November 9, 2021 ROTARY IN REVIEW: Steve Young

At 12:15 pm on November 9th at the InterContinental Hotel, President Todd Nicholson opened the meeting. Nancy Brady provided the inspirational minute about “radical empathy” to test and understand another person’s experience with the ability to understand another person’s pain. Bill Given introduced two guests and a Rotarian to our meeting. Rita Dibble and Eddie Coblentz were greeters and Linda Mulhern, the scribe. Todd wanted to thank our tech team of Dave Wolfgram, Katie Dailey and Paul Meekin for their help with the hybrid meeting format.

 

 

Carolyn Will introduced our speaker Steve Young, Club #10 member and director of Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism. Steve noted that the evacuation of Afghanistan is very similar to the exodus out of Vietnam in 1975. Steve’s father had been instrumental with the Geneva conference which worked on the armistice of the Korean war and the agreement moving the French out of Indochina in the 1950s. Steve spent time in Thailand after his father was appointed the ambassador of Thailand. His mother was active with promoting Thai art. After Steve graduated from Harvard, he decided to spend time in Vietnam and work with the citizens about self- development and self-defense of their area. Steve married a woman from Vietnam and many of his friends attended, even the American ambassador attended his wedding! In 1975, Steve knew when the city of Da Nang fell in March of 1975, a refugee program needed to be developed, he raced to talk with anyone that he knew in the state department to set up it up. Many of his friends like himself had Vietnamese wives so it was imperative to get the attention of the secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. The United States had no refugee program at the time and people were fleeing to Saigon to get out of the country. The educated, the political class and the military were trying to get out prior to the fall of South Vietnam at the end of April 1975. A Parole authority was set with the help of Senator Ted Kennedy, but he needed numbers of people coming to the country. A population of 150,000 was used to anticipate what needed to be done by America to set up refugee families as they arrived in this country, which included 16 people housed by Steve and his wife! By 1977, the Vietnamese boat people were leaving, and the Khmer Rouge atrocities prompted additional people to leave Cambodia as well as the Hmong from Laos. They all ended up in refugee camps in Thailand initially. The Refugee Act of 1980 brought many of these people to the United States. President Carter set up a Human Rights department within the state department as well. When the government asked Steve what the refugees would need, they expected he would say that a social service bureaucracy would be needed. He instead said, “teach them English and find them jobs” and they will be able to take care of themselves. Many of the former “elites” within the Vietnamese society were sent to re-education camps after the war.  When General Vessey went to Vietnam to secure help in finding MIAs from the war, he told the foreign minister that we would take the people from the camps along with bi-racial children of American soldiers along with their families, they were all allowed to emigrate. Steve said that we should be proud of what we did 50 years ago and will likewise be impressed with what we can do to help the refugees from Afghanistan.