In this image from 1975, a young Vietnamese refugee sits on a cot in the Mount Angel Oktoberfest building.
Courtesy of the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel Archive
In April 1975, over 160 Vietnamese refugees fleeing Saigon found a temporary home in the Mount Angel Oktoberfest building.
Christine Rausch has been a Benedictine Sister at Mount Angel Abbey for over 70 years and is the order’s archivist. Among the many decades worth of historical documents is an album of photographs taken in late April 1975, when the nuns unexpectedly took in Vietnamese children fleeing from war.
Rausch recalled, “The call came in and asked if it was possible for us to take care of a plane load of Vietnamese refugees.”
It was the last days of the Vietnam War, and Saigon was about to fall to the communists. Thousands of people were trying to get out of the country.
For the nuns, there was no question of whether to take in the children, of course, the answer was yes.
In this screenshot from 2017, Christine Rausch of the Benedictine Sisters of Mount Angel Abbey looks through archival images showing Vietnamese refugees arriving in 1975.
Greg Bond/OPB
Each September, the town celebrates a traditional Oktoberfest in a large community building that serves as the beer garden, but in April, the structure was empty.
In a 2017 interview for the Oregon Experience documentary “The Vietnam War, Oregon Remembers,” Rausch described how quickly the community mobilized. “In a very short time, the town was buzzing.”
She said the city opened the Oktoberfest building, and within hours volunteers from the surrounding area filled it with cots, food, blankets and toys for the new arrivals. Most of the refugees were children and nuns from a Saigon orphanage for young polio victims.
In this image from 1975, a Vietnamese refugee is helped off a plane at the Portland International Airport before heading to Mount Angel, Oregon.
Courtesy of the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel Archive
Rausch recalled she was teaching first grade in Mount Angel at the time. She said that as soon as word came that the refugees were on their way, local schools released students early so the buses could transport the new arrivals. “We got word that the school was going to be closing at twelve o’clock. We would close and the school buses would go off to pick up the Vietnamese. We knew that they were refugees, fleeing the country and that they were orphans.”
The buses traveled to the Portland International Airport and transported the entire group to Mount Angel. At that point, they had been traveling for three days.
“— Christine Rausch, Benedictine Sisters of Mt. AngelIt was a very wonderful experience of community service working together.”
When they finally made it to their destination, the weather was cold and rainy, and Rausch remembers the children were exhausted, but volunteers did everything possible to make the beer hall welcoming. “They had it fixed up, and there was a kitchen, and they were preparing meals, so that when they arrived, they had food and a place to stay. It was a lot of caring people.”
Over the next few weeks, the children settled into their temporary home and visited Mount Hood, where many saw snow for the first time.
In this image from 1975, two Vietnamese refugees play with a tricycle at their temporary shelter in the Mount Angel beer hall.
Courtesy of the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel Archive
Volunteers helped document the names and other information of each child. Rausch said, “They processed each child and found out who they were. They found out where they came from and whether they had any family.”
Some children were reunited with family members or people they knew in the country, while others were adopted or placed in foster care. A few went on to California and Texas with some of the Vietnam nuns. Rausch said, “Within one month, they were all distributed somewhere.”
BEHIND THE SCENES
This photo from 1966, shows young Richard Bauman, not long after enlisting in the U.S. Navy. He would serve as a Seabee in the Vietnam War.
Courtesy of Richard Bauman
The Vietnamese refugees’ time at Mount Angel is part of the larger story of the Vietnam War covered in the 2017 Oregon Experience documentary “The Vietnam War, Oregon Remembers.”
My stepfather, Richard Bauman, was a Navy Seabee in Vietnam, but I had never heard much about his experiences while growing up. Like many Vietnam vets, he didn’t talk about his experiences. However, when I told him I was co-producing a documentary on Oregonians’ experiences during the war years, he agreed to take part.
Within the first few minutes of the interview, I learned more about his experiences than I had in all the many years I had known him.
He told me that as soon as he arrived in Vietnam, “We were right up on the DMZ. We were building housing facilities — we called them huts — for the Marines. They had been living in tents, and we built these buildings for them with metal roofs. Then they all got blown up. That was the first month.”
His story is just one of many covered in our 90-minute documentary “The Vietnam War, Oregon Remembers.”
