By Gina Delfavero, Blairsville Dispatch, Friday, May 11, 2007

BLAIRSVILLE–Area native Naomi C. (Wirdzek) Desiderio always loved to write, but she surprised even herself when she decided years ago that she was going to write a historical novel set during World War II.

Her resulting first book, “Hell at Sea,” was nearly two decades in the making. But the novel finally has made it to print, and she already has finished a follow-up volume.

While fulfilling a lifelong dream of becoming an author, Desiderio also has reached an important milestone in her life. She is now in the midst of her second year of cancer remission.

Desiderio, 56, lives in Cranford, N.J., with her husband, James “Des,” and their three children: Philip, Laura and Vince. But she comes back often to visit family in the Blairsville area, where she grew up and attended SS. Simon & Jude School.

“I noticed when I had my spelling and reading classes that I just loved words,” she recalled of her school days. “The teachers would require us to use our spelling words to make a sentence or tell a story, and I went wild.”

During the summer of her sixth-grade year, she wrote a chapter book.

“I knew I loved writing,” she said. “My mind was always very creative.”

After she graduated from Blairsville High School, in 1968, she completed studies in English, earning a bachelor’s degree at Seton Hill University and a master’s degree at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Once they were married, Desiderio and her husband moved to metropolitan New Jersey in 1974.

“Gone were the little farms and coal mines,” she said. “It took me a while to adjust. I had a lot of growing up to do.”

Her writing hobby had been put on the backburner since her move to the East Coast, but it was rekindled after she sat down one night to watch a public television broadcast of “The World at War.”

“That’s the first time something really clicked in me,” she said. “This show hit me.

“I sat that night and started a story set in World War II Paris, when the Germans were arriving.”

It became clear to her that if she was going to continue her tale, she’d have to delve deeper into the history of the war, from both sides of the battlefield.

“I knew I had a lot of research to do,” she said. For one thing, “I didn’t know how my characters would dress.”

The workload looming ahead caused her to second-guessing her decision to write a novel based in that era.

“I kept asking myself, ‘Do I really want to start something like this? Do I really want to begin going through with this thing?’ ”

She had an answer the next day, when she went to the local library and checked out every book she could find on Europe and World War II.

“Everything I read just hit me,” she recalled. “I envisioned little scenes in which I would be walking on a battlefield in no man’s land. The soldiers on each side were ready to launch an attack, and I told them to calm down and put away their weapons.”

As a mother and novelist, Desiderio’s schedule was often hectic, with only limited hours she could devote to writing.

She wrote each morning from 4:30 to 7 o’clock and then spent the rest of the time working as a library assistant, volunteering and taking care of her ailing parents.

“I’d be itchy until the next morning,” she said. “I couldn’t wait to get back to my desk.”

In 1985, as Desiderio researched various World War II battles, she was intrigued by a particular book, “Iron Coffins” by Herbert A. Werner. After reading this personal account of German submarine engagements, Desiderio knew she wanted to base her novel on a female character who is picked up by German soldiers on Long Island and travels on a U-boat with them.

Noting on the book’s jacket that Werner lived in New Jersey, Desiderio corresponded with him and met him at a restaurant.

“He asked me, ‘Why is a mother of three children interested in the German U-boats,’” she recalled.

When she told him about her idea for a story, he suggested she get in touch with Herbert Georgius, curator of a U.S. submarine display in Hackensack, N.J. Georgius, in turn, directed her to Martin Shaffer, a U.S. submarine veteran of World War II.

Shaffer had friends who served on U-boats, one living in New York and another in Cologne, Germany.

“From there, little by little, the names came in,” Desiderio said. “Historians began calling me.”

Continuing her research, she traveled to Germany to expand her knowledge of U-boats and the people who sailed on them.

She took her first trip in 1988, to Hamburg, with Sharkhunters International, Inc., a group of history buffs, U.S. submarine veterans and German U-boat veterans interested in preserving the chronicles of the U-boats.

“Many of the U-boat men were there, and a lot of them were just coming into retirement,” Desiderio said. “And that’s where I got a lot of my dialogue” for the book.”

Many of these German veterans invited Desiderio into their homes, an offer she took advantage of on later trips to Germany.

Her daughter, Laura, then 10, joined her on a second voyage to Germany, in 1989. They stayed in Cuxhaven, arriving in the country just in time for two different U-boat reunions, which Desiderio attended.

