The images won’t die- South Vietnamese women and children scrambling desperately toward helicopters; North Vietnamese tanks crashing through walls, roaring through the streets of Saigon- the end of an era.

In a war as tragic as any we have known, the victims were numberless.  And the most innocent, the most vulnerable, were the children.  Beyond the Babylift is the story of one of those children.

He was the son of a black American GI and a South Vietnamese woman.  Raised in the black-market streets of Vietnam, he was taken to an orphanage an later sent to the United States.  Here he was eventually placed with a white American couple, Pamela and David Purdy, who offered him love and chose him as their fourth child.

Beyond the Babylift is Pamela Purdy’s valiant effort to “put flesh on our struggle to be a family.”

Her extraordinary diary begins:  “The babylift from Vietnam had been in full swing for about a month, and every day thousands of children were being flown to all parts of the country.

Couples with active, approved applications for U.S. adoptions were telephoned by Friends of Children of Vietnam to see whether they would consider a Vietnamese child.   Our call came on Thursday, May 15.”

That is only the beginning of a story you will never forget- a story of America, of a war, and of one remarkable American family.  And of people who choose to pick up the pieces and go on, loving one another in the aftermath of a terrible human tragedy.