The Teaching History Her Way Podcast · CherylAnne Amendola

Airlifted, Uplifted: Operation Babylift, Transracial Adoptees, and the Classroom

·38 min·2 clips

Amy Mai describes infants being passed by bucket brigade and strapped into cargo planes.

1. The Teaching History Her Way podcast episode centers on Operation Babylift, transracial adoption, and teaching history through Amy Mai Tierney's lived experience. 2. Host Sherrilyn Amendola interviews Amy Mai Tierney, who was born in Saigon, Vietnam, airlifted out in April 1975, and later earned a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College and a master's from Teachers College at Columbia University. 3. The episode asks what history teachers should know when teaching Vietnam War-era adoption, identity formation, and the classroom treatment of adoptees. 4. Amy Mai says she had very little personal history growing up, so she looked to history to fill in the blanks left by her own origins. 5. She defines Operation Babylift as the movement of a little over 3,000 adoptees from South Vietnam to the United States after President Ford earmarked USAID money in April 1975. 6. She says many Americans framed the operation as humanitarian, while others saw it as a Ford administration public-relations move after the war. 7. Amy Mai notes that over half of the children labeled 'orphans' had living parents, and she says a court case challenged whether they should have been brought to the United States. 8. She describes the evacuation process with boxes of infants, a bucket brigade, and straps inside cargo planes. 9. She says the first flight's rear cargo doors malfunctioned and over 138 people were killed, including 78 children. 10. She explains that Sister Kateri ran the orphanage's daily operations and preferred the term 'halfway house' because the children were between their birth families and final homes. 11. Amy Mai recalls finding Father John McVeigh in New Jersey after studying abroad in Vietnam in 1995 and later learning he had been part of her history for years. 12. She says Father McVeigh performed her wedding ceremony and baptized her first child, and she attended Operation Babylift reunions for the 30th and 40th anniversaries. 13. She describes a kindergarten culture project that led her mother to arrange a lunch with Vietnamese immigrants, where the language and the house smell felt unfamiliar to her. 14. She recounts a second-grade play in which her teacher wanted her to play Korea, and she chose Germany instead because she identified more with her German grandmother and soccer. 15. She explains a thesis-based identity model using an X axis for adopting-family culture and a Y axis for culture of origin, which lets adoptees be understood as moving on a grid rather than trapped in boxes. 16. She says the dot on that grid moves throughout life, depending on time, place, and the person she is speaking with. 17. The conversation is reflective and practical, with Sherrilyn repeatedly connecting Amy Mai's story to lesson planning, student identity, and teacher responsibility. 18. The interview format allows long, personal answers, and the tone shifts between classroom application, family history, and direct advice for history teachers. 19. History teachers, social studies teachers, and adoptee-aware educators would get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting light banter or quick entertainment may skip it.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Teaching History Her Way Podcast