“I became close friends with several veterans and their wives, and they even came to visit us in the United States,” she said.

That same year, Desiderio finished the manuscript for her novel, which filled more than 800 pages.

“I must have rewritten my novel, as it is now, at least 100 times,” she said. “It took me a long time to learn my particular writing skills.”

She contacted the Naval Institution Press, and an editor there agreed to read her novel. “They sent it back and said cut it in half,” she said.

They praised her story, “But they said they couldn’t take it,” she said.

“That broke my heart. I was ready to throw everything away. But my husband said, ‘Don’t you give up.’”

So she worked diligently to cut the novel’s bulk down into a workable size, eliminating scenes that she felt were no longer important to the story.

Desiderio’s novel begins in March 1942, soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Americans still weren’t ready for the attacks of the German U-boats, she said.

Her protagonist is 18-year-old Mary Ann Connor, from Brooklyn, who is staying with a group of friends and their parents at a beach bungalow in Long Island. Walking the beach alone one evening, the young woman comes across a U-boat landing party that has come ashore to launch a Nazi sabotage mission.

She is taken aboard the enemy vessel, but is not harmed. Desiderio noted, “The captain even gives up his quarters to her because it’s more private.”

For four weeks, Connor sails with the Germans as they sink ships and get bombed by an airplane.

“I have her experiencing this–it’s not a truly terrible patrol compared to other U-boats,” Desiderio said of her character’s experience..

The German soldiers give her tasks to do while on board, and she keeps a diary of sorts.

“That’s where I speak, through her, what she observes, feels, the heart of the matter,” Desiderio stated.

In 1990, Desiderio made her final trip to Germany, this time with her son, Philip, then 12. Their trip was planned just before the Berlin Wall came down.

But, in December 2003, Desiderio hit a roadblock that stopped her writing career in its tracks. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor that was found to be malignant.

After an operation to remove the growth and rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, she recovered, “But I wasn’t supposed to live past three years,” she recalled.

Just as she regained her strength and was ready to move on with her life, a second cancer diagnosis was made in January 2005. A tumor was found on her stomach, attached to her large intestine, and a smaller tumor was discovered nearby, both of them malignant. The chemotherapy prescribed wasn’t doing much to shrink the growths, so Desiderio once again had surgery. The tumor in her stomach, when it was removed, weighed over 30 pounds.

As she fought this second bout of cancer, Desiderio began to lose faith that her novel would ever make it to the bookshelves.

“I’m never going to be published,” she remembered thinking. “I’m never going to live to see this.”

But she continued putting her pen to paper, regardless of her illness.

“I still made myself get up and write, no matter how sick I was,” she said. “Despite the pain, I finished the novel.”

Now, she has been in remission for more than two years.

“My oncologist is just shocked that I’m still around and that I’m doing so well,” she said.

Desiderio’s battle with cancer inspired certain themes in her book.

“It gave me more knowledge of the feelings and understanding the pain of others,” she said.

“You get into a situation and you have to adapt yourself to it. With cancer, your whole world changes and you can’t go back. You find a way to live with it and accept your new self, and say, I’m going to survive. And I think this is one of the themes in my novel.

“In the end, my character finds herself in an impossible position and she learns to accept things or else give up and allow herself to die,” she explained.

Desiderio used two working titles as she wrote: “Sailing with the Enemy” and “The Other Side.” Her husband came up with the novel’s ultimate title, “Hell at Sea.”

“I had a lot of help from veterans in Germany and in America,” she said. Many aided with proofreading and checking her facts.

Last year, during her recovery from chemotherapy, she began sending copies of her manuscript to 40 commercial publishing companies.

When all she received in return were form rejection letters, she and her husband began to discuss using an independent self-publishing company.

“I hated to do that, because it meant money up front,” she said.

They chose Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC, a Christian organization. About a week after she submitted her manuscript, she got a phone call from Tate.

“The phone rang,” she recalled, “and the person on the other end said, ‘Your novel is just beautiful. We want to publish it.’ I started to cry.”

Desiderio was told the publisher liked her story because it had a message of acceptance.

“A lot of the soldiers (in her novel) didn’t speak English, but they show (Connor) kindness,” Desiderio explained.

It took some time to complete the publishing process, including the selection of a cover and the final changes to the text.

“The editor called and said, ‘I hardly had to do any editing at all,’” Desiderio remarked. “‘But you have to do one thing–you have to get rid of some of the curse words.’”

