Cape woman helps Vietnamese neighbors

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (April 1, 2005): Three decades after she left Vietnam, Lilly Pyle of Cape Elizabeth is leading an effort to help those still living in her native village.

Pyle was born and grew up in the village of Dong Ha in central Vietnam, just inland from Da Nang, in the territory that became known during the Vietnam War as the DMZ, the demilitarized zone.

“It used to be a little village” and even now has only between 3,000 and 5,000 residents – she has been told not to ask for exact numbers for fear the Communist government will think she's a spy.

When she was growing up, an American military base was built nearby. “As children, we went out to the fence to see them,” she said. “I sell bananas and Cokes and stuff” to the servicemen.

In 1972, the Americans pulled back and the Viet Cong took the village after a devastating rocket attack that split up her family for days.

Heading to America

Pyle was in Da Nang then, learning to be a seamstress, and the family ended up in a refugee camp. Pyle quit school to earn money by doing laundry for an American serviceman from Maine, whom she later married and, even later, divorced.

A friend of Pyle’s from the village ended up working for another American, who shared living quarters with Pyle’s future husband.

That village friend married the serviceman she was working for and moved to Maryland. She sent Pyle letters asking her to come to America.

“She sent me pictures of apples and horses,” Pyle said. The serviceman she had worked for, now back in the U.S., promised to support her if she came over.

But still Pyle worried about whether her father, a police officer, would be punished if she left for America.

“He said he owed me my life anywhere that’s safe at the time,” so she left. After a brief trip to Maryland, Pyle went to Maine, where she got married and had two children.

She lost touch with her girlfriend in Maryland, and began life entirely anew in Maine.

Years down the road, Pyle left what had become a very bad relationship.

“If I escaped from that war, I escape again,” she said. She learned to drive, and to read and write English, and left, for the sake of her children, who have both now graduated from college.

Homecoming

In the mid-1990s, in response to a wish from her dying father, Pyle returned to Vietnam for the first time since she had left.

“Imagine you come home 30 years later,” she said. The villagers were poor and hungry.

Government rules required them to build on land they owned, or the government would take the land for someone else. So the villagers built homes, wall by wall, as they could afford the materials.

Others were able to finish a house, but had no other money. “They live in a nice house and (have) no food because they feel the house is going to be (there for) generations,” Pyle said.

“I have always wanted to do something to help,” she said, and so she resolved to raise money to help the villagers – her former neighbors, who remember her as a member of a good family, one of the oldest in the village.

While she was home, she also got bad news: “The children were getting kidnapped and sold to another country for prostitution.”

Many of the people have no jobs, but still have to pay taxes. They also have to pay for their children to attend school.

With Pyle’s money, families are better able to provide for themselves. Some of her money also goes to help the community at large. The first $4,000 she raises this year, for example, will pay for fences and playgrounds at local schools. After that, “I’ll try to see if I can have some form of a day care.”

Seeking donations

Pyle has set up a non-profit organization, the Vietnamese Hope Foundation, to allow donors to deduct contributions from their income taxes. People can find out more about the foundation at its Web site, www.VietnameseHopeFoundation.org, and can send donations to Pyle at PO Box 2752, South Portland, ME 04116.

All of the money goes to the people in the village – she covers the travel expenses herself.

She has returned twice since her father’s death, once with her children and once on her own. Each time she has brought donations to help women and children in Dong Ha.

Many of the women she gives money to are widowed mothers. A lot of the men in the village are dying of cancer – “none of them are over 40” – and the women need the help.

“I can’t save everybody, but I can do a little bit at a time,” Pyle said. “I’ve helped a lot of families.”

But with the American money comes questions from the Vietnamese government, including requests for bribes.

One official demanded she give all the money to him, promising to buy rice to give to everyone in the village. She refused, citing the Biblical proverb “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”

“I want these people to become independent like me,” she said.

Pyle wants to be sure of where her money is going and personally interviews families that are possible recipients.

“These people never had anything,” she said. “It’s so hard. Everybody the same situation. … I just help one at a time.”

Pyle wants to broaden her foundation’s donor base, who are mostly now friends and customers at her Old Port hair salon. She is trying to get other Vietnamese-Americans around the U.S. to raise money too, to support their villages.

She believes she has found her purpose in life, and has been given the means to carry it out.

“I believe that God has chosen me” to face the challenges of war, emigration, abuse and poverty. Without those experiences, Pyle said, “How would I know how to get out of the gutter? Then I wouldn’t know how to help these people.”

