A call from the past

Last Friday I received a phone call from Wir Smith, the adopted son of the late Dr. Pat Smith. I knew of Wir and his older brother Det from my trips to Vietnam in the period between 1968-1970.

I had read about Dr. Smith in an article in the Seattle Times. She graduated from the UW School of Medicine and responded to a challenge to go to Vietnam and open a hospital in the Central Highlands. That was in the 1950s. It was not known at the time that in a few years there would be a war in the area.

The article told of a group in the Seattle area that supported Dr. Smith by providing funds and product for her hospital. The story was compelling, so my wife and I attended a meeting.

We learned some details of her rural hospital and we were hooked.

After several meetings, I volunteered to set up the next meeting. I went to the Four Seasons Hotel in Seattle to secure a meeting place, and when I explained it was for a meeting of Dr. Pat Smith friends the hotel provided one of their meeting rooms free.

At the time, I was planning my first trip to Vietnam and other countries in the Far East.

The group had provided funds to purchase a piece of hospital equipment that Dr. Smith had asked for, and they had been discussing how to get it to Vietnam. They asked me to take it over to her, and I agreed.

The hospital was at Kontum about 500 miles north of Saigon. In planning my trip I learned that accredited journalists could get on military planes and land vehicles on a space-available basis and could go almost anywhere.

The equipment was a heart monitoring device and fit into a suitcase, weighing about 60 pounds.

Since I was flying on Pan Am, I went to see the Pan Am manager at the airport in Seattle. After explaining the equipment and who it was for, he agreed to transport it from Seattle to Saigon without charge.

Before my flight, I took it to the airport and delivered it to Pan Am and was told that I could pick it up from the Pan Am manager at Saigon. So far so good.

I advised Dr. Smith that the machine was on its way.

A couple of weeks later, I arrived in Saigon. The first thing I did was to check with Pan Am, but I was told they hadn’t seen it.

After a flurry, the Pan Am manager there told me that the machine hadn’t left Seattle. Someone tucked it in a corner and everyone forgot about it. There were a series of delays, and I left to continue my trip and no machine.

About 10 days later I was in Hong Kong, deeply troubled by all of this, so I went to our consulate and asked to see the Marine Corps representative. A colonel came out, and I explained my dilemma. He said not to worry, that the marines would get the machine to Kontum.

It took about eight weeks, but I finally learned that the machine was delivered. If there is any message here, it is that the marines can get any job done.

I visited with Wir for about a half hour. He told me that his mother was killed from shrapnel from a mortar round, and his father asked Dr. Smith to adopt the two boys so they could have a better life, and she did so.

The communists tried on several occasions to kill Dr. Smith, but workers at the hospital hid her just in time.

Wir and Det were sent home to the Seattle area to live with Dr. Pat’s sister until the war was over and Pat decided to retire from her hospital responsibilities. Wir was 4 when he came to Seattle.

He returned to the Central Highlands some years later and stated he was a stranger in his own land. He was reunited with his father but couldn’t speak the dialect because he’d left at such an early age. Wir became a music composer and Det had joined the U. S. military.

Dr. Pat returned to the Seattle area where she practiced medicine for another 20 years. She died at age 78. Wir, her adopted son, described her as another Mother Teresa.