Vietnam: answering the call ‘Get your passport, get your shots; I need help.’ Susan Carol McDonald SL to Mary Nelle Gage SL in June 1973
The Vietnam War gave rise to thousands of orphans. As husbands and fathers were killed, surviving mothers became the sole providers for their families. Rural agrarian life was disrupted and many fled to cities; the traditional extended family no longer provided stability. In addition, socioeconomic and traditional values often required a mother to relinquish a mixed-race child. Children born with handicaps or who developed serious illnesses could not be cared for by poverty-stricken families. By Mary Nelle Gage SL
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alter Cronkite began his nightly CBS evening news broadcast with the death count from Vietnam from the late 1960s through the early 1970s. As a young newly professed sister and a high school speech, drama and English teacher, my abiding thought was, “What could I do that would be positive?” In the spring of 1973, my former Loretto Heights College classmate, Susan Carol McDonald — who was now Sr. Susan Carol, a nurse at our Motherhouse in Kentucky — announced that she would be volunteering to nurse orphans in Saigon. During a Holy Week Motherhouse visit, I told Susan that if there was something someone without medical skills could do, I would come to help. In early June, six days after her arrival, Susan wrote to me and said, “Get your passport, get your shots; I need help.”
Mary Nelle Gage SL holds Drew, who would later be adopted by an American family. Gregory, adopted by a family in Minnesota, looks on.
Cribs filled every room ... New Haven was an old French villa with stucco walls and tile floors that Susan administered and where she nursed the 60 infants and toddlers in her care. Each baby had its own white crib with mosquito netting all around that Susan had bought in the Saigon market. Cribs filled every room on the main level and on the second floor. On the roof was an air-conditioned bedroom and the large laundry where Vietnamese staff washed and hung diapers all day every day. The living room served as Susan’s bedroom, our dining area and the meeting room. In the kitchen on the first floor, rice, meat, fruit and vegetables 6 • Loretto Magazine
From left, Mary Nelle Gage SL, Rosemary Taylor and Susan Carol McDonald SL, standing at the entry to New Haven nursery in 1974.
