UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER VIETNAMESE CLUB GAINS PERSPECTIVE AT GENESEO’S NATIONAL WARPLANE MUSEUM

BY SUZIE WELLS

Ten University of Rochester Vietnamese Students Association (VSA) members toured the National Warplane Museum (NWM) in Geneseo (3489 Big Tree Rd., Geneseo) April 8 to see e Saigon Lady C-130, one of the last planes to escape South Vietnam with civilians before the Communist takeover (Fall of Saigon) in April 1975.

According to the museum, “About 45 years ago, South Vietnamese Air Force pilot Pham Quang Kheim loaded his family onto a C-130 cargo plane in the nal hours of the Vietnam War. South Vietnam was collapsing into panic and looting as North Vietnamese forces surrounded, and then entered, the capital of Saigon. Kheim ew the big plane and his family to safety in Singapore – one of the last to leave the city before the Communist takeover.” e Saigon Lady spent 28 years at e Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC before resettling at the NWM in 2019 for restoration and public display as the centerpiece of their developing Vietnam War monument.

VSA President, Nguyet “Riley” Nguyen helped coordinate the visit, the ve-year-old club’s rst o -campus trip. He said the VSA hosts on-campus cultural events like Pho Night, Co ee Break, and Spring Festival to promote and celebrate Vietnamese culture, and the members who visited the Warplane Museum were incredibly grateful for this unique learning opportunity.

When Nguyen introduced the trip, members found it meaningful and memorable, open-minded despite their upbringing with a very di erent perspective. ey knew largely of the hardships the Vietnamese government, military, and citizens experienced. “Our families were permanently separated, our lands were destroyed, and our country was split in half. We didn’t have many discussions about the American side of this war other than them being our enemy, and the military planes on Vietnamese territory were our target.” unfortunate situations. e visit to NWM was a visual representation of these hardships of warfare, allowing us to sympathize with the lost ones and be grateful for our current living conditions regardless of our political stance on this issue.”

NWM volunteers Jay Jones, Ray Ingram, and Don Wilson, leaders of the C-130 restoration project, chaperoned the student visit. e students’ engagement impressed Jones, who said, “ ey asked lots of questions and listened attentively to the presentation. Some had visited Air Museums in Vietnam before but weren’t allowed to sit in the cockpit. ey loved sitting in the pilot seat, handling ight controls and pushing buttons!” e National Warplane Museum is “dedicated to all active, retired, living, or deceased US Armed Forces veterans and their families who served during the World Wars, Korean Con ict, Vietnam, Gulf Wars, and Mid-eastern battles.” e museum preserves some of the aircra , equipment, and artifacts of those con icts. NWM believes it is crucial to remind “visitors and especially our youth of the fortitude and courageous sacri ces it took to maintain our liberty here in America, especially within the changing culture we are facing today.” e NWM owns the Saigon Lady and several other important military aircra that deserve to be preserved and accessible to the public. Volunteer Ruth Henry says, “ ere is a primal connection when we step aboard a vintage plane. We feel the presence of the soldiers, and for just a moment, connect to their world.” Perhaps through more visits like this and outreach in the community, people today will learn to appreciate the human experience that was the Vietnam War. roughout the visit, Nguyen said, “We were able to look at this complex piece of history from both the American and the Vietnamese perspectives. e NWM exhibit opened us to this discussion of the American side, speci cally the condition they endured during the war. We looked at the relatively small size of the Saigon Lady plane and how it transported up to 100 people. We heard stories of paratroopers preparing as they jumped out of the plane - many didn’t return home.”

He explained, “ e war caused tremendous loss to innocent citizens on both sides: young teenagers were sent to war zones instead of college, soldiers returned with permanent physical and mental damage, families were forever separated, among countless other

To learn more about the museum, visit nationalwarplanemuseum. com. ey host “ e Greatest Show on Turf,” the National Warplane Museum Airshow each June (this year 6/3-4). is year’s anticipated lineup includes: F-16 Viper Demo Team, Skipper Hyle (T-6 Aerobatics), Rob Holland, Lou Horschel (P-51 & FG-1 Corsair), Jason Flood (Pitts S2B & Cub), Ariel Leudi (P-51), Mustang Demo Team, Round Canopy Parachute Team, Scott Yoak, and Jim Tobul, Class of ‘45, Bent Wing Brothers(Corsairs), omRichards(P-40),ManfredRadius(Sailplane), PBY Catalina, Canadian Harvard Association (Tentative). Check out their website to learn more about these aircra and to reserve your tickets for the airshow.

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