Plant fires under investigation

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (March 31, 2005): The cause of a March 24 fire at RTS Packaging in the Scarborough Industrial Park is under investigation, according to Scarborough Fire Chief Michael Thurlow.

The fire did not do significant damage to the building, though the company did lose some of its products, according to a company spokesman. The company makes cardboard packaging such as dividers in beverage cartons.

Thurlow said the fire appears to have started in a cardboard waste collection system that runs throughout the building and collects scraps of cardboard cut by machinery. Thurlow likened the system to a sawdust collection system in a carpentry workshop.

He said the fire started somewhere in the system by an unknown cause, and said it is not the first time such a fire has started in the system.

“We really don’t know just what’s causing it,” Thurlow said. He said the company is being “very cooperative” and wants to find the cause of the fires as well, to avoid future damage and losses.

Town gets new ambulance

The Scarborough Fire Department has received a new ambulance, which arrived Tuesday. It is part of a multi-year effort to replace the town’s aging ambulances. Two of the three were replaced last year, and the new arrival means all three of the town’s ambulances are new.

A five-year contract with the ambulance dealer means each of the ambulances will be in service for three years before being traded back in for credit toward a new ambulance, according to Fire Chief Michael Thurlow.

“It keeps them under factory warranty,” meaning the town pays “virtually nothing” toward maintenance costs, he said.

The town’s previous ambulances were out of warranty and required a lot of maintenance. The one replaced this week was a 10-year-old model, Thurlow said. “It was a rough ride to Portland,” he said.

The new ambulances cost about $130,000, and if they drive fewer than 36,000 miles in three years – something Thurlow thinks likely – the dealer will give 50 percent of that back to the town in trade-in credit toward a future ambulance.

The contract the town has with the dealer is for five years, starting last year, and can be extended for two additional years beyond that, giving the town fixed prices on the vehicles.

Suicide pact alleged in double stabbing

Published in the Current; co-written with staff writer Ken Tatro

SCARBOROUGH (March 8, 2005): Police believe a 15-year-old Scarborough girl and a 20-year-old Scarborough woman suffered stab wounds Tuesday in the woods off Route 114 because of a suicide pact.

Police found the two in the woods next to the Scarborough Public Library, after the older of the two, Barbara Kring, called from her cell phone just before 5 p.m. Tuesday to report that she and a friend were bleeding and needed help, according to police.

Kring is a 2004 graduate of Scarborough High School. The 15-year-old is a freshman at the school.

Scarborough Police Chief Robbie Moulton said Tuesday night that the two females were the only people involved in the incident. He did not know whether one or both of them used the knife police recovered and believe to be the only weapon involved.

What information the police do have so far comes from brief conversations officers had with the women before ambulances took them to Maine Medical Center, where both underwent surgery Tuesday night.

Both were listed in stable condition Wednesday afternoon, police said.

A family member of Kring’s declined to comment when reached by phone Wednesday.

Keith Matassa, coordinator of marine mammal rehabilitation at the University of New England, said Kring was “a great person” and “a really, really good volunteer” for the program, where she has helped treat stranded seals for three years.

A relative of the 15-year-old also declined to comment for this story.

Kring told dispatchers that the pair had a poisonous substance with them, according to police.

Police did recover an unknown liquid at the scene, and sent it to a lab for identification. The substance was not identified by press time, and police were not sure whether either of the women had injected the substance, though two syringes were recovered from the scene.

Grover said police didn't know the nature of the relationship between the two young women. He said police had not yet fully interviewed them, and were withholding some information until the end of the inquiry.

"It is part of an ongoing investigation," Grover said. No charges have been filed.

Scarborough police officials kept the Maine State Police abreast of events through Wednesday morning, before it became clear that both women would survive.

The Maine State Police has jurisdiction over murder investigations throughout the state, except in Portland. But Wednesday, state and local police agreed Scarborough's detectives should handle the case, Grover said.

At Scarborough High School Wednesday, students could get counseling if they needed it, said Principal Andrew Dolloff. The school has several staff members who are trained to help students affected by these types of incidents.

Dolloff said early in the morning he happened past the guidance area and noticed that a couple of the counselors were meeting with small groups of students.

But, for the most part, the school ran normally. There was no formal announcement to students about the incident.

"It's not that you try to downplay the significance ... but we do try to reduce the amount of hysteria or misinformation that is out there," he said.

