Photos and Video :: The Early Years

The Early Years

(left) Bill Kimball the founder of Vets With a Mission. Bill now lives in Copenhagen with his wife Karin. Bill is retired, but peruses the arts as a sculptor.

One of our first medical projects was Northeast of Ho Chi Minh City in 1992, the Ham Tam Hospital. We donated $15, 800 for renovations to this facility. One of our earliest medical programs was sponsoring western doctors to train the Vietnamese physicians on the latest techniques in surgery and orthopedic procedures.

We also shipped numerous containers of medical supplies to the Ham Tam Hospital and the Center for Traumatology and Orthopedics’ in Ho Chi Minh City. Our medical work first began in 1992 in Ho Chi Minh City. It would later expand into rural areas near Da Nang and Hue. The picture to the right shows the welcome banner for the workshop on repairing Ham Tam Hospital on February 17, 1992.

In the early years in country transportation by air was via Aeroflot (our as we called it Aeroflop). They had a terrible safety record and on most flights upon boarding the plane I always take a look at the tires. On a few of those flights I thought I could see the air in the tires, they were so bald. I had a seat once that was not bolted down to the floorboard and upon fastening my seat belt my seat lifted up from the floor. The air conditioning system when turned on usually filled the passenger compartment with vapor and you could not see three seats in front of you. On one early morning flight to Da Nang the stewardess still had big rollers in her hair as she read the safety card. I’ve included a picture of one of the standard safety features of the Aeroflot engineering, a safety “rope” escape box. Notice the unique design of the box and handle. Put all these features together on these flights and you have a unique opportunity to start a “fresh prayer meeting”.

Today Vietnam Airlines has a new fleet of Euro Air Buses and flies the skies above Vietnam with confident, experienced pilots both Vietnamese and European trained. The flights are comfortable and most often on time and reliable if you don’t get bumped by a government big shot. Yes, no more escape ropes.

On that first flight back to Vietnam in 1989 as we stepped off the plane in Saigon we said together, “We’re back, we’re better and were bigger.” They say a picture says a thousand words; here is Big Mau from California standing next to a group of Vietnamese soldiers. All the children wanted to rub Mau’s Buda belly, as a token of good luck. Can you tell which one is the American in the photo? We were always bigger and we are back.