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The Good Samaritan of Ho Chi Minh City
Tibor Krausz Bangkok
 TOUCHING TOURISTS: Blind Vietnamese pianists Dang Hoai Phuc and Duong Chi Hung feeling their way around the treasures of a Bangkok temple with ex-captain Peter Sheridan |
In 1970, Peter Sheridan, then a United States army captain, went to Vietnam to make war. Nowadays, the Jewish psychological-warfare veteran returns to the scenes of his battles on another kind of mission � to help the children of his former enemies.
After 23 years as a trial lawyer in Atlanta, Sheridan, 56, settled in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and opened a property development/export business. �I returned to Vietnam to make money,� says Sheridan, a large teddy bear of a man who is developing a beach resort and deals in handicrafts and antiques. �Instead, I made friends.�
Dozens of needy friends. In Saigon, every corner has its beggar and homeless children roam the streets � victims of rampant poverty and the aftershocks of a brutal war that ravaged the country until 1975. Sheridan is like a good Samaritan who helps those of them who cross his path. �I don't pick them,� he explains. �They pick me.�
They seem to pick him everywhere. As examples of his good works, he tells of a visit to an amputee ward, where he met a 20-year-old man whose hand had been mangled by a paper-cutting machine. Sheridan hired him as his security guard. Another time, he lent his motorbike to an acquaintance who crashed and ended up in a coma with severe head injuries. Sheridan footed his hospital bills and launched a one-man drive to persuade foreign companies and auto-makers like Suzuki and Yamaha to follow his example and issue their staff with helmets.
He also gets poor children back to school. He frees child laborers from rice paddies, fruit vendors from behind stalls, and even soldiers from uniform � and finances their way into the classroom. Now, some three dozen youngsters are studying on his money around Vietnam. �The parents may need convincing,� says Sheridan. �Their kids know it�s their last chance to study.�
Sometimes, though, he loses kids to the street. Some ditch studying for more lucrative occupations, such as petty thieving and picking pockets. Still, Sheridan remains on hand for promising young Vietnamese, however disadvantaged. He is managing two piano-playing prodigies who live in a home for the blind in Saigon. Dang Hoai Phuc, 18, a virtuoso already, lost his sight at age nine when a bomb he had dug up in his father�s rice field exploded in his face; Duong Chi Hung, 23, who has learned five languages by ear, became blind from measles at age 2.
In June, Sheridan brought them to Bangkok to audition with conservatories, rehearse with an orchestra � and take a �touching tour� of the Grand Palace, a glittering Buddhist royal temple complex in the heart of the city. Leading his friends by the hand around the gilded pagodas and spires, Sheridan described the stunning sights for them. Excited by so much beauty at their fingertips, Phuc and Hung delightedly felt the shapes of monkey and demon statues among all the �Don�t Touch� signs. �It was wonderful!� enthused Phuc after the tour. �People think the blind can�t do anything, but Peter makes us feel normal.�
Sheridan is also seeking donors for a bone-marrow transplant for a blind girl with leukemia, and looking for foreign hospitals specializing in restorative surgery for children not irreversibly sightless.
Sheridan's bond with his prot�g�s may go beyond simple benefaction. A divorc�, he�s just adopted 14-year-old Tung, a runaway whose father had forced him to peddle drugs. Tung lived on Saigon�s streets and one day latched on to the American. Sheridan bought him some fried chicken. �I watched him eat,� he recalls. �He even ate the bones, savoring them. I never saw hunger like that before.� Sheridan let the boy stay in his three-story house with his Vietnamese staff.
Tung never wanted to leave him again. �You have to be careful,� explains Sheridan, �these poor kids can jump into your heart.� This one sure did. Rather than let Tung lapse back into street life, Sheridan decided to adopt him. His 20-year-old daughter in San Francisco and his sister, a Satmar hasid in New Jersey, both gave him moral support. But Sheridan, who is not observant, won�t force his Jewishness on Tung. �He�ll chart his own path for himself,� he says.
For all his goodwill toward the Vietnamese, Sheridan makes no apologies for his role in the war. �We fought for a just cause and I feel no guilt at all,� he says. �But we caused enough destruction and it�s time Americans did some good.�
In 1970 and 1971, he commanded a psychological operations battalion to break down the Viet Cong�s morale. He broadcast propaganda messages from low-flying aircraft, dropped leaflets on enemy strong-holds, and distributed �Wanted� posters for Viet Cong cadres. His name, in turn, featured on the Communists� own hit-list. Now, one of his friends is a police chief who wanted to take him out in the war.
Changes of heart notwithstanding, Vietnam�s Communist authorities still look askance at �capitalists.� Sheridan�s Saigon offices have been subject to midnight police raids and he has to fight daily battles with bureaucracy. Last September, after he had refused them bribes, the authorities withdrew his residency permit. Sheridan now runs his business by remote control from Bangkok, returning every month on short visits to Saigon, where he still maintains his house for his staff and Tung.
But he hasn�t abandoned his prot�g�s. He�s busy setting up a charity in Saigon to provide scholarship for poor students, no-interest loans for farmers, and equipment for provincial schools. �Little things,� says Sheridan, �go a long way in Vietnam.�
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