Milking My Fifteen Seconds of Fame By Al Bell In June, at a reunion in Vancouver, Washington, of USS Morton (DD-948), the destroyer I had commanded in 1981 and 1982, one of my former sailors asked, “Wow, Captain, do you enjoy being a celebrity every two years?” I did not say so, but, secretly, I do. His comment was based upon all of the attention my presence drew among the hundred or so attendees. I felt like a star because of all of the cameras flashing pictures of me and people wanting pictures taken with me. They were like paparazzi. Sailors who had served on Morton before my tour shook my hand enthusiastically and told me that they wished that they had served under me. Most of the hoopla resulted from my rescue, against orders, of 70 Vietnamese boat people in 1982. By 2001, I had forgotten about the rescue when Jacquelynne Vu, who had been a young girl at the time of the rescue, tracked me down on the Internet to thank me and the crew. She later invited me to her wedding in Vancouver. I attended and was a “celebrity” for the first time. At several points in the ceremonies I was recognized and publicly thanked for being “their savior on the sea.” The Portland Oregonian covered the reunion with the Vu family in a front page story with photographs. People on the street there recognized me, and a Unitarian minister made me the subject of her sermon that Sunday. At reunions on both the East Coast and the West Coast, including the one this June, some of these former boat people have attended. In Virginia Beach in 2011, Thanh Nguyen, the daughter of a Vietnamese family rescued in June of 1982 in the South China Sea, gave the speech at our banquet. It was a very moving speech of thanks to the crew of USS Morton, which had saved her family from imminent drowning. Thanh, whose mother was pregnant with her at the time of the rescue, was the first child of these refugees born in America. She graduated with High Honors the day following the reunion from George Washington School of Law. Her powerful speech had everyone in tears, including the waitresses and the bartender. A dozen former boat people and their children and grandchildren attended that reunion. In 2001, I had related the rescue story to fellow Mensan, Bob Tutelman, at a First Friday Fun happy hour. He thought that it would be a fine story for Readers Digest. Based upon Bob’s recommendation, I wrote the story for San Diego Mensan. However, Readers Digest was not interested. Much later, San Diego Reader published an abridged version of it with their editor adding the kitschy name “Saved by Commander Bell!” My version of the story was posted by a former USS Morton sailor on the ship’s website. As a result, people searching the Internet for “boat people” found that story and sent me email thanking me for rescuing the Vietnamese. Most of these people were either former boat people themselves or former Navy sailors who had been involved in rescue situations, or, sadly, tragic situations in which the refugees had not been rescued. Thanh Nguyen was one of those who found the story on line. Another was a filmmaker, Duc Nguyen. Duc contacted me to solicit my assistance in making a documentary about the incident in 1988 in which the captain of USS Dubuque (LPD-8) had refused to pick up 110 boat people. Consequently, these people were adrift for many weeks without food or water. Only 52 remained alive when Filipino fishermen from the island of Bolinao found them. The boat people had ultimately resorted to cannibalism of the dead to survive. I put Duc in touch with a former Dubuque crew member, a witness to the tragic event, who had been one of the people who had found my story on line and had emailed me. That former petty officer became a key participant in the documentary. I also helped Duc review Navy archival footage of rescues of boat people, hoping that the image of the U.S. Navy would not be too tarnished in the film. The finished documentary, Bolinao 52, won several awards, including two Emmys. At a 2009 screening in Santa Ana, I and two of the Vietnamese survivors from the Dubuque incident were honorees. I was presented with a plaque expressing “deepest gratitude” for my assistance in making Bolinao 52 and for defying “military orders to follow [my] conscience and uphold higher laws of humanity.” Excessively boosting my ego and my growing feeling of being a celebrity was the standing ovation given to me following my brief remarks to the hundreds of people present. Over the years, I was visited three times in San Diego by people whom we had rescued. They had come from as far away as Massachusetts to thank me. A local television station covered one of these events. My Hanh Do, one of the boat people, described the horrible slaughter of her parents by Vietnamese Communists that led to her fleeing the country. Asked by the reporter how long he had known about these events, My Hanh’s fifteen year old son said, “Fifteen minutes.” The reporter wanted to know what he had been told about how his parents came to America. He said, “They told me only that they came by boat.” After the reunion in Virginia Beach, the Washington Post featured a major story by Tara Bahrampour on the front page of the Sunday Metro section about the reunion with the boat people. Later, a panel of Washington, DC, radio pundits voted that story the “Feel Good Story of the Week.” Last summer Jacquelynne Vu’s family came to San Diego for the wedding of her brother, John, to a local girl. My wife and I attended. At the reception, I again played the part of a celebrity. Last Thanksgiving Day, the San Diego U-T (formerly Union-Tribune) carried a front page feature story by award-winning freelance columnist and author, Fred Dickey, relating the rescue story and containing quotes from our former boat people. He had contacted them directly so that he could write his own version of the story. The gratitude that they expressed fit nicely with the theme of Thanksgiving. When I phoned my daughter, a family practice physician in Missouri, about the U-T story, I could almost see her eyes roll back in her head as she asked, “Are you still talking about that?” The implication was clear: Stop milking that story. It’s getting old. Move on to something new. It was true. I was basking too much in the glow of the adulation that defying my squadron commander by rescuing the Vietnamese had earned me. I felt that it somehow compensated for the fitness report “damning me with faint praise” for my disobedience. Still, it is time to move on. Former boat people united with rescuers: Marla and Al Bell are seated. Left to right standing: Loc Nguyen with his wife, Jacquelynne, Jacquelynne’s parents, Don and Karen Vu, LT Larry Diaz, FTG3 Dave Haupt, Ken Huynh and his wife Hanh. Photo courtesy of Dick Gohman Nevertheless, I will always remember what Loc Nguyen, Jacquelynne Vu’s husband, asked me before they left the banquet at this year’s reunion: “Do you ever think about what a difference you made?” I do think about that. I am amazed at how hard working and successful these people are. Hoai Vu (Sister Teresa), our only English speaking refugee, went from being a nun during the Vietnam War, to selling cigarettes on the street to survive after the Communist takeover, to becoming a wealthy real estate owner in Massachusetts. Jacquelynne is a registered nurse. Her mother is a production engineer for Adidas. Her father is a skilled machinist. Jacquelynne’s husband, Loc, is an IT specialist. Thanh is a successful attorney. Ken Huynh, the first boat person we rescued, is a well-known MetLife agent. My Hanh Do’s husband has a small construction company. There are now three generations of these families prospering in America. At Jacquelynne Vu’s wedding reception, I told the guests that the success of these people in America filled me with almost the same pride that a parent feels at the achievements of his children. It’s true. I do feel that way. In 1982, had I done what other commanding officers did, ordered the ship to alter course to avoid coming into visual range of small radar contacts, none of these people would be alive today. If being proud of that makes me guilty of milking this story, please forgive me.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 16:54:06 +0000
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