Jon Dull, Jodi Willis and Thuy Williams left Vietnam as children in April 1975 and were adopted by families in the U.S. Now, 50 years later, they share their stories with Holt.
In April 1975, Jon Dull, Jodi Willis and Thuy Williams were children living in Vietnam, strangers to one another. But within a few weeks, all three would be evacuated from the war-torn country, shortly before the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. Jon, Jodi and Thuy were part of what has come to famously be known as “Operation Babylift.” The babylift was a series of flights at the end of the war that followed an evacuation order issued by U.S. President Gerald Ford for Vietnamese children living in orphanages, and who were already in process, to be adopted by families in the U.S. Many of these children were fathered by military personnel from the U.S. and other countries, and the children who were part of the babylift also joined families in other Western nations. Holt was one agency that took part in this effort. During the month of April 1975, Holt safely evacuated more than 400 children in our care, many of whom traveled aboard a Holt-chartered Pan Am flight that left Saigon on April 5.
Shortly after leaving Vietnam, Jon, Jodi and Thuy were adopted into families living near Portland, Oregon, and the three still live in the area today. In addition, they are all members of an Operation Babylift adoptee group on Facebook. In the summer of 2024, with the 50th anniversary of Operation Babylift approaching, Jon felt inspired to reach out to other adoptees in the area, asking if anyone wanted to meet up for lunch. In total, five adoptees (four of whom were adopted through Holt) and two spouses gathered at a Vietnamese restaurant in Portland. As the group had never met before, they spent a couple of hours getting to know one another, speaking of their origins in Vietnam, the families in which they grew up and other aspects of their lives. They also expressed that they felt Operation Babylift had given them a second chance at life. Recently, Jon, his mother Joy, Jodi and Thuy shared more about their lives and their adoption journeys with Holt. Here are their stories.
Jon Dull: “I Was Given a ‘Golden Ticket’”
In the spring of 1974, Joy and Jerry Dull were the parents of four young children, hoping to add another child to their family. They had begun working with Holt on the adoption of a child from Vietnam, but soon learned that they would not be eligible to move forward as they already had children. So the Dulls refocused their efforts on adopting a child from South Korea. After about a year, Joy and Jerry had given up hope as the waiting process lingered.
Then on April 2, 1975, Joy received an unexpected call from Holt that changed their lives. Their social worker had just received word that a chartered flight with more than 400 orphans in Holt’s care would be leaving Saigon on April 5 and arriving in Seattle a day later. On that flight was a 5-month-old baby named Tran Ai Quoc, who was in immediate need of an adoptive family. The child had been relinquished by his mother at birth and had been living in a Holt-run orphanage in Saigon for months. Since the Dulls had been in the process of working with Holt and had gone through the necessary background checks, they could move forward with the adoption of this baby. “Of course we were very excited,” says Joy. “But we had just a few days to pull everything together.”
Late in the day on April 5, Joy and Jerry made the four-hour drive up to the Seattle-Tacoma airport to await the arrival of a Pan Am jumbo jet that held their new baby. They were surrounded by a sea of other Holt parents, many of whom had been in the process of adopting from Vietnam for the past 12 to 24 months. The scene at the airport that evening was hectic and filled with nervous anticipation, Joy recalls, as the parents waited for the plane’s arrival. Finally, at 12:30 a.m. on April 6, the families drew a sigh of relief as the Pan Am jet came into view and landed safely with the babies, nurses, doctors and other personnel on board. Six hours later, the children were released to their parents after receiving their vaccinations and clearing immigration. The Dulls’ baby appeared to be tired from the long overseas flight but was otherwise healthy, weighing in at a little more than 13 pounds. Recalling her first moments with her child, Joy says, “He cried for a while — I think he was hungry and not used to his new environment.” But soon after taking a bottle, the baby settled down for the long car ride to his new home in the U.S.
Joy and Jerry named their new child Jon Michael Dull and raised him in a small town south of Portland. In time, the couple would go on to adopt two more children, a 14-year-old boy from South Korea and a 12-year-old girl from India. Growing up in a large and loving family, Jon formed close bonds with his parents and six siblings, and embraced the opportunities he was given. He was the first of his siblings to go to college, earning a bachelor’s degree in business economics and an MBA with a focus in finance.
