Operation Babylift Collection
50 years since the end of the Vietnam War • America 250 • A call to remembrance, dignity, and community care
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2025 marks 50 years since the end of the War in Vietnam, and 50 years since the first Operation Babylift flight—the C-5A Galaxy—crashed outside Saigon, taking 178 lives. One of the survivors was Devaki Murch, an adoptee who would one day become the steward of the archives that tell this story.
In March 2024, at an adoptee gathering in Boulder, Colorado, Sister Mary Nelle Gage pulled Devaki aside. In her basement sat 33 boxes of original archival material from Friends for All Children (FFAC), the adoption agency that operated in Vietnam and later in Boulder. She needed a plan for what would happen to them when she could no longer care for them.
She chose Devaki—not because she had archival credentials (she didn’t), but because she trusted her to do this differently.
Devaki is a trade show and event producer by profession. For more than twenty years, her work has centered on gatherings where people matter, where the underdog gets seen, where kindness is not an afterthought but structural design. She understands how humans move through emotional moments—how to give them space, dignity, time, and yes, excellent snacks.
Those skills turned out to be exactly what this archive needed.
At age 83, Sister Mary Nelle—who had been in Vietnam in 1975 as the Assistant Director of FFAC—carried boxes up the stairs with Devaki: adoptee files, caregiver letters, flight and transportation manifests, handwritten correspondence, litigation documents, plywood-mounted photo collages, 8mm films, VHS tapes, magazines, and original records that survived the chaos of April 1975.
A few months later, while sorting adoptee files, Devaki asked if her file was down there.
“Yes,” Sister Mary Nelle smiled. “Somewhere.”
She brought up a stack of folders. Devaki opened the first one.
“Mommy!!!”
Her mother’s handwriting—her adoption letter—was sitting at the top of the pile.
This was proof of intention, of love, of being chosen.
Proof she had longed for, without ever searching.
Earlier, author and Babylift veteran Linda Boris had emailed Devaki the original C-5A survivor manifest. On it was MIMOSA, Devaki’s nursery name. Again: proof. Place. Time. Reality.
Devaki wasn’t searching for her history. It found her.
If this could happen to someone not looking, what might it mean to someone who is?
A New Model of Community Archives
Delivering someone’s adoptee file is not a transaction—it is a moment of transformation.
It cannot be emailed. It cannot be reduced to PDFs in a portal.
This is where Devaki’s background becomes a methodology.
She meets adoptees in person.
She hands them a clasp envelope in the same style FFAC used in the 1970s.
She creates space for them to open it alone first—without an audience.
She stays if needed. She leaves room if not.
She follows up.
Because the delivery IS the archive.
This is bell hooks’s Love Ethic in practice:
care, commitment, knowledge, respect, responsibility, trust.
What traditional archival training calls “bias,” Devaki recognizes as relationship and responsibility. What academia calls “inefficient,” the love ethic methodology identifies as essential.
This approach is trauma-informed, community-led, and deeply human.
Why This Work Matters Now
The 50-Year Anniversary Window
Those who were adults in 1975 are aging. Their memories—vital context that gives life to the documents—must be recorded now.
The adoptees themselves are in their 50s, ready for connection, meaning, and reunion.
The materials keep arriving:
new photos, letters, records, artifacts repeating the same plea—
“Tell my story.”
America 250
As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, America is reckoning with identity, belonging, migration, and community.
Operation Babylift is a chapter of that story—one that reflects grief, resilience, humanitarian action, and the complexities of American involvement abroad.
The Operation Babylift Collection invites the country to remember, to question, and to care.
A New Standard for Ethical Archives
The Operation Babylift Collection is proving that:
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Love is a methodology, not sentimentality.
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Care is rigorous.
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Trauma-informed practice produces better outcomes than extraction.
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Community stewardship is not optional; it is ethical obligation.
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People—not institutions—own their stories.
Where traditional archives create distance, this project creates connection.
Where traditional systems passively wait, this project proactively reaches out.
Where institutions prioritize preservation, this project prioritizes people.
This is not just an archive.
It is a living, breathing ecosystem of stories, relationships, and care.
Support This Work
The Operation Babylift Collection is powered by community support, collaboration, and the belief that history deserves to be handled with dignity.
Your support helps ensure that:
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adoptees receive their records with care
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elders’ testimonies are recorded before it’s too late
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archives remain accessible to the community
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exhibitions, books, and public programming can reach wider audiences
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history is preserved in a way that does not harm the people it belongs to
For more information or to support the Operation Babylift Collection, contact: