Article February 9, 2004 Issue

'YOU CAN NEVER DO ENOUGH'

M.J.

The date was April 4, 1975, and Bob Macauley, an ordinary middle-class person, was sitting in his living room in New Canaan, Connecticut, watching the images on TV of a plane crash halfway around the world. Three hundred Vietnamese war orphans were being airlifted out of Saigon to the United States, when the plane went down. Eighty children died, and the rest were either injured or missing.

Unable to get the US government to respond quickly, Macauley wrote a check for money he didn't have and chartered a plane to bring the orphans to the United States. Among those he rescued were two 18-month-old twins, a boy and a girl. "It was a miracle," he says. "It was two days after the crash, and a rice farmer heard some whimpering. He found the twins wrapped in each other's arms, clinging to each other. They were completely unscratched."

On a recent segment of NBC's Today show, host Ann Curry profiled Macauley as her contribution to the show's "Who We Admire" feature. As she noted, she chose Macauley because she is especially inspired by those who do good works quietly.

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