He and his wife, Charlotte, have also traveled to many places in the world, visiting Vietnam several times. “I went to Vietnam because I like to travel, not to find my roots,” says Jon. Yet, in 2018, Jon and Charlotte brought Joy on a trip to his birth country, visiting places like Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Da Nang, Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. “My mother had always wanted to see Vietnam, so when we had the opportunity to take her there, we did,” he says. Then last November, coinciding with his 50th birthday, Jon and Charlotte returned to Vietnam and traveled to an orphanage north of Da Nang. They visited the children during dinner, spent some time talking with them and helped clean up afterwards. “I’m not really sure why I decided we should go visit an orphanage,” says Jon. “But I felt it was important for me to visit one on my 50th birthday trip to help remind me [of where I once lived] and ground me.” Jon and Charlotte also plan to live overseas for a few years in the near future once they’re both fully retired. They hope to engage in volunteer work, possibly in an orphanage in Da Nang.
Looking back on the past 50 years, Jon believes that being part of Operation Babylift has had an impact on his life, but doesn’t define him. As he says, “I never really felt that I was adopted, in that my parents are my parents. But I also believe that I’ve been given a ‘golden ticket’ in life, and I have tried to make the most of it. Knowing that I came from an orphanage in Vietnam — and [sensing] what my life would have been like had I stayed there — has motivated me to enjoy every moment and to experience life to the fullest. Beyond that, I’m grateful to the unsung heroes of Operation Babylift, everyone from the Holt workers in Vietnam, to the pilots, nurses and other flight volunteers, to, of course, my parents. If it wasn’t for their efforts, none of this would be possible for me today.”
Jodi Willis: “I Am Grateful to So Many People”
Jodi Willis was born on March 21, 1975, in My Tho, Vietnam, a city located in the Mekong Delta, south of Saigon. Born to a single mother, Jodi was brought to an orphanage in Saigon and into Holt’s care when she was 3 weeks old. At the time, she weighed less than 5 pounds and was sickly and small.
Two weeks later, however, Jodi was evacuated from Vietnam on Holt’s last flight out of Saigon. She was placed on a military cargo jet with the remaining babies in Holt’s care, leaving Saigon on April 27, 1975. Three days later, the city would fall to North Vietnamese forces, leading to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government and the reunification of Vietnam under Communist rule. With all the chaos surrounding them, “the evacuation itself was a miracle,” says Jodi, now 50 and living in Oregon with her husband of 31 years and two children. “Everything was working against us. We were lucky to have even had a runway to get off the ground.”
But fortunately, Jodi’s flight did take off safely, and on its way to the U.S. stopped at a military base in Honolulu to refuel. While there, all of the children were medically evaluated, and Jodi and another baby were detained as they were too sick to continue. But in a week’s time, Jodi’s health had improved enough for her to be placed on another flight to Portland, Oregon. On May 5, 1975, she met her new family — her parents, John and Sherri, and an older sister who’d been adopted from South Korea two years earlier.
Jodi’s family would grow in time as her mother gave birth to a daughter in 1976, and the family would adopt a 13-month-old boy from South Korea three years later. She and her three siblings were raised in a Christian household in a predominantly white community, south of Portland.
Recalling her early days, Jodi says, “I had a very challenging childhood. Growing up, I knew that the Vietnam War wasn’t popular, and I was afraid people would be cruel to me because of this. I was afraid people would think I was a Communist.” For many years, Jodi chose not to explore her roots in Vietnam — or the early weeks of her adoption story. “To be honest, I didn’t think it was possible,” she says.
But in 2021, Jodi discovered that it was possible to retrieve her adoption records through Holt and saw for the first time her Vietnamese birth certificate. Through an English translation of the document, Jodi discovered her birth mother’s name as well as her own birth name, birth date and other data. She also was able to view her medical information from the time she was in Holt’s care and learned the name of the American nurse who completed her intake exam. (The nurse, now elderly, lives in the U.S., and by a stroke of luck, Jodi was able to locate her on Facebook. The two have spoken since, filling in gaps to Jodi’s early story.)
Jodi credits her own evacuation from Vietnam — as well as the safe retrieval of her adoption files — to the efforts of two men, Glen Noteboom, a Holt social worker in Vietnam in the 1970s, and former Holt president John Williams, who started his career with Holt as a project manager in Vietnam just before Operation Babylift. Both men are now in their 80s. Jodi was fortunate enough to meet John in 2024, as he helped fill in more of her story. John described how he and Glen did not leave Saigon until every one of the children in Holt’s care was safely evacuated from the war zone. He also described how he and Glen safeguarded the children’s records, by packing a small chartered DC-3 aircraft from floor to ceiling with boxes and boxes of documents, before boarding that plane themselves and leaving Saigon. Those documents today are secured at Holt’s headquarters in Eugene, Oregon.