Desiderio recently hosted her first two book signings, one of which was at Garwood Public Library, where she used to work.

Desiderio has already finished her second novel, a continuation of Connor’s story, gleaned from the edits she had to make in order to trim the first book.

Tate Publishing has already said it will publish the book if her first novel sells at least 5,000 copies.

Her “sequel” of sorts takes place years after Connor’s U-boat journey. The first chapter has Connor living in a personal care home when a historian calls and asks her to recount her experience from years before.

The French Underground had helped to get her back home, where she was repatriated, but the whole event was kept very quiet by her family, who didn’t want their daughter to be seen as an ally of the Germans who take care of her on her voyage. People had even accused her of being brainwashed by the Germans.

In the second novel, she is reunited with the captain of the German U-boat on which she traveled, at a convention of submarine veterans in Baltimore.

The tale of Connor’s escape via the French Underground will be told in full in Desiderio’s third novel, which she has yet to begin.

Learn more about “Hell at Sea“

 

 By ERIN WILLIAMSON Times regional staff

Nidia, a green spider with big purple eyes, is in trouble. She’s alone in a storm with a nest of soon-to-hatch babies on her back and has nowhere to go.

“The story is about a little spider that gets caught in a storm,” said Meredith Thigpen, author of the new children’s book “Saving Nidia.”

But Nidia is saved when Jesus scoops her up, protects her from the storm and carries her with him.

The purpose of the story, Thigpen said, is to show that God created all creatures.

“It’s letting kids know that they’re not unimportant … that everyone’s important,” she said. “We’re all God’s creatures.”

“Nidia, it is a very bad night to be carrying around such an important package,” Jesus tells Nidia. She replies that she is looking for a new home because the storm flooded her old one.

Jesus continues: “I am also in search of something, Nidia. I am in search of people to show the wonders of my Father’s home. So it seems that we are both in search of something important.”

Thigpen, who lives in Flowery Branch with her husband, Jamie, and two sons Oliver, 8, and Collier, 5, found an illustrator for her story in Braselton resident Jason Pruitt.

It was a case of them both being in the right place at the right time, she said.

Thigpen ran into Pruitt and his wife, Paige, at Chestnut Mountain Church off Ga. 53, and mentioned that her book was going to be published.

Pruitt, who went to North Gwinnett High School with the couple, said he’d recently been talking with his wife and mentioned that he’d like to illustrate a kids’ book one day.

“I’ve been drawing ever since I was really little,” he said. “I’ve just always enjoyed drawing … (but) I hadn’t drawn much in probably 12 years.”

Pruitt said that between work and the activities of his children, Logan and Kaylan, he hadn’t had much time.

After seeing a few preliminary drawings, the publishing company gave him the go ahead.

“It’s probably one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” he said.

Thigpen, who has always written more as a pasttime, said her husband spotted the story of Nidia and pushed her to get it published.

While she writes various types of stories, she prefers writing for kids.

“Children’s books are what I really enjoy doing,” she said, adding that there’s a sequel to “Saving Nidia” in the works, as well as a couple of “for fun” books.

Both Thigpen and Pruitt test their work on their children.

“They let me know if they like it and if they don’t,” Pruitt said. “They’re very honest.”

Originally published Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Learn more about “Saving Nidia“

 

 05:47 PM PDT on Thursday, May 3, 2007

By LAURIE LUCAS
The Press-Enterprise

Ingris Cruz, a twice-divorced mother, was sick of books telling her how to flirt and what to wear to catch a guy.

“I’ve read a lot of books that say, ‘Do this, do that,’ ” she says. “I’d never had one talk about what your purpose is in dating.”

That is, until she got her hands on the recently released “Dating With Purpose,” (Tate Publishing, $10), written by the Rev. Anthony McComb. He’s the assistant pastor of the New Jerusalem Christian Center of Riverside, the church Cruz joined four years ago.

“Whether you’re single, married, young or old, the book gives you things to think about,” says Cruz, 35. “It requires you to have discipline.”

Discipline, as in refraining from sex. “Dating does not equal sex,” McComb writes. “You cannot live in the bedroom.”

Instead, the purpose of dating should be to gather information, communicate and become friends to determine whether you’re compatible.

“I like it because it’s scriptural-based,” says Dorothy Grant, 32, another fan of McComb’s dating bible. “He gives you key points on what to look for in a relationship so you don’t rush into anything until the Lord sends you the right person.”

