)

GATX APPROACHED ME AFTER RETIRING AS A RESULT OF MY QUALITY CONTROL BACK GROUND FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS., HAD TO RETIRE DUE TO A BYPASS.

STRANGELY, AS A GATX REPRESENTATIVE, I MADE THE TRANSFER TO WORLD'S FIRST MD-11 AT THE MOHAVE DESERT TO WARREN VEST AND JACK BROWN ON A THREE HOUR ACCEPTANCE FLIGHT

HERE ALL THEM YEARS WITH WORLD, I WAS PRETTY MUCH RESPONSIBLE FOR ACQUIRING AND GETTING WITH THE FAA ON ALL THESE AIRCRAFT AND PLACING THEM ON WORLD'S OPERATING CERTIFICATE.

BEFORE SETTLING DOWN IN OAKLAND WITH THE LONG HOURS I INHERITED, I.E. IT TOOK ME FOUR (SOME AT HOME) YEARS TO BUILD THE GP & P MANUAL USING TWA MANUAL AS A REFERENCE. ED DALY GAVE ME A PNC FOR THAT.

BEGINNING OF THE NIKE OPERATION PAUL PYSTOR AND I SPENT WEEKS IN HONULULU SETTING UP LONG HOURS TO SET UP THE NIKE OPERATION. ALSO,

THE 1961 FRANKFURT OPERATION OUT OF McGuire AFB, I WAS REPONSIBLE UNDER WOA SNR VP BILL BOYD TO TURN AROUND OUR 1049H CONNIES FROM NJ TO FRANFURT, AVERAGING SOMETHING CLOSE TO 17HOUR'S PER AIRCRAFT DAILY.

IN 1966, TOM RIPA AND SPENT SOME TIME IN THE FAR EAST OPERATION, TOM STAYED, I LEFT AND CONTINUED MY GP & P MANUAL TRAINING IN THE FAR EAST WHERE ALL MX REPS AND F/E PERSONAL WERE LOCATED. THIS MISSION WAS THE SAME ON THE LOGAIRE OPERATION WHERE I RECEIVED MY PERMANENT BACK INJURY IN FEBRUARY 1965 (THATS ANOTHER STORY)

DICK THIS IS PART MY STORY AND THERE IS A LOT MORE TO BE TOLD.

TODAY, MY ONLY COMPLAINT WITH WORLD AIRWAYS, I GOT BEAT OUT OF (LIKE THOUSANDS OF HOURS) TIME OF OVERTIME PAY THAT ED DALY PROMISED ME.
AND HAVE THE LUMPS TO PROVE IT AT MY 86 YEARS.

THIS IS MY MANUSCRIPT I HAD WITH WORLD, (ALL TRUE) I KNOW THERE'S MUCH MORE. BUT, I THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS.

Thanks, for the opportunity to go over what I contributed to this airline. - Joe

WORLD AIRWAYS TO HOST FLIGHT TO VIETNAM, COMMEMORATING 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF 'OPERATION BABYLIFT”

WORLD AIRWAYS TO HOST FLIGHT TO VIETNAM, COMMEMORATING 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF 'OPERATION BABYLIFT”