Written by Ivy
|
23 April 2012
Dinner and drinks. This is one of the first things that comes to the minds of those in George Esper's, very wide, inner circle. It was an invitation you never passed up. "Dinner and drinks" meant more than a free meal, it meant an evening filled with stories, laughs, and more lessons learned than you thought possible in one night... sometimes more lessons than you thought possible in one lifetime.
George's "dinner and drinks" invitations were like a golden ticket. For many students, this offer was a rare opportunity to network with one of George's many famous friends. But for those of us gathered Saturday night for "dinner and drinks" in George's honor, we remember these invitations as treasured opportunities to learn more about the man who never spoke about himself.
"Okay, okay Peter, we know your interview with Osama bin Laden was amazing, but I want to ask you about George," Paul Sunyak remembered saying while recalling a dinner we shared with George, a group of students, and one of George's best friends Peter Arnett.
You see, George never spoke about himself. In fact, he rarely let others even talk about him. George was someone who made a special skill of deflection attention away from himself.
It was through these "dinner and drinks" evenings you learned who George Esper truly was. His friends told the best stories, which is why we often pressed them with questions. Paul was the best at this. He was never afraid to block out the spotlight from the night's featured guest in the hopes of learning one more thing about George.
But you learned the most by just watching George be George.
Last night was a night George would have loved. We told stories over sushi and wine, smiling and laughing while we remembered our dear friend. It was a "dinner and drinks" invitation in true George Esper style. It was the type of celebration we all hoped we could have had with George just one last time.
When I got back into town this afternoon, I started looking through some boxes (actually searching for the title to a car we're about to sell) and came across a box I had long forgotten about. Inside was a file I kept while traveling with George through Vietnam in 2005.
Nestled between copies of our personal documents, travel papers, and itineraries was the first draft of a story he wrote about returning to Vietnam. I remember George coming to my hotel room to use my laptop to file the story.
I sat back on the bed and watched him punch out this story at the desk across the room. I pretended to study for the statistics final I was scheduled to take upon returning home, but was really watching in awe at his signature hunt-and-peck typing style. I listened closely as he spoke to himself while piecing the story together. It was a rare opportunity to witness the story-writing process of an amazing journalistic hero.
I remember George turning to me after about a half hour and saying "I'm so sorry, you should be studying and here I am bothering you."
I laughed and said, "George, this is statistics... I could read this for the next two years and still have no clue what it says."
It became an ongoing joke of ours: "At least this isn't statistics."
I couldn't help but break into tears while reading the draft of this story. I remember George asking me to run down to the first floor business center of the hotel to print it out. When I came back to the room, he asked me to read over it. Of course, I already had on the way back up the stairs. I was too embarrassed to tell him though, so I read it again.
When I "finished," he laughed and said, "Now you see why I'm so nice to my editors. They make me look good."
* * * * * *
A correspondent revisits the fall of Saigon
By George Esper
Published: Saturday, April 30, 2005
HO CHI MINH CITY — For old times' sake, I knocked on the door of the third floor apartment where I had lived 30 years ago. Liu Ba Tho warmly greeted me and my friends and invited us in. Tho, now 67, and a retired engineer, served us cake and bottled water.
In my mind, I recalled the room in which I had slept, and how my two children, then five and three, had ducked under the bed during the fighting.
My apartment in the Eden Building in Ho Chi Minh City's Central Square had fallen into terrible disrepair. The old, shaky elevator was sealed off.
I remembered when, during the war days, if we had a big story, we would excitedly run up the four flights of steps to The Associated Press office to file.
I had chosen the apartment because it was right under my office. I rarely had a peaceful night's sleep - what with artillery, bombs and rockets exploding, jolting me out of bed and up to the office to check out each of the sounds of war.
I was in the AP bureau that fateful day 30 years ago: April 30, 1975, a historic day that forever changed my life and propelled me far beyond where I had intended to go.
After the last Americans had been evacuated by helicopter from the U.S. Embassy, a rear guard of 11 Marines scrambled aboard a helicopter in a blaze of tear gas and smoke grenades to keep back a stampede of panicky South Vietnamese trying to escape their Northern foes.
It wasn't long before a Vietnamese translator alerted me to the inevitable national radio broadcast.
"BULLETIN," I wrote. "Surrender." And then: "SAIGON (AP) - President Duong Van 'Big' Minh of South Vietnam announced Wednesday an unconditional surrender to the forces of North Vietnam."
Dispirited South Vietnamese troops marched from their outposts on the outskirts of Saigon to stack their weapons. It was from the AP bureau that I ran down the four flights of stairs to the Central Square to get reactions from them. There I ran into a police colonel. His eyes were crazed; his arms gesticulated wildly.
"Fini! Fini!" he yelled. As he fingered his holstered pistol, I feared he might shoot me because of the anger among the South Vietnamese who felt the Americans had abandoned them.
Instead, he turned and saluted a war memorial statue of South Vietnamese Marines, pulled the pistol from his holster and fired into his head. Soon after, North Vietnamese troops who took over the city destroyed the war memorial with sledgehammers as hundreds of people watched. The day was supposed to end a painful and divisive American era of involvement in Vietnam.
The incoming teletype in the AP bureau clicked off an urgent message from Wes Gallagher, then the president of the wire service, advising that a final helicopter might be returning.
"Any of you want to leave if it works out?" he asked of me and my colleagues.
"Thanks for your offer," I messaged back. "We want to stay, but have some nervous Vietnamese want to get out, please. FYI, the U.S. Embassy promised me they would take care of them, but in the chaos they were unable to get into the embassy to board helicopters."
Hundreds of South Vietnamese stampeded the embassy and tried to scale its 14-foot, or 4.2 meter, wall to reach evacuation helicopters. U.S. marines and civilians beat them back with their boots and rifle butts.
The war ended for me as I came encountered two of the nameless, faceless Communist soldiers I had written about for 10 years without ever seeing them, except in death or as prisoners of war. Two North Vietnamese soldiers walked into the AP office, showing us photos of their loved ones and telling us how much they missed them and wanted to get home.
I was reunited with one of those soldiers, Tran Viet Ca, who came by the Continental Hotel to see me. He told me he had been in the jungles for seven years. The photo he had shown me when he was 25 was of his girlfriend. Today, at age 55, he is retired from the army and is now a farmer.
"Both the Vietnamese and the U.S., most of the people, did not want war, only their governments," he said.
