Dear Lana,

In answer to your request, yes you may post whatever you wish in your website. I am including the story of my few hours with my two little escorts.

Yesterday, I thought a lot about my experiences and wondered about those of so many others. Every act of that caring process, no matter how insignificant it seemed, was critical to the life of those people no matter their ages. It made a difference in their lives. Thank you for your service to all of those needy people. I am reminded of the song, What The World Needs Now (is love sweet love) - love like yours. We needed it then and we need it now, more than ever. Again, Lana, THANK YOU!

Michael Matson

Email address: kmm464@verizon.net

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My name is Michael Matson. I was returning stateside after a one-year tour of duty at Wallace Air Station in late April or early May (my memory is a bit foggy at the moment), 1975. When I got to Clark AB, I realized that I could get back to the states a week early if I were to volunteer as an escort for the orphans. I did just that. I wrote a story about my experience.

Also, I was able to communicate with a few adoptees two years ago.

I look back on my four-year tour in the USAF and realize that those 21 hours spent with those children on that flight is the single most eventful and important contribution that I could make. I want to think it made a difference.

I realize that my part was not much in comparison to the whole of the operation, but it was important to those babies.

When I arrived in San Francisco and handed over my wards, I realized that we had bonded in that short time together. I walked away knowing that they had touched my life in some significant way. . . like the green tendril of a sprout, if you will, forever bound in the constraints of my heart and soul. This has developed and grown with me over the years.

Having said that, at the 25th anniversary of Operation Babylift and afterward, I began wondering what might have been the lot of my two. I had two children to care for but one, the only non-baby on that flight, was a little boy of (I can only guess) age four to seven, and I imagine closer to five years of age. Sometimes I think that my knowing who they were and are would be considered none of my business, but I have read of several who have some insatiatiable urge to find out everything about themselves. Would it be possible to find out who that little boy was and what happened to him? If so, It might answer the question of a few hours of his journey.

My email address is kmm464@verizon.net.