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District volunteers on way to Vietnam Floods washed out school's dedication but not theirs Thursday, November 11, 1999 By Lawrence Walsh, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
High water. Washed out roads. A 22-hour commute.
Getting to school shouldn't be that much trouble.
But to a group of dedicated Pittsburghers who helped build an elementary school in Da Nang in central Vietnam, the trip is well worth the effort.
Fifteen members of the Vietnam Children's Fund - Western Pennsylvania Project who raised more than $40,000 to build the school, left Saturday for Vietnam. They had planned to formally dedicate the school on Veterans Day, but recent storms washed out roads throughout the region where the school was located and also washed out the group's dedication ceremony.
They decided to go anyway and try to help the school children and their parents clean up from recent floods -- if they can.
"We'll do our best to get there," group leader Tony Accamando of Upper St. Clair said before leaving for Vietnam on Saturday.
"One of the government officials in Da Nang who worked on our school project used a rowboat to get to work," said Accamando, vice president of public and community affairs for Adelphia, a cable television company. "You have to admire that kind of determination."
Barring any more rain, the group shouldn't need rowboats to get around, said Marcia Landau of Unionville, Va., executive director of the Vietnam Children's Fund, a nonprofit charitable foundation. The Western Pennsylvania Project is one of many local chapters around the United States.
"The rain has subsided, the flood waters are receding and many of the roads have re-opened," she said.
Chris Butera of Bethel Park said her husband, Joe, a financial analyst for Consolidated Natural Gas Co., and their son, Joe Jr., a junior at Bethel Park High School, knew what they were getting into.
"They packed boots and rubber gloves so they would be able to help out if they could," Landau said, "but they certainly didn't expect to be helping flood victims when they planned this trip."
Along with about 60 others, the group raised $41,500 of the $45,500 needed to build the school in a rural area outside Da Nang. It opened this fall and has an enrollment of about 650 students.
Accamando said the group hopes to raise the remaining $4,000 before the end of the year.
Pete Peterson, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam and a former Vietnam War veteran and prisoner of war, had planned to help the Pittsburgh group dedicate the school outside Da Nang and another one about 60 miles away in Chu Lai. He now plans to tour the flood-stricken countryside.
Accamando said the idea to build a school in each of Vietnam's 40 provinces came from the late Lewis B. Puller Jr. of Richmond, Va., the son of the late Gen. Lewis "Chesty" Puller, the most decorated Marine in the history of the corps.
The younger Puller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Marine combat platoon leader, lost both legs and part of one hand when he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam.
He lived in constant pain and needed to use a wheelchair. But he never saw his dream become a reality. He became addicted to pain pills and alcohol and committed suicide in May 1994.
The schools outside Da Nang and Chu Lai are the fifth and sixth built by the fund, said Landau, a New York City native who now regrets that she had been an anti-war protester.
"We have at least 20 more schools scheduled for construction in the next five years," she said.
"Our goal is to graduate as many children from these schools as there are names on the Wall," she said, referring to the black granite wall in Washington, D.C., that lists the names of more than 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam.
"That would mean more than 58,000 children would know how to read and write," she said. "And that would be a wonderful thing for kids who once went to school in caves or thatched roof huts."
In addition to Accamando and the Burteras, the group includes Debbie Tulak, Thomas McGarvey, Judith Lorigan, Joseph Lagana, Shirley Hruby, Dodie Gaines, Thomas Fitzgerald, George D'Angelo, Daniel Cinowalt, Scott Brush, Louis Baldassare and Thanh Armagost, a Vietnamese native who will be the translator for the group.
For more information, contact the Vietnam Children's Fund -- Western Pennsylvania Project, 490 Hollydale Drive, Pittsburgh 15241, or call 412-833-6072.
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