Just like all the other children in his hometown, Rob Slaubaugh was a “farm kid.” Growing up on his family’s wheat farm, just south of the Canadian border in northern North Dakota, meant working alongside his dad in the frigid north winds of winter and in the heat of the long days of summer. He loved his family and he loved his life on that farm; “I can’t think of a better place to grow up,” Rob said. It was a life that started out in a much different land.Tami Herman grew up in the Midwest, the daughter of two educators. She, too, has fond memories of her childhood in smaller communities of central and eastern Missouri. And like Rob, Tami was displaced from her birth country.
It was in early 1974, only a few months after they were born, Rob in Saigon and Tami in Southwest Vietnam, that they were flown to the United States, like hundreds of other babies in war-torn Vietnam, to be adopted into their new families. During his childhood, Rob says there wasn’t another “Asian kid for two counties.” He vividly recalls, however, a time when playing high school basketball, his team met another school team that also had a boy of Asian descent.
“My parents were good at helping me understand my culture,” Rob said. “Mom would even occasionally cook Vietnamese food.”
Tami was in more of a culture battle with her mom. She wanted to blend in and not be “singled-out”, while her mother attempted to keep Tami’s birth heritage alive. “I hated the Asian dolls given to me and even threw away some traditional dresses that came with me from Vietnam,” Tami remorsefully remembers.A huge point of contention surfaced when her mother insisted that Tami attend a playgroup for Asian children. Tami was pushing against her past. But it is that past that brought about a wonderful future for another orphan from Vietnam.
As she matured in high school and college, Tami started embracing her heritage. And in late 2005, at 32-years-old, she and her husband Jason decided to start a family.
“It was a natural for us to pick Vietnam. It allows us to celebrate and continue my heritage,” Tami said. She felt she would make the perfect parent for a Vietnamese child who needs a home.
About that same time, Rob and his wife Amanda were making the decision to adopt from the country of his birth. By the end of 2006, both Rob and Amanda and Tami and Jason received their referrals—a baby in Vietnam was waiting for both couples.Rob read in the referral how his new son was abandoned at birth in a Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) hospital just like him. Tami, meanwhile, would be traveling to an orphanage in Kien Giang Province in southwest Vietnam to adopt her new daughter. This was close to where Tami was born.
In late April, both couples traveled to Vietnam.
Tami and Jason were accompanied by Tami’s dad, Larry David.
“We stopped by the orphanage our first evening to see Olivia,” Tami said. “She cried the whole time in my arms. When I took her home the next day, then it sunk in. All these emotions were running through my head… She was so precious.”
On the same day, up in Ho Chi Minh City, 2 ½-year-old Benjamin Slaubaugh was reluctantly meeting his new parents for the first time. “I was a little worried about what kind of emotions would surface when we arrived in Vietnam to adopt our baby,” Rob said when contemplating the similarities of how their lives began. “We share where we came from and an understanding that God had a plan for us. My parents prove that you don’t have to have the biological ties to be a strong family.”
The Herman homecoming, 13 days later at St. Louis’ Lambert Airport, was a flashback for Tami’s dad. It was 33 years ago, in that same airport, that he held Tami for the first time when she was escorted to the United States from Vietnam. She was 3-months-old.“My mother is still so excited. Everyday she says, ‘We are so blessed. We have two beautiful girls from Vietnam. How special is that?’”--written by Cory Barron - Children's Hope Int'l
Published in the Children's Hope Newsletter, Fall 2007