The location, just yards from the Scarborough Public Library, is a wooded area within view of Wentworth Intermediate School and the Scarborough Middle School.

The general area – and especially the library – is a common place for students and young people to congregate in the afternoons.

"It was like Grand Central Station yesterday," said Assistant Library Director Susan Winch Wednesday.

Library staff were expecting to close early because of the bad weather, and were telling kids to arrange to get picked up before 5 p.m.

"There were just tons of kids in and out and in and out," Winch said. She said she did not know Kring or the other girl involved, and said that library staff often don't know the names of all the kids who spend time in the building after school.

She said "nothing unusual" happened at the library throughout the afternoon.

Springtime is surfing time

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (March 3, 2005): Scarborough surfer and filmmaker Ben Keller is showing two short works in a one-time-only event on Sunday, March 20, at 7 p.m. at the Stadium on Brown Street in Portland.

Keller, whose first major film, the documentary “Ishmael,” chronicled the lives of New England winter surfers, has been working on “Rubberman: A Northeast Surfer’s Journey” as a light-hearted approach to the subject.

“It’s more of a traditional surf movie,” Keller said. “It’s got some of the best surfing I’ve shot.”

“Rubberman” includes scenes of local surfers – Seth Balliett of Pine Point is the star of the 30-minute show – on local beaches like Higgins Beach, Scarborough Beach and “Doc Brown’s,” the section of Cape Elizabeth shoreline along Shore Road where the ocean comes in next to the road.

Keller said the short film also has footage of “a secret spot in Scarborough” that is beginning to become well known, but whose location he would not divulge. It also has shots of Scarborough surfer James Krans.

Calling the movie “a fun timeout for the community,” Keller said it has a “funny plot, horrific acting” and is designed to elicit audience participation such as booing and hissing at the screen.

The event will also include a showing of a 15-minute short film edited by Keller as a tribute to the early days of surfing films, including glimpses of Bob Denver (pre-Gilligan) and Nancy Sinatra, as well as a rare recording of the Supremes singing a surfing song.

The event officially begins at 6 p.m., with tickets costing $3. Proceeds will benefit Keller’s next movie. All ages are welcome. There will also be a raffle of surfing and surf-related gear, including a surfboard.

Digging his way out

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Feb 17, 2005): Deen Kirchner wanted some company this winter. The Scarborough 12-year-old has "adopted" a fire hydrant for each of the past three winters, and wants everyone in town to do the same.

After big snowstorms, Kirchner shovels snow away from the fire hydrant across the street from his house, which helps firefighters respond more quickly to emergencies.
It takes firefighters about 45 seconds to hook up a hose to a hydrant, Kirchner said. But if they have to dig the hydrant out from under the snow, it can take as long as two minutes -- an eternity for someone whose house is on fire, or who is trapped inside.

Just down the street is another hydrant that regularly gets buried by storms and plows.

"I tried to convince my friend Eric," who lives down the street, to adopt that one, Kirchner said. But it didn't work, so Kirchner is thinking about adopting it as well.

He has encouraged other family members to help him out with "his" hydrant, and after last week's big storm, he got a neighbor to come by with a pickup and a plow to clear away the big mess around the hydrant.

Kirchner, now in sixth grade, started three years ago, after his mother heard about an "adopt-a-hydrant" program in South Portland, where residents were asked to take a few extra minutes while clearing their walks and driveways, to dig out hydrants as well.

"There's not really anything else for kids to volunteer," Kirchner said. A lot of local non-profits are happy to have young people volunteer, but require them to be 13 or older.

"I want to help," Kirchner said.

He also carefully removes any ice from around the fixtures. He said it takes about 20 minutes for him to fix up the hydrant, though he is a fastidious worker and checks back regularly to ensure that warm temperatures and passing vehicles haven't conspired to cover any portion of the hydrant.

He has even brought a degree of engineering to the task. He knows which direction the town plow usually comes from, and keeps that side clearer. That way, the snowplow dumps its load of snow before the hydrant and doesn't cover the hydrant itself.

He keeps an eye on the weather, so he knows when his work will be needed. "When I wake up, I look outside," Kirchner said.

He eats his breakfast in front of the local TV news. And when a big storm is on the way, he makes sure his tools are ready, except this last time.

He forgot to put his shovel upright in a tall snowbank, and after the storm, had to spend 10 minutes looking for it. He eventually found it on the ground, "under all the snow," near the grill.

He also knows how to handle his workload. "When I'd get tired, I'd build a couch" to sit on and rest.