The nurse who helped rescue people, clear polluted soil

Lady Borton has been to all the three regions – northern, central and southern – in Vietnam in the war to help people. 

Lady Borton decided to come to Vietnam when the country was in war. In 1969, at the age of 27, she worked as a nurse for the US’s Quaker Service, a humanitarian organization which sent volunteers to Vietnam to help both sides, promote peace and justice, and overcome the consequences left by the war. She endeavored to carry patients to and from the hospital, and worked with teams cleaning up polluted land.

Recalling the years of her youth, she said she wanted to be present in Vietnam to do something to help Vietnamese people. 

In Vietnam, she stayed in Quang Ngai province where she saw Vietnamese who were poor and miserable because of the war. She met many patients who were farmers, and many were children who had lost their legs because of mines while they were tending buffalo.

Lady Borton also understood the painful losses of Americans who participated in the war. Some of them were forced to become soldiers, while others voluntarily joined the army and went to Vietnam. Many of them could not return from the war, others were injured, or became disabled, or were missing. She felt anguish at the losses.

When the war ended, to re-establish relations, liaison officers are necessary. According to Lady Borton, there were two special persons – Dave Elder and John McAuliff. They traveled between Washington and New York at the time when there was only a Vietnamese representative at the United Nations.

In 1977, the US State Department did not allow Vietnamese government representatives to go out of the Manhattan area in New York City. They had to stay within the UN area. However, Americans in the peace movement sometimes got permission from the department to invite Vietnamese representatives to enter Philadelphia to attend weekend picnics and meet with Americans and Vietnamese in the US.

Later, when recalling these days, Lady Borton said the events were very important, and if there had been no event organizers like Dave Elder and John McAuliff, there would not have been memories to celebrate the two countries’ relations.

John McAuliff and the Reconciliation and Development Fund connected and enhanced exchanges between individuals and non-governmental organizations of the US and Vietnam. He made great efforts in people's diplomacy with Vietnam for more than half a century, and helped Vietnamese Agent Orange victims.

Since 1969, Lady Borton has been traveling between Vietnam and the US so many times that she has lost count of the number of trips. In the 1980s, she returned to Vietnam and stayed here for many months to write a book - "After Sorrow", which is similar to a diary about the time she spent in rural areas of Vietnam during the war, the book was helpful for understanding and normalizing Vietnam-US relations after the war.

Her work is close to the Vietnamese people in the countryside and is the voice of reconciliation and innovation. In the foreword to Lady Borton's book “After Sorrow,” famous writer and political activist Grace Paley wrote that Borton had vowed to love and understand the Vietnamese.

In 1990s, Lady Borton moved to Hanoi to work. 

In 1993-2004, as chief representative of the Quakers in Vietnam, she directed many projects on developing irrigation and clean water and providing capital to poor women. She helped press agencies in Vietnam edit articles written in English, and organized a many meetings between Vietnamese and American writers’ and publishers’ associations.

She met Marines Colonel Chuck Meadows in the late 1990s when he returned to Vietnam to repair the damages caused by the war. As the Executive Director of PeaceTrees Vietnam, an organization that helps Vietnamese people find and safely transport landmines left over from the war. When a place is cleared of landmines, trees are planted there. Tens of thousands of acres of land have been cleared for farming.

She and painter David Thomas published the book "Ho Chi Minh A Portrait" on the occasion of the 113th anniversary of President Ho Chi Minh's birth (2003) and helped the Ho Chi Minh Museum compile a book about Nguyen Ai Quoc's case in Hong Kong 1931 with documents she had collected from many countries. She was awarded the Friendship Medal by the Vietnamese Government in 1998.

Nguyen Bach