Anne Ripley and Sharron Dorr

00:05 Good morning. My name is Anne Ripley. I'm 76 years old is February 10th 2021?

00:14 I'm currently located in Chicago, but formerly in Boston.

00:20 My conversation partner is named Sharron Dorr, and we met the very first day in college a long time ago.

00:31 An as an indicated, my name is Sharon door. I 2 and 76 years old. It is February 10th 2021 and I'm located in Geneva, Illinois. And my partner is in Appleton Ripley and we have been friends since the first day of college in 1962. So we have now known each other almost 60 years and and I've had a whole lifetime of experiences and Adventures with you and among the many stories of your remarkable life my favorite and perhaps the most inspiring is of you working in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand.

01:31 Show me more about that again you were there three times as I recall. How did you get into this? And what year did you first go?

01:44 Okay, so I first went well, I was kind of at a low point in my nursing career and I was house painting. I just needed a change and then a longtime news articles over and over again in the fall of 1979 that that were describing the Despair and horrible humanitarian crisis of the cambodians desperate to get out from the what was called The Killing Fields of Cambodia and into refugee camps on the border with Thailand and naturally as we all know Refugee crisis have a lot of politics and there were a lot of politics but included in those politics were Jimmy Carter's wife President Carter's wife asking for volunteers to join.

02:42 The Red Cross through the international committee for the Red Cross and the Georgetown University Medical Community. And we took a team of 15 people over to to work in Thailand four miles from the border where you could still hear the guns going off and where soldiers would come in at Night from from Cambodia and steal away the young boys to take back to fight with them. It was it was it was a very stressful time and the people who we worked with had been allowed to come across the border only 5 weeks prior to our arrival. So we arrived at just the time when

03:35 The bottom of their life was reached today. They were in rags. They were wearing shoes flip-flops that were made from from rubber tires. They were action colored they were they had all kinds of symptoms of malnutrition then and parasites and malaria and everything else and lots of people died. It was the despairing moment in which my only Instinct was to give

04:09 Absolutely everything I could everything every poor to give to them because the need was so enormous.

04:21 And what I what I discovered out of that, of course is

04:26 Is what has underpinned the rest of my life, which is go where you can be useful find a place to be useful and give it everything. You've got to MIT your Alice Lee and it will change your life as it has changed mind several times. So that's that's how I got into it. And I remember your telling me that you were impressed with how quickly a government can fall.

04:57 Yeah in in time in Cambodia.

05:03 Under the threat of American bombs dropping on every major city.

05:10 The the insurrectionists name to Khmer Rouge

05:18 Frightened everyone with bullhorn saying the Americans are going to drop bombs, which they had been American had been dropping bombs along the border with Vietnam the Vietnam War and and they've been dropping bombs there and and so the Cambodian peasants from the border on the east side were rushed into the cities to protect themselves. And so when the Khmer Rouge which was a sort of a latent political movement from many years, but hadn't done anything. They just grass power and within 3 days.

05:58 All the cities fell everybody was evacuated from the cities and the people will wearing glasses obviously could read so they were educated. Therefore they were killed and anybody that was known to be educated was killed and children are made to spy on their parents and tell the Khmer Rouge what their parents were saying secretly and if that was that was counter to what the government wanted to hear that they would be killed and it and that's hole. Of 5 years became known as The Killing Fields and there were up to three million people maybe more chilled of their own people. It was a civil war killing their own people and we came close to a moment that scared the bejesus out of me just once a month ago.

06:54 And and I could when I was in Thailand and I knew governments could fall fast.

07:03 And I heard a month ago because of the history of my experience and we have to be really careful or we too will be rushing to the borders. And anyways, I don't want to be catastrophic here.

07:24 But it is realistic.

07:27 What you confronted in the camp was the need for raw survival and the predominance of fundamental human needs. Yeah. Yeah. The number one thing was well after there were several number one things number one food number 2

08:00 Number one water number one medicine number one shelter

08:07 And number one safety from being attacked in the Night by some some kid with a gun and basic basic human needs were the first thing that had to be attacked by those of us who came in healthy ready to work, you know pitching in doing whatever we could know again, we didn't have medicine and food was a difficulty because when someone is so many many many people were

08:47 Spot it is extremely you have to feed them extremely carefully or they can die.