The Rev. Jerry Louder, pastor of New Jerusalem and national president of the U.S. Pastors Association, says he’s recommending the book to the group’s 87,000-plus members.

“But it’s also a great tool for any parent, teacher or person seeking successful dating encounters,” Louder notes.

McComb, 40, based his ideas on his own experience and 15 years of interviews with psychologists and pastors. He’s also a role model for segueing from dating with purpose to a successful marriage.

He and his wife, Carol McComb, 43, a financial analyst, whom he calls his “song of joy,” are raising two daughters. Desiree, 22, is a senior at San Diego State and Cassandra, 15, is a ninth-grader at King High School in the Orangecrest section of Riverside where the family lives.

A self-described “bad kid” growing up in South Central LA, McComb says when he was 17 he saved himself by embracing Christ.

“I didn’t know where my life was headed or where I fit in,” he recalls. Praying for guidance, direction and discipline, he joined the military, got married and served as assistant pastor of the New Jerusalem Christian Center for the last 18 years.

He learned much about the travails of teen dating when he taught theology at a local Christian high school and has counseled couples with marital issues.

“I realized if their focus was proper, these people sitting in my office could have resolved their problems at the beginning of their relationship,” McComb says.

Couples can avoid hurt and anguish when they initially meet if they know their purpose in dating, recognize when someone is wrong for them and know how to identify red flags that are often ignored, he says.

After reading the book, “I realized I didn’t know myself like I thought I did,” admits Cruz. “Right now, I’m trying to take the time to find out what I’m after in a relationship.”

Reach Laurie Lucas at 951-368-9569 or llucas@PE.com
——————————————————————————–
Warning signs about your courtship
A general uneasy feeling

There’s more fighting than fun

Too many subjects are potential land mines

Physical intimacy accelerates at the expense of emotional closeness

You find yourself always giving in to what your partner wants

You detect serious emotional problems such as extreme fears, irrational anger and inability to show affection

Anxiety is keeping you in the relationship

Your partner goes from doctor to doctor complaining of imaginary aches and pains

Your partner makes excuses for not finding a job, borrows money from you constantly and can’t budget

Your partner is possessive, a perfectionist, treats you contemptuously, can’t ever apologize and shares few interests with you

Source: “Dating with Purpose”

Learn more about “Dating With Purpose“

 Record Courier Staff Reports
May 9, 2007

Tomacina Hochgurtel tells the story passionately and honestly about how she became the legal guardian of her sister’s baby, Jordan Lee, who was born with Down syndrome, in her soon-to-be released book, “Aunt Mommy.”

She and Dan Hochgurtel were not married when she found out that her sister was pregnant with her fourth child.

Tomacina Hochgurtel, now 29 and profound beyond her years, had this to say of her situation at the time:

“I was only 20 years old. Dan and I were living together in a tiny apartment. We were striving to live life as adults. Struggling to go to work everyday and pay the bills on time. It is bizarre how something so common could seem like such a chore. Life doesn’t always come easy from the beginning. We are all entitled to make our mistakes. Everyone spends their entire life trying to figure out how to live life to the fullest.

“Dan and I were definitely not perfect; we made our share of mistakes. We fought like cats and dogs. We let a lot of little things come between us.

“Marriage was not really a thought yet. Having a child was nearly inconceivable. We could not even remember to feed the cat most of the time. Getting out of bed in the morning to go to work on time was a task we had not yet mastered. Needless to say, to start a family and live for each other was something we could not even fathom.”

Hochgurtel talks about how she, along with her two other sisters, witnessed the birth of their sister’s son, and immediately fell in love with him, at the time not knowing he was a Down syndrome baby.

“He had very light blond hair, ivory skin and those beautiful eyes. I could see right into his eyes. They were magical! I knew right away that there was something special about Jordan Lee. I just wanted to hold him forever and never let him go. I had never felt anything so intense; I was speechless,” said Hochgurtel in her book. “I was so madly in love with this new little angel!”

Each chapter in this short and poignant little paperback book – 75 pages – begins with a new picture of this child deemed “amazing” by Hochgurtel. She tells the tale of Jordan’s tumultuous first year, with a troubled life quite the opposite of the structured one he eventually came to have with Tomacina and, her intense and emotional struggles to get legal guardianship. Hochgurtel talks about how Jordan eventually made her and Dan’s lives complete beyond their expectations.

