Sayonna Randall ZHS '64

Many times over the years we have been asked if we know of any Zebras who lost their lives in Vietnam. Determining this has proved to be difficult. We have compared the names of each male Zebra we have been unable to locate with the list of those who lost their lives in Vietnam, and have come up with a handful of possibilities, i.e. names which match, with ages appropriate for their class year in Zaragoza. However, we have no way to verify with any certainty as in none of those few situations do we have a link to any family members. And of course we like to be very sure when dealing with classmates who might be deceased.

We have also reviewed the names of military women who lost their lives, and found no classmates. However, in attempting to locate Sayonna Randall, a member of the class of '64 who attended ZHS as a seventh grader in 1959, we found a couple of leads. A more extensive search led us to have interaction with people familiar with the history of Operation Babylift -- which you may recall was an effort to evacuate orphans from Vietnam before the eventual fall of Saigon -- and the conclusion that Sayonna was on the initial, and ill fated, flight from Saigon which crashed April 4, 1975, taking her life and the lives of almost all aboard.

While there is a margin for error in our conclusion, the following factors were considered by us and the officials we communicated with:
1. The uniqueness of her name -- Sayonna.
2. Her age at death -- 29, in 1975 -- which corresponds to H. S. graduation in 1964.
3. Viewing of her picture from the ZHS yearbook by a close friend very familiar with Sayonna and the particulars of Operation Babylift. She is confident that her friend Sayonna and our Zebra are one and the same person. Further, she adds that Sayonna never married and thus was still Sayonna Randall.

Below is the note from the lady who assisted us with our search and identification, along with an Excerpt from an article detailing Operation Babylift. There are many related articles on the Internet.
Nancy Knell Reeves ZHS ' 64


Nancy, I'm glad I could be of help. The woman who identified Sayonna's photo remembers her every day along with the other women she worked with who died on that flight. Your alumni might also want to know that the women and men who served in Vietnam remember the civilian and military women who died in Vietnam at the Wall every Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Their names, including Sayonna's, have been read in ceremonies, the most recent being the 15th anniversary of the Vietnam Women's Memorial last November. As long as we're around, they won't be forgotten.
Best,
Ann


Excerpt: It became more and more apparent in the spring of 1975 that the Communist were gaining an upper hand in the fighting and that Saigon could be under Communist control in a few months, or possibly even weeks. Consequently, a plan evolved to evacuate as many orphans as possible out of Saigon. The objective of the plan, which was dubbed "Operation Babylift," was to rescue the orphans from what were expected to be even worse conditions than the children had been used to. Critics charged that the real intent of the operation was to arouse public sympathy in the United States in a last, desperate attempt to have the U.S. government increase its support of the South Vietnamese government. In addition, they charged that Operation Babylift was primarily intended to covertly evacuate American civilians and dependents. By being escorts for the orphans, the United States could get non-essential civilians out of Vietnam but avoid the appearance that it had lost faith in the South Vietnamese government and preclude starting a panic among the civilian population. Tragically, the first flight of "Operation Babylift" ended in disaster.
Major General Homer Smith, as the Defense Attaché in Saigon at the time, was the highest-ranking American military person in Vietnam, reporting to the American Ambassador, Graham Martin. At the end of April 1975, General Smith would become one of the last American heroes in Vietnam because he was largely responsible for what, in retrospect, was one of the most difficult, but successful, evacuations in U.S. military history. General Smith has related what happened that fateful day in an email to the author:
I received an order from Washington on 4 April 1975 to backload any U.S. aircraft I could lay my hands on with American/Vietnamese orphans to be flown back to the U.S. The first plane I could commandeer was a C-5A that had landed that day with a load of reconditioned 105mm howitzers for the ARVN. We loaded 226 orphans and 70 civilians. The orphans came from several orphanages in Saigon. The civilians included women from the staff of the Defense Attaché's Office, some third country nationals and a few dependents When the plan crashed shortly after take-off, 138 orphans, 39 civilians and 11 crew members were killed.

Specifically, shortly after take-off, a cargo-loading door blew off the giant transport. The pilot, who survived the crash, tried desperately to control the aircraft and nurse it back to Tan Son Nhut for an emergency landing, but he was forced to crash-land the plane in a rice paddy a few miles from the airport. The exact number of casualties, or even the number of persons on board that ill-fated flight, has never been exactly determined, with sources citing different numbers, with the orphans killed ranging from 138 to "over 200."