Though Jodi has not been back to Vietnam since she left as an infant in 1975, she does have a desire to someday visit. “Obtaining my adoption records in 2021, approaching my 50th birthday, and meeting John Williams, who answered so many of my questions and eased so many of my uncertainties, has lit a desire in me to find out more about myself,” Jodi says. Returning to Vietnam may also provide insight and clarity into all of the forces that worked together to bring her to the U.S., from the nurses and orphanage workers who cared for her as a baby, to those who helped her evacuate as chaos ensued, to her parents who answered the call to adopt 50 years ago today.
“Operation Babylift gave me a new life,” says Jodi, one filled with love, challenges and opportunities. “My husband often tells me that God knew I was meant to be his wife, so Christ brought me across two oceans to bring us together. Looking back, the evacuation is the ashes that brought the beauty of a new life.”
Thuy Williams: “I Was Given a Second Chance”
Thuy Williams remembers hearing the bombs fall around her as a young child growing up in Saigon. She also remembers being hungry and terrified. In April 1975, Thuy was 5 years old, the daughter of a single mother who had given birth to her at age 16 and a father who had been a U.S. Marine serving in Vietnam. Thuy was an “Amerasian” child — half Asian and half American — and as the fall of Saigon grew closer, her mother, Ho, feared for her safety. Biracial or Amerasian children faced discrimination growing up in Vietnam, and Thuy says there were rumors that all Amerasian children would be killed at the end of the war.
So on April 4, 1975, Ho made arrangements to help Thuy leave Vietnam. She brought her to the Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon and placed her on a military cargo plane bound for the U.S. (To read more of Thuy’s remarkable story, and to learn how this plan came about, see When Life Gives You Second Chances.) But shortly after Thuy boarded that plane, she was removed from it, as the flight had too many passengers. She was scheduled to travel the following day, April 5, on one of Operation Babylift’s next flights out of Saigon.
As it turned out, the change in travel plans likely saved Thuy’s life. Shortly after takeoff on April 4, the military plane — with more than 300 passengers on board — suffered a mechanical failure and crashed in a rice paddy near the Saigon River. Sadly, 128 people died, including 78 children. In the chaos, Thuy’s mother was told that her daughter had perished.
The next day, however, Thuy flew to the U.S. on a chartered Pan Am flight alongside another 324 infants and children, including survivors of the previous day’s crash. Not knowing that fate had played a part in her journey, Thuy simply recalls sitting next to another little girl on the plane and pretending to read her a book. (The book was given to Thuy by a flight attendant and written in English.) She also remembers stopping at a military base in the Philippines where a U.S. serviceman came on board and offered her a hard-boiled egg. “Much of the trip was a blur, but I have these two memories,” says Thuy.
Unlike Jon and Jodi who had been in Holt’s care in Vietnam and who were placed on a Holt-sponsored Pan Am flight, Thuy did not join her family through Holt and was on a separate Pan Am flight on April 5. So when she arrived at the airport in Portland, Oregon, she was greeted by Jenny Williams, a mother who had agreed to foster a 6-month-old baby from Vietnam. Much to Jenny’s surprise, Thuy was a 5-year-old child who spoke no English. But undeterred by this change in plans, Jenny and her husband, David, decided to not only foster Thuy but to adopt her — giving her a permanent home in Oregon.
Thuy grew up in a largely white community, sharing a loving home with her parents and two younger sisters. But like many adoptees, the trauma of her early years in Vietnam stayed with her. Since trauma-informed adoption therapy did not exist at the time, Thuy’s parents looked for physical activities to help her find an outlet for her emotions. When she was 8, Thuy joined a children’s soccer team, and that was the beginning of her lifelong love of sports. “Playing soccer gave me something to do and took my mind off things as I could totally focus on the game,” she recalls.
In time, Thuy would take her passion for sports and turn it into a mission to help others. At the age of 20, Thuy joined the military for eight years, serving as a tank mechanic in the U.S. Army, in an effort to honor her birth father and to serve America, the country she loves. Upon her return to civilian life, Thuy became a sports coach, public speaker, mentor and missionary, eventually leading some 30 humanitarian trips to impoverished countries around the world. She’s focused her outreach on helping kids who’ve faced trauma — in the U.S., in war-torn countries and in refugee camps abroad.
Looking back on her time in Vietnam, her evacuation to safety through Operation Babylift and her life thereafter, Thuy says, “I believe we’re all put here on this earth for a purpose, and mine is to make a positive impact on children around the world. Because of the things I saw in Vietnam and the poverty I experienced, I think I’m able to connect with kids in refugee camps and in poverty. One of the things I love is going to an area where there’s no hope for kids and bringing out a soccer ball, and seeing the smiles on their faces. I think, if nothing else, I was put on this earth to give these kids a little bit of hope that things can get better. It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow. But there’s always a hope for something better.”
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