“Jordan Lee has always been the kindest and most loving person I have ever met! Being loved by Jordan is the most wonderful and fulfilling love that I have ever and most likely will ever experience. It is as if he loves on a whole different level than most people. His love is so pure and so innocent and selfless. He is the brightest light, even brighter, like the sun, and he came into my life and lit up my whole world like a brand new summer morning.”

Jordan is now 8 and in third grade. Tomacina Hochgurtel has lived in Carson Valley for her entire life. Tomacina and Dan Hochgurtel were married in 2003 and welcomed their youngest son David into their lives in 2004. Tomacina Hochgurtel is the manager of her family’s restaurant, Two Guys from Italy in Gardnerville, where she works as a waitress, cook and bookkeeper. She always dreamed of being an author and was excited to have a story, she was so passionate about, to write.

“When I was younger I used to say I would write mystery novels,” said Hochgurtel. “This book actually started as a diary. It was what I could do to get through all the chaos.”

Hochgurtel’s book is selling for $8.99. “Aunt Mommy,” a 2007 publication by Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC, of Mustang, Okla., can be purchased now at Two Guys from Italy in Gardnerville, or at tatepublishing.com. After the book’s release date, July 3, it will be available at amazon.com, borders.com or barnesandnoble.com.

Learn more about “Aunt Mommy“

 Article Launched: 05/06/2007 10:12:46 PM PDT
There is an inner electricity in Oni Vitandham. A surging of crosscurrents.

A survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s, Vitandham finds that her search for a kind of Buddhist serenity is at war with the hard-learned street smarts she picked up in Long Beach. She is Cambodian, but highly Americanized.

She preaches peace, but seems to always be fighting some sort of inner war.

At one moment she can be dropping her eyes demurely, and at another shouting and demanding to be heard.

Even her name speaks to multiple identities. She chose Vitandham as her last name by combining the initials of people who helped her survive in Cambodia.

On the one hand, she created Progressive United Action Association Inc., a nonprofit organization that offers free English-language instruction to more than 1,300 bereft children in her home country. And yet, never, not once, has she returned to see the benefits of her creation.
And now, relations with the organization she founded have become so strained that the board of directors recently released a letter claiming Vitandham was “no longer our founder.”

As a survivor of the Cambodian genocide, Vitandham saw almost unimaginable atrocities.

But while many Cambodians retreated within themselves and their communities when they came to the United States, Vitandham had a very different, a very un-Cambodian response.
“I’m not a humble person,” Vitandham says. “It’s something about my personality. I’m an aggressive Cambodian woman.”

In the beginning

Before there was Progressive United, there was only a willful young Cambodian woman who wanted to leave a legacy for her people.

In the early 1990s, Vitandham was just another survivor adrift in a foreign country and mystifying culture.

It was then, at the urging of friend and mentor Robert Simpson, that she became an inveterate writer of letters recounting her experiences as a survivor of the Killing Fields, about tribunals to prosecute former Khmer Rouge leaders, about HIV and ongoing injustices in her homeland.

She regularly sent off letters – to politicians in Washington, D.C., to diplomats, to the United Nations, to leaders across the globe, to just about anyone who would respond.

Members of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party have never met Vitandham, but they know her from her often incendiary letters.

Simpson suggested she create a nonprofit corporation and use it to make a difference and shortly thereafter, Progressive United was born.

As Vitandham had little money and less understanding of what she wanted to achieve, the organization remained little more than a letterhead.

In 1998, she registered PUAAI as a nonprofit and quickly started a one-person crusade in Long Beach, helping residents with legal and immigration problems, after-school programs and tutoring.

In 2000, she met Mike Blasdell, a real estate agent in Long Beach who became enamored of Cambodian culture after working in Vietnam.

It was not a match made in heaven.

Blasdell says Vitandham despised him because he had worked with the Vietnamese, the enemy of her people.

However, Blasdell’s sister, Karen Blasdell, was fond of Vitandham, and because Blasdell was caring for his sister as she battled through the final fatal stages of her cancer, the three were often together.

Before Karen died, she asked Blasdell to look after Vitandham.

Six years later, the hot-and-cold relationship continues. The two are not romantically linked, but Vitandham, as well as her teenage daughter, live rent-free in a home owned by Blasdell.

“She’s my project,” Blasdell says in a voice that suggests both affection and weariness.

He sees the rent-free arrangement as one of his contributions to the people of Cambodia.

Blasdell alternately admires Vitandham’s passion and ability to get things done, but grows tired of stamping out the fires she can create.