08:53 I can't take it in. So so there were there were nutrition centers shut up. By the way. I should mention my group was one of several there were other what they call ngos which means non-government organizations such as care World Vision and a variety of religious organizations, you know, a lot of Norwegian group called women who knows how to do things and that is named concern. There are some really excellent groups and that comes in the year the first year. It was just medical groups one after another after another.

09:48 And until we all worked hard everybody worked hard. I just knew my group best. That's all.

09:55 Tell me about the the Christmas party and the gift exchange. It was during the Christmas holidays that we went because a lot of people could take that time off so we went for 6 weeks and

10:20 At Christmas during the Christmas New Year's week the volunteers put together some money. It wasn't probably very much but it was enough to give every Refugee a present and every military person on the phone at the camp also a present for a little presents and the two presents that I remember one was one was looking at a young couple who had gotten as a present for Christmas a baby rattle, which they had. No use for it that point but it anyway so much joy so much joy to get a present that it was it was beyond Joy. They were laughing uncontrollably and dancing and a pure delight and life was renewed. It was so powerful.

11:14 And then there was a young boy who I have befriended and I had given him a pad of paper and some crayons and when when I was about to leave he brought me back the whole pad of paper with art on it. He had transformed the paper and the crayons into art to express his life experience because we had no words between us we could only share body language and just the the emotional intensity between two beings and and his expect to me was this wonderful book. I still have it of his art showing

12:03 Pictures of his time in the jungle and and the wildness of that experience and the fear and it all it all was imprinted into the pictures and that was very moving and still meaningful. This is now 40 years later.

12:27 So yeah, that was that was powerful.

12:31 End and it moved you so much. I recall you said once that one picture was of deer in the rice fields at dawn just idyllic and with such a strong sense of Nature and you yourself have a very strong sense of Nature and that whole experience moved you so much that you wanted to go back the next year. Tell us about the next year old man. Will the next year. I really did want to go back and I happen to mention to somebody that I wanted to go back and he said well then I'll buy your ticket.

13:15 And I I was stunned and then I had to do something. So as it happened, he bought the ticket and I

13:26 I grabbed the book The Wave as I like to say in my life phone when I'm wave of opportunity comes by and you grab it really hard. You're you're you're going to be taking place and I grabbed this wave of opportunity. I was able to get time off from my work if I was able to find somebody to stay with some organization to stay with in Thailand. And then I raise pretty nearly overnight 13 or 14 thousand dollars.

14:01 Which here would buy that much but there at those in that knows years if bought an enormous amount and I decided that my friend should come with me. So we both went and we we used every horny of that 15 * 14, whatever number to to provide supplies to the first week that we were there. We went to to each organization which by then had gotten a little more established the camp which has been about three thousand people here before was know about 15,000.

14:42 And the following year the third year when I finally went back again. It was closer to 22000. But this year we went to each organization. We ask them what small thing their organization couldn't just provide for them and the timely way that they needed it and that we would do that. So we were able to discover that the people who ran the hospital needed fans because of the malaria and the high fevers and the Heat and everything else and we went we found out some trusted friends from the year before that that it would be wonderful if we could get some small engines in 05 horsepower. So that people in the camp could learn a trade they could learn how to fix engines we learn we figured out

15:42 Sewing machines would be a big help and then you'd have since this is on your hand and then you know, the silly little things like manicures and pedicures and so we gave some tools to three or four women to become beauticians. If you will need some scissors to get have somebody to start a barbershop and so we saw the need for very small things in the in the community that has now become as big as my town and and we saw ways to help and went to Bangkok and bought everything and brought it all back while we were in Bangkok by chance. I met somebody who is a reporter and was one of the very first reporters allowed in to pnom Penh the capital of Cambodia.

16:36 Sense of 6 years ago and she took a lot of slides and I happened to say could could I get a copy of those slides tomorrow and take them to the camp to show people not she had been in Thailand and Cambodia the week before so these were very new.

17:00 And I had to go through the channels and go to see the general in charge of the camping and because it would have to be at night when it was dark enough to show slides and we weren't allowed there at night and he agreed and so we set up a you set up a sheet hanging down from a from a covered area that had a roof over it and then and then it was hung on the edge of this open-air Pavilion.

