The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Did you know in 1972, a photographer in South Vietnam captured a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a U.S. napalm attack. Her clothes had been burned off and she was running naked towards the camera. At the time she was unidentified, but in 1982, while she was in medical school, the Vietnamese government learned who she was and took her away to use as a poster girl for national propaganda. In 1986 she was sent to Cuba where she met her husband and in 1992 they honeymooned in Moscow. Their return flight to Cuba included a one-hour stopover in Gander, Nfld. Kim and her husband took that window of opportunity to defect to Canada, where they still live and raise their two boys. Now she uses her notoriety to speak for peace. In November 1997, Kim was named Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Earlier in 1997, she founded the Kim Foundation in Chicago, to help innocent victims of war. Something to Ponder: A sponger is a person who will get and forget as long as others give and forgive.
