A reunion 34 years in the making By Bill Osinski
ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Serving in Vietnam in May 1969, medic Richard Hock and
head triage nurse Donna Rowe, right, joined forces to save an orphaned baby they
named Kathleen. On Monday, the three were reunited for the first time at Fort
Sam Houston in San Antonio.
FORT SAM HOUSTON — After 34 years, they got to hold their "baby" again.
Kathleen Epps landed Monday on a parade ground on this Army post in a Huey
helicopter, the same type of craft that brought her to 3rd Field Hospital in
Saigon, South Vietnam, in May 1969.
Then, she was a wounded infant, the sole survivor of an enemy attack on her
village. Now, she is a wife and mother of three girls, living in a small town in
northern California.
The two people on the parade ground guiding her Huey to a landing Monday had
been there for her at the hospital as well.
Donna Rowe, now a real estate broker in Atlanta, was the head triage nurse,
who made the decision — against standing military policy — to treat the wounded
baby. Richard Hock, an Atlanta paramedic, was a hospital medic during the
Vietnam War. They were both trained in medicine here on the post by the Army
before they were deployed.
They saved the child's life, became her godparents, named her Kathleen and,
once she left the hospital, never saw her again — until Monday.
Rowe, a former captain, broke with military protocol the moment the chopper
blades stopped and rushed to embrace Epps.
She retold the story of Epps' rescue, then sang a few bars of the baby's
namesake ballad:
"I'll take you home again, Kathleen,
To where your heart will feel no pain,
To where the fields are fresh and green."
Hock presented Epps with his second most highly treasured Vietnam memorial,
his Combat Medical Badge. The act of helping save the wounded baby was his No.
1, he said.
Epps was a stoic patient at the Saigon hospital, Rowe and other staffers
said. She's still that way.
"This is all just surreal to me. It hasn't quite sunk in on me yet," she said
when asked to describe her emotions for the television cameras.
Still, she said, the impact of the reunion had been very powerful for her.
"I was the baby brought to 3rd Field Hospital. Now, here I am with my
surrogate family," Epps said. "I wasn't expecting to find these people in my
lifetime."
She began her search for her rescuers about 12 years ago. "I wanted something
to be able to tell my children about where I came from," she said.
What she will tell them and her grandchildren, she said, is that "I'm here
today because a lot of people went out on a limb for me."
Those people included the infantrymen who found the baby girl in her dead
mother's arms and called for the helicopter rescue, the helicopter pilot who
broke the rules by taking the child to an American hospital, and Rowe and the
others at 3rd Field Hospital who treated her despite a soldiers-first policy.
For Hock, it was the best moment of his nearly three years in Vietnam.
"Sometime in everybody's life, you get a chance to do something right,
something good," he said. "It does my heart good to know we did the right thing,
and she made it."
Aid from Austin
The reunion was made possible in more than one way by a pair of Austin
filmmakers who are producing "In the Shadow of the Blade," a documentary about
Huey rescue missions in Vietnam, called "dustoffs."
In October, Rowe told them the story of the baby's rescue while they were
shooting footage at Kennesaw State University. Her comments also became part of
a story in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the making of the film.
A researcher who was helping Epps find the hospital staffers saw the article
on a Web site, and then Epps contacted Cheryl Fries, the film's creative
director.
Though the film was in its final stages of editing, Fries decided to put
together one more landing-zone shoot. Corporate sponsors of the film, including
Southwest Airlines and Columbia Helicopter Co. of Portland, Ore., provided the
funding.
"We think this is the perfect happy ending for our movie," said Fries, who,
with her husband, Patrick, formed Austin-based Arrowhead Films, the
documentary's production company.
To Fries, the film has become as much a mission as a movie.
"This is about showing a side to the Vietnam War that's hardly been heard
before," she said. "We were honored to bring these people together."
A family gathering
Besides Rowe and Hock, the characters in the Baby Kathleen story who came to
Fort Sam Houston on Monday included Ed Russell and Roy Entin, who had been
chaplain's assistants at 3rd Field Hospital; Epps' adoptive parents, Marvin
Cords and Sally Gibson; and Epps' husband, Billy, and their three daughters,
Mary Ann, 8, Jo-Jo, 6, and Sean, 5.
They searched their emotional databanks for the right way to describe what
the reunion meant to them.
Russell said Epps and the family she has built are a tribute to the
compassion of those who helped save her.
"This is their legacy in one person," he said.
Though Russell left the hospital a few days before the baby arrived, he was
the one who made the first contact with her and helped her find the others.
For Sally Gibson, the story has a strong spiritual element.
"I always told Kathleen that she was very special and that God had a plan for
her life," Gibson said. "Why would she be the only survivor?" After the reunion
at the parade ground, the members of the reunion party went to the post
auditorium to address a class of prospective Army nurses and medics who might
soon be called to duty in another war.
Rowe said the story of saving Baby Kathleen is highly relevant today.
"Why did we do what we did?" she said. "Because our core American values of
courage, compassion and commitment had been driven down into our soul. Because
it was the right thing to do."
Epps told the audience, "I don't know why I'm here still. Maybe my story can
give a little hope to our soldiers in Iraq, a hope that there are good things
that can come out of a war."
Donna Rowe's scrapbook includes a war correspondent's photo of baby Kathleen
surrounded by her surrogate American family.
Hock is at center; Rowe is at right. Photo
by Helen Musgrove