17:34 Well, these people were very small and sitting side-by-side with their knees way up to their chin and not moving a muscle.

17:46 There were apparently I'm told ten thousand people watching the slideshow.

17:55 Because it shows everybody in the camp.

18:01 Everybody in the cap came off as entertainment for one thing. But but everybody came and there was absolute silence. It was absolutely silent as people watched the slides one after another after another and when I went back to the camp the next day people were in tears because five or six people at Sheen's family members alive in those pictures who they had thought were dead.

18:35 Everything for them so that would be the tragedy of family separation.

18:45 Had been resolved for some of those people very few but some and and it was a powerful moment of an instinct that I had to ask for those slides and an opportunity to show them.

19:02 And I'm the difference that it made it was memorable. It was memorable.

19:11 And what I've always loved about that story is that it happened. Again. It happened at Christmas and the first year you gave that young man the pad of paper and he gave you a heart and the second hear you you have the instinct to show those slides and at Christmas.

19:43 Gave people hope

19:48 Enjoy it was the best Christmas present. They possibly could have gotten

19:58 Yeah, well it I know it had an impact, you know giving them the raw materials of this is another feature that the things that we bought in Bangkok and brought back to the camp functional useful things tools wood instrument materials for 13 and 14 thousand dollars. We could buy and provide a lot of things that didn't cost that much that could make a living to teach people how to make a living for themselves and create their own community on their own and so providing that just being able to the the empowering thing for me.

20:55 Was that I was completely unconstrained by anything but my own creative effort and and I just poured it out into everything I could see that could help to create.

21:16 She create their own lives. I mean I wasn't going to be there forever. So if I could give somebody some scissors to cut hair he can have a business.

21:26 A little bit of money and that was what we were trying to do was to create little ways in which we could give somebody the chance to build on it. And the truth of the matter is they did they were so eager. They were like dry sponge is sucking up opportunity and so eager to get refugees.

21:52 They're not things behind the fence. Then there were some disgusting moments when some tourists came and stood on the other side of the fence at one of the camps, but I was just in little pink short shorts and a tank top and flip-flops and laughing and pointing animals how you have to tell you that they were complete.

22:21 Unbelievably courageous Brave and creative human beings and I became very good friends with several of them and when they got able to come to the United States and Canada and it happened I was getting married. I invited them to my wedding in part to see them again and then part to give them a chance to have a reunions they did.

22:53 Credibly fun. People many many refugees have survived. They have to be fine. They have to be fun. So I came away with was a sense of the honor and the dignity and the resilience of course of people in Refugee crisis.

23:18 States are not to be disrespected.

23:21 And so what you realized I gather is that you as an American could provide the raw tools.

23:37 That they needed and and they asked for the role. They asked me for the tools that they wanted. So there you are. It started from them. They asked me for the tools.

23:59 And I gave it to them without question and then they created their lives. So I went back for another year the following year and took with me to other nurses and an english-as-a-second-language teacher.

24:16 And we went back to the same camp and many of the same people were there and they were that I say by now there were twenty-three thousand refugees in that camp. Show it more than doubled over that year.

24:32 The camp was orderly there was a sense of structure to the camp a magnificent Cultural Center has been built out of bamboo and and and and things like that. It was a gorgeous building and education center been set up a naturally all the health centers and and the various angios had two different buildings and people had structures that they had made into a home Bank of building, but they weren't very private.

25:11 You know, they had a skinny wall between separating units but no doors. And so there were lots of blue plastic sheets hanging in front of the doors to give some privacy, but the creative efforts if they made it to make Beauty and order in the surrounding was phenomenal and the gardens jungle. So there's a lot of water and then you know things grow fast. There was a banana tree that was planted the second year. I was there. It was about 4 feet high and when I went back to third year, it was more like 10 or 15. It was very tall and producing bananas.

25:53 Which brings me to a story actually about which I have been very stupid. I couldn't I can't believe I did it but we were sitting together having a snack many of these Cambodian friends. I've made very good friend and and we talked and body language, but we also by then they had some English.

