A fateful flight

Jennifer Nguyen Noone, 36, has had a pretty normal life. She was raised by two loving parents in Garden City South, attended Washington Street School in Franklin Square and H. Frank Carey High School, and graduated with a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University.

Noone’s life might have been completely different, however, without a 1970s program initiated by President Gerald Ford following the Vietnam War, and an American soldier who carried Jennifer to safety when she was an infant.

Following the cease-fire agreement signed by the U.S. and Vietnam in 1973, Da Nang, South Vietnam’s second-largest city, fell to North Vietnam in March of 1975. That April, Saigon, South Vietnam, was under attack by the North Vietnamese. South Vietnam was slowly deteriorating, and when the nation began to run out of resources needed to care for children abandoned during the war, Vietnam asked the U.S. for help.

In April 1975, Ford announced the creation of Operation Babylift, a program to fly Vietnam orphans to the U.S. and other countries. Ford also set aside $2 million to aid children who would be coming to America.

The operation ran for nearly three weeks, and some 2,700 children were flown out of South Vietnam to the U.S., while 1,300 more were flown to Canada, Australia and Europe. Jennifer was one of the last babies to be transported to the U.S., a tiny passenger on the last flight out of Vietnam on April 26, 1975.

Lana and Byron Noone, who have lived in Garden City South since they were married in 1970, and tried unsuccessfully to conceive in the first several years of their marriage, decided to turn to adoption in 1975. They knew nothing about Operation Babylift, however, until they met someone from the Long Island Chapter of Friends of Children of Vietnam. After endless paperwork and a month-long hospitalization for Jennifer, who was being treated for impetigo and scabies, Jennifer came to the Noone home on June 5, 1975.