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History of the Khanh Hoa Hospital

By Christina Verderosa

The story of the Khanh Hoa Rehabilitation Hospital actually begins several years before it’s founding in Nha Trang and has its roots in programs established by the Mennonite Brotherhood church soon after WW II.

Donald Voth is now a professor of rural sociology at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville, but in 1958, he came to Vietnam as a volunteer for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). He lived and worked with the staff of the leprosarium in Banmethout and with the populations of the highland tribes. Voth explained that by the time he arrived in Vietnam the MCC had, Ôa pretty large program going on.” The leprosy hospital had an established program to serve the hill tribes and MCC provided medical services through volunteers. MCC also brought in government commodities to distribute and gave out Christmas bundles from the Mennonite Brotherhood Church. “Children would put the bundles together,” Voth explained. They contained basic supplies such as towels and soap and a toy. The bundles also included the name and address of the person who sent it to encourage people to become pen pals.

Voth said that the MCC and the Vietnamese Protestant Church were interested in expanding their programs, and “a hospital was one way to do it.” A deal was made with the world Council of Churches, which provided funding, and the Vietnamese Protestant Church that owned a large amount of property. A young man from Indiana named Alan Hochsteter became the general contractor.

“We did everything from scratch,” Voth recalled. “We got our own sand from the river and we found some mahogany trees lying there.” The first building was a residence hall. “There was nothing else there,” Voth said. The news hospital building and residence was dedicated in 1961. The first volunteer nurse from the US to arrive was Elnora Weaver, who Voth eventually married.

In 1971 Jean Hershey arrived at the hospital. She had originally wanted to go to Nepal, but the Mennonite Brotherhood Church asked her to go to Vietnam instead. As a volunteer nurse, she was involved both in health care and education. “We conducted a lot of public health programs,” Hershey said. She also worked with student nurses.

American GIs were involved with the hospital from the beginning, and many came and helped with the construction, but Hershey said by the time she arrived, the hospital began to distance itself from the American troops. “We wanted the image of a community hospital, not a military one,” she said. Most of the military left Nha Trang shortly after Hershey arrived. There was not military action around Nha Trang. “The war affected the atmosphere,” Hershey said, “but there was not much fighting.”

In 1975, after the fall of South Vietnam, the government seized all the Protestant Church property, including the hospital. At first it was used only for soldiers, but shortly before Peacework’s first mission to Nha Trang in 1997, it was given permission to expand.

Peacework, which is based in Blacksburg, VA, was founded in 1989. Its mission is to arrange international volunteer service projects around the world for colleges, universities, service organizations, or groups of individuals.

In 1997, Voth and Peacework director Stephen Darr came to Vietnam. They met Vu Trong Thuc, Associate Director of the YMCA of Vietnam. Peacework had already began running work camps in Russia, Nicaragua, and other countries and wanted to get some programs going in Vietnam.

Darr and Voth met Alan Hochsteter in Nha Trang and they visited the hospital. They eventually asked Thuc to check on doing work camps at the hospital and Peacework held their first work camp there in 1999. Peacework raised $10,000 for the project and paid the expenses for the YMCA volunteers. American volunteers pay their own way.

The project in 2002 was funded by a grant from the United Methodist Church national office.

More information about Peacework is available from their website www.peacework.org.

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Originally published in the DeWitt Era-Enterprise (DeWitt, Arkansas), January 31, 2002

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