26:28 And we were each given a banana or somehow. We got one and I was opening mine from the stem end and they were opening their eyes from the other and I tried to correct them to tell them how I can't believe I did that it was open. It had to take the skin third year when I went back the gardens were.

27:19 Abundance, so they had a lots of green vegetables in food to the gardens were amazing first year that started with the gardens II year among other people we gave them some seeds as well. They had created their their wonderful Gardens that also created trade goods I should say and the trade goods were all baskets. In this case. No other refugee camps that I went to the mostly women did and and men who have been injured in the war ended up doing the crafty things in this Camp. They'd be allowed to go out into the jungle and gather long Vines very long Vines and then they had panels of metal with different size holes in it and the children's job was to pull the vines through the holes and strip them down so that they were all of equal size.

28:19 And then they did pull up against a slightly smaller hole and then chill it. To be a very fine read which could be used to a weave baskets and the basket was top-notch five-star the tops fit exactly on the bottom know because they didn't have any metal findings to put on purses or something like that to hold the shot her to hold the handle on they they use just pieces of 10, but each piece is tens was decorated with little designs and so on and everything sit meticulously and beautifully they were several of them still and I treasure them I treasure them for what they represent which is despair turned into hope

29:19 And did you believe it was Beauty? They can't believe that they were made in a refugee camp.

29:31 Have funded of dire necessity and it didn't cost them anything and and and I must say those baskets were magnificent.

29:48 So they created order.

29:52 They could no music or storytelling was allowed during the five years of the Khmer Rouge rule of The Killing Fields. No stories. No culture. No history. Nothing. The whole culture was supposed to start in 1974 everything before it was too little rated. Everything was what they called year zero.

30:23 And you know there were people who were very very well-known musicians who had to hide all their skills and talents and they got to this they got to this camp and in our case we were able to provide the materials for them to start making instruments again until music came back. One of the organization's needed more fabric. We bought fabric they had dancers dancing again and Cambodian dancing and music is quite magnificent called and nuanced and it it's quite beautiful and they were learning pulling back their culture.

31:09 And Other Stories I wanted to tell you there was a dentist there from Scotland and he he he was basically pro bono and we gave him some supplies that he asked for and what those things that he was able to do was to make Dentures. Most people didn't have any cheap because they just didn't for many reasons. Anyway, one of the older men needed Dentures apparently a lot and the dentist named Jamie told me that

31:44 When he said as those dentures and I actually have a picture of that moment. This old man was surrounded by children and he started talking in a way they could understand because I didn't have Keith. He wasn't understandable, but he was a master Storyteller from tire from Cambodia.

32:04 And so all of a sudden because Jamie was able to fix his teeth.

32:10 The Storyteller was able to entrench the children live in history stories of Cambodia, which is an ancient civilization and this man

32:24 He got his Hope from these Dentures, which is the swerving thing. I mean just think of it and then he gobbled it or they couldn't wait. It's another example.

32:43 It's another example of how use me you and

32:52 Others from the quote outside came in with basic tools out of the refugees made civilization. Yeah, that's right in their own in their own light not in our light not in our they made their they recreated their own civilization. Yeah, that was important.

33:18 That was important. We couldn't give gifts that had strings attached. You have to do it our way or no other than how do you peel a banana?

33:33 Well

33:37 In wrapping things up. What I would love to hear you talk about or summarize is what you learned first of all about yourself and then what you learned about them.

33:55 Oh, man. Oh, man.

33:59 Well

34:01 One thing

34:04 I learned for sure is the resilience of the human being of the living thing.

34:13 I mean, we've all seen plants animals others survived. I watched human beings come to life again with food and water and safety and then they created the other is fundamental needs that they needed which were Beauty and music and art and education and community order and structure and things like that laws if you will.

34:47 And I showed the resilience that this is what I learned inside of me is all I need.

35:00 Its enhanced by education and its enhanced by grabbing opportunity. But all I really needed there was me.

35:11 Me giving everything I have.

35:16 And that's all people really need is themselves to give everything. They've got that's what I learned in and I and I and I love you step Awareness on other occasions in my life with the same rumor miraculous results Parts completely.

