Why This Exists
Archives in Love and War
is bigger than ourselves.
The grounding source for this whole project is education and knowledge, and how the past informs our future framework of thinking and engaging with one another and with the planet. Archives in Love and War inhabits coexisting spaces and times in our minds and is demonstrated in our choices and actions.
Empathy is the overarching goal. Empathy for those before us, the 1975 Generation who made impossible decisions at speed, the caregivers who kept 33 boxes in a basement for fifty years, the birth mothers who placed children on planes and waited. Empathy for those with us, the Babylift Generation reading their own record for the first time, the Consequence Generation carrying inherited precarity. Empathy for those beyond us, the generations who will inherit what we do with this moment, the communities whose histories we are holding, the planet that holds all of it.
The Foundation · June 2024 · Ongoing
The Operation Babylift Collection.
Four pillars of core work.
35+ linear feet. 33 boxes. Original Friends For All Children (FFAC) records from the 1975 Vietnamese child evacuation. Entrusted by Sr. Mary Nelle Gage in June 2024. The only comprehensive primary source archive of FFAC operational records in existence. Everything else is built on this.
01 · Archive Processing and Repository Preparation
StoryPoint_MASTER (4,816 transcribed line items across nine datasets). Finding aid development. Media cataloging. Provenance chain: FFAC (1962 to 1977) · Sr. Mary Nelle Gage (1977 to 2024) · Devaki Murch / StoryScope Studio (2024 to present) · permanent repository (pending). Leading candidate: Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University, positioned alongside the National Museum of the Vietnam War. Repository confirmation pending.
02 · Adoptee File Delivery
The framework is fully designed: intake inquiry, acknowledgment, file found/not found protocol, in-person delivery preference, consent, legal waiver, pre-delivery checklist. Files may contain: adoptee dossiers, financial documentation, home study and social worker reports, medical records, birth records, birth judgments, photographs, correspondence, legal paperwork. Currently paused pending legal consultation around citizenship documentation risk under active enforcement conditions.
03 · Community Gatherings and Adoptee Support
Presentations at Regis University, University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa, UH Maui Campus, Kauaʻi Community College, Lahainaluna High School, Pan Am Operation Babylift Gala (Cradle of Aviation, Garden City, NY), Arrived exhibition (Boulder Community Center, March to May 2025). History Colorado oral history partnership. Active connections with Vietnamese-American adoptee community organizations, biological family search networks, and diaspora research groups.
04 · Family Search Support
File cross-referencing using StoryPoint_MASTER as the matching layer. The OBC as part of a broader search ecosystem connecting biological family databases, DNA networks, and Vietnamese-American search organizations. The central question: "What if she is searching for me?"
Physical Scale
35+ linear feet · 33 boxes · FFAC records 1962 to 1975
Transcribed Records
4,816 line items across nine datasets
Community Scope
~3,300 people evacuated via Operation Babylift, April 3 to 30, 1975
C-5A Crash
April 4, 1975 · 178 of 314 survived · 150 were children
Media Coverage
National reach.
The archive in public consciousness.
- Smithsonian Magazine · October 8, 2025 · Nina Strochlic · "This Adoptee Discovered a Trove of Documents in a Nun's Basement."
- ABC News 20/20 Special · May 8, 2025 · "Operation Babylift: The 50-Year Journey." 25-minute prime time special.
- Washington Post · "The children of the Vietnam War's 'Operation Babylift' have turned 50."
- Nexstar Media/NewsNation · "The Vietnam War: Flight to a New Future."
- Hawaiʻi Public Radio · November 2025 and March 2026.
- Regis University Magazine · Spring/Summer 2025 · Center for the Study of War Experiences.
- The Insider/Inside Utah · March 4, 2025 · "Restoring a Remarkable Past."
- University of Utah IT · May 2025 · Feature on Stella Liechty and the OBC digital infrastructure.
The Full Timeline
Five initiatives.
One arc to Spring 2028.
April 2026
My Name Is Mimosa
CompleteEast Window Gallery, North Boulder. April 3 to 25.
First public exhibition of Devaki's own origin story as a case study in what the broader OBC holds. Eight walls of archival material. Concurrent with the Invisible Threads Gathering (April 9 to 12). Proof of Convergence, Proof of Consequence.
2026 to 2027
Research Phase
ActiveField research and writing.
Primary source review across institutional archives. Field documentation via Instinct. Substack dispatches. Made in Vietnam book research.
Fall 2026
Education Pilot
UpcomingStudent project. Independent study. Internal.
First cohort of students, university and community college. Archives in Love and War initiative connecting OBC, AI-assisted research, and intergenerational pedagogy. Librarians as key research partners.
Spring 2027
Expansion Cohort
UpcomingReturn students become near-peer mentors. New students enroll. High school journalism students join through teacher partners. Documentary rough assembly begins.
Fall 2027
Kaleidoscope Project + Making
UpcomingThe Kaleidoscope Project: Gen Z researchers inside the archive using AI tools. kaleidoscopeproject.ai. Simultaneously: education cohort finalizes gallery, locks documentary, rehearses panel.
Spring 2028
The Delivery
UpcomingPublic event, gallery, documentary screening, student-led panel. Gen Alpha in the room. Students are the conveners, curators, presenters. Six months before the November 2028 presidential election. The documentary short travels to the Fine Print of Belonging gathering.
2028
Fine Print of Belonging
UpcomingFour generations. One room. The policy gathering. The 1975 Generation, the Babylift Generation, the Search Generation, the Consequence Generation. Not in sequence, together. Location TBD. The documentary from the student project travels here. Some students travel with it.
Funding Landscape
Archives x AI x
Intergenerational Pedagogy.
Notre Dame ECG · Templeton
Love Ethic Social Innovator Fellowship. Application is the venue where the LEAP methodology was first articulated for scholarly review. Planned reapplication.
IMLS
Community archives + library research support + AI tools + student researchers. National Leadership Grant territory.
NEH
100-year historical framework, oral history methodology, public humanities output. Preservation and Access for the OBC.
Mellon Foundation
Archival practice + community history + higher education pedagogy. Intergenerational design across six named demographic generations.
Heising-Simons · Humanity AI
Archives x AI. Community archives + AI-assisted research + documented LEAP methodology. Anthropic partnership as technology credibility.
Ford Foundation
Civic voice, intergenerational equity, community documentation. Spring 2028 delivery six months before a presidential election.
Support This Work
You are not funding an archive.
You are becoming part of the history it holds.
Preserve the Records
Digitization of fragile originals that exist nowhere else before they deteriorate beyond recovery.
Return the Files
Fund the intake infrastructure, matching protocol, and trauma-informed delivery that returns each file to the person it was written about.
Build the Rooms
Invisible Threads. Fine Print of Belonging. Spring 2028 education gathering. These are the rooms where the archive comes alive.
"When you build archives with love, not as sentiment, but as measurable, replicable action, something remarkable happens. People trust you with their stories. Adoptees reclaim authority over their own narratives. And fifty years later, the person who received you upon arrival as a baby appears at your display table, seeing what became of that work."
Devaki Murch · operationbabylift.orgThe archive exists at exactly this moment.
So do you.
So do you.
Fiscally Sponsored by Torrey House Press · EIN 39-4105983 · All donations tax-deductible
Donate Now