I began a tradition last year of looking back into my “Rearview Mirror” to give awards to the best stories and storytellers of the year. This week and next, I’ll give out those awards in this column.
The winners will receive a certificate. OK, it’s not quite the Oscars, but it is the … drumroll, please … Rearview Mirror 2016 Awards.
UNSUNG HERO AWARD
By far, the top “Rearview Mirror” story of the year was about the Vietnam Babylift. From April 3 to 26, 1975, 3,300 infants and children were brought out of Saigon to homes in the United States, Australia, France and Canada.
My Aug. 12 column on the babylift was shared more than 1,600 times via the Honolulu Star-Advertiser Facebook site, and the article received hundreds of comments, many from caregivers or now-grown babies taken out of South Vietnam as it fell to the Viet Cong.
One who wrote to me was former state Sen. Fred Hemmings, who was on a list of American Red Cross volunteers to assist in emergencies. He received a call to help care for the children while one of the planes was on the ground at Hickam Air Force Base.
“The plane had been on an 18-hour journey,” Hemmings recalled, “and the caretakers on board were wiped out with exhaustion. I would soon find out why. We boarded the plane with a sea of crying youngsters and babies that ranged in age from several months to 8 years old. Most were in bassinets tied to the seats. It was a mess.
“After about a half-hour of changing diapers and cleaning babies, I came upon a bassinet of what appeared to be a 6- to 8-month-old child. She was howling and her arms reached up while her eyes pleaded for me to embrace her. Her eyes pierced my soul. Somehow there was a connection.
“When I held her, she clutched me very tightly. After caring for her, I went to secure her back in her bassinet and she would not let me go and howled with anguish. I could not put her down. I spent the remaining time helping other children while somehow holding her. I should say she held me. I learned from this baby how important and nourishing it is for a child to be embraced both emotionally and physically.“
Hemmings was asked to continue on the flight to Seattle; he was told Pan Am would bring him back. He stayed on the plane and spent the entire flight moving from child to child tending to their needs, all while carrying “my little girl.”
When the plane arrived in Seattle, many adoptive parents were waiting anxiously at the airport. “It came time for me to let go of my little girl,” Hemmings said. “It was difficult. All these decades later I would most love to meet the grown lady I held as a wee baby all those years ago.”
For his actions that week, and for the hundreds of other caregivers who took part in the Vietnam Babylift, I present to Fred Hemmings the Rearview Mirror 2016 Unsung Hero Award.
FUNNIEST STORY OF THE YEAR
Next up is the funniest story to appear in “Rearview Mirror” in 2016. It goes to Patti Smart, the Aloha Airlines flight attendant who lost her skirt out the window of an airplane. I wrote about it June 10.
Patti was a flight attendant for Aloha Airlines for 50 years, from January 1957 until she retired in 2007, several months before Aloha stopped passenger service. Just a few months after joining the airline, she was serving pineapple juice in the cabin of a DC-3 when a passenger bumped the tray she was holding. The juice spilled, soaking Patti’s skirt.
She didn’t have a replacement uniform but did have a pair of rainbow-colored capris that she put on while rinsing out her skirt. Drying it out enough so she could put it back on was another matter.
The propeller-driven DC-3 airliners flew at low altitudes and were not pressurized, so the co-pilot opened one of the cockpit windows about a half-inch while Patti held her skirt up to it. It wasn’t enough, though, so he lowered the window all the way.
“Quite a breeze came in and I thought it would dry, when all of a sudden, it flew out of my hands and out the window! That was the last I saw of my skirt,” Patti said.
The pilot radioed dispatch to call her mom to bring a replacement skirt to Honolulu Airport for her next flight to Hilo. At the time, all the planes in the Pacific used the same frequency, so all the crews now knew Patti had lost her skirt out the plane’s window.
A flight behind them heard the call to dispatch and radioed her plane: “Don’t worry, we caught it,” the pilot joked. “Tell Patti it’s on our wing!”
Stay tuned. Next week, I’ll give out my final Rearview Mirror Awards of 2016.
Bob Sigall, author of “The Companies We Keep” series of books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Contact him via email at sigall@yahoo.com.