35:42 Producer miraculous things unexpected and I always feel when I'm when I'm done. One of these this was the first big one that I've ever experienced first big grabbing the wave experience.

36:01 And an in every subsequent one. I've been even more aware that when I'm there when I'm in it when I'm in the zone if you will I am completely directed by spirit.

36:15 And

36:17 Everything happens just the way it needs to happen. Everything happens. Right? It's very creative. It's very innovated. It is very encompassing and bracing and I come away from the circumstances of I think I've had three maybe in my life that I Come Away with so much energy and vision and creativity and and self-esteem. I'm sure that you know now because I know what the result is.

36:56 And so yeah.

37:03 Yeah, but what I learned about the refugees was was was there a human being given a chance to live given a chance to breathe? They will create.

37:20 Their life in a in a in a very profound way which has contribution all over the place. I didn't mean to single selfish Refugee. They all knew that whatever they had. They had to give because everybody needed everything and and so there were no selfish ones at least not that I ever saw.

37:47 Now they must become selfish because you know, whatever however their lives have gone. But but these refugees are not in the cage. They are not then I hope that anybody that thinks that will change their mind.

38:07 Tonight I grew tremendously from that experience should changed my life.

38:16 Deeply and profoundly in Forever.

38:19 But anyway one thing that I wanted to tell you.

38:22 Was that two years ago? I don't know if you know this story but two years ago, my son and I were you know searching up and down the Mississippi River just on a trip and he said oh Mom, I need some coffee and we couldn't find a coffee place except one called Mississippi's best coffee that lives about 20 miles away 20 miles away and got and went in and there was a very nice man behind the counter. My son is coughing and I looked at the man and I said, where are you from?

38:59 And he looked at me and we knew right away. There was something going to happen and he said Cambodia and I said because I knew what age he was just by looking at him. I said what what camper you in and he said I was going to come put chance and I should that's when I was that's the camp. I was him and we were in the same at the same time and I had all the pictures in my computer in the car.

39:30 Empty coffee shop and I showed him the pictures and he grabbed his heart.

39:38 Oh my God, brings tears to my eyes. He grabbed his heart. And you said this is so hard. This is so hard and he pointed to the area where the building was that he had lived in he pointed to the things that he knew very well like the cultural center. He spent a lot of time in the music and so on.

40:00 And he knew that that camp that that that he knew that camp intimately just as I did and we shared something and in that moment, I realized that those pictures don't belong to me those pictures are not my history. They are the history of those people who lived this experience as as vital to their actual life and the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, which is a which is a city that took in a lot of Southeast Asian refugees.

40:37 That university has a section for Southeast Asian archives and I gave all my photos and slides to them and then I have been I have been documenting them so that they

40:57 So that they can be online and in anybody that wants to look up come put Camp can find things about Comfort camp and maybe find something that they knew the very very same dentist. But I told you about ended up in Lowell of all places being from Scotland has no reason for him to come to Lowell and he ended up there and only two years before I recognize my duty he died in the Buddhist community in Lowell, and I'm so sorry that I missed him because that would have been a very rich reunions. Anyway. Yeah the gift you gave people.

41:48 Still continues in your giving those slides to the university is to not only go back to Mississippi to meet that man again and to give him a book I put together. I'm beginning to work on it with photos and words about the experience there so that he has a history of Visual History of his own history. And also the three families that came to my wedding. I would like to visit one in San Diego one in Kentucky, Tennessee and one in Toronto. I would like to visit them all.

42:32 And hope that they're all well I should have lost touch when we all had babies. And that's for the thing at your games back to history to the people who lived it.

42:47 And if I can find any other people that that new or went or knew anybody that went and have photos and don't know what to do with them because you know, they don't know what to do with them the Southeast Asian archive at the University of Massachusetts Lowell is the place to contribute them.

43:08 Because somebody may find their family that way.

43:14 Well, and thank you so much for this story. You don't lose me and inspires me. And I know that you will go visit those families because that's who you are my friend of almost 60 years. I think I'm September when it will be 60 years. We need to we need to take a little trip to that college and look around. What do you think? Let's do it. All right. I love you. I love you very much. Thank you for doing this.

44:00 Okay. Alright. Okay, we can check out now.