Blasdell says Vitandham eventually introduced him to a group of Cambodians in Fresno, who compose the bulk of Progressive United’s base and provide its funding.

“I asked what it was the group wanted the most,” Blasdell says. “They said their biggest wish was to help the people left behind in Cambodia. That’s what they call them, the people left behind.”

Opening in Cambodia

Progressive United was officially recognized in Cambodia as a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, in 2002, after what Blasdell said was a year of negotiation. He refused to pay bribes to expedite the process.

Eventually, the first school opened. Today, Progressive United offers free English-language training, mostly in rural areas of the country, as well as some computer classes in Phnom Penh.

Dianne McNinch, a former member of the Long Beach City College Board of Directors, wrote the curriculum for the schools, and Blasdell put the organization together, hired staff in Cambodia and worked through the bureaucracy.

When PUAAI was still in its formative stage, Vitandham first spoke with the Fresno Cambodian group that would become the backbone of her organization.

Although most of the Cambodians in the group are not wealthy, they have kept the organization afloat through some turbulent times through fundraisers, membership drives and donations.

Especially in the past two years, Vitandham’s relationships with donors and the organization’s board of directors became increasingly rancorous.

Internal strife

The split arose in part over Vitandham’s association with David Brooks Arnold, a Washington, D.C., insider and activist .

Believing Arnold could help PUAAI secure lucrative government grants and contacts, Vitandham enlisted his help.

Arnold, who has HIV and had been a director of international relations for the American Red Cross and special assistant to the president’s International AIDS Trust, agreed to do so in March 2005.

The organization’s headquarters were moved to Washington and Arnold was named president by the board of directors.

Arnold went on to form another board of directors, although there are questions whether this was properly done or within his authority.

PUAAI board members say they never surrendered their positions nor authorized Vitandham to give away control of the organization.

The problems soon escalated.

There were disputes about the organization’s mission – and Arnold’s main interest in fighting HIV and AIDS in Cambodia.

“We always wanted to do that,” Vitandham says of fighting AIDS. “But (Arnold) didn’t want me to be a part of that.”

Vitandham says Arnold tried to hijack the group to pursue his personal agenda at the expense of the schools.

However, in a March 2005 letter, Vitandham wrote in a letter she was relinquishing control of Progressive United to Arnold – though, again, it is unclear whether that was in her purview.

Vitandham says the breaking point with Arnold came when he tried to shut down the schools.

Arnold could not be reached for comment.

However, in an e-mail written on behalf of the Washington board, board member Michael Pates wrote that Vitandham had asked Arnold “to lead PUAAI as president to a new level of visibility and effectiveness” and that “Both he and the board have fulfilled their duties in good faith and have no further comment on any allegation to the contrary.”

A further e-mail asking Pates if the D.C. board considered itself still in charge went unanswered.

Somara Chea, who runs PUAAI operations in Cambodia, met Arnold on a trip he took to her country. She said he asked her to identify orphans whose parents had died from AIDS.

Chea scoured rural areas and found about 150 children orphaned by AIDS.

However, she said Arnold failed to do anything with the information she provided.

“He doesn’t help, only talk,” Chea said. “He talks very big, does very small.”

Relations further deteriorated when Arnold hired his adopted son, Michael Booker Arnold, as the first paid executive director of the organization. Because of the organization’s minimal budget, this caused even more dissent.

Eventually, the organization’s California board of directors moved to replace David Brooks Arnold with Blasdell, who had been chairman of the organization prior to stepping down for him.

It is unclear whether David Brooks Arnold will challenge the decision.

Blasdell says his letters to Arnold and others in Washington have gone unanswered. The number for PUAAI in Washington has been disconnected, although the e-mail from Pates still listed a Washington address.

Vitandham also clashed with the Fresno board of directors about her failure to report to them about how she used organization money.

The disputes have damaged PUAAI’s membership according to Roath Nem, a member of the organization’s board of directors.

“Before there were hundreds of members,” Nem says. “After the conflict some members have quit. Now there are maybe 100.”

Forging ahead

Despite the internal struggles, the group continues to open new schools and has embarked on an ambitious plan to build a new classroom, office and residential building in Phnom Penh.

Nem says the board is attempting to get funds from international organizations, but has had no luck thus far.

“We don’t know when we’ll get funds, but we have to do it,” Nem says.

Meanwhile, Vitandham has stepped away from the organization.

She has returned to school, is working on a second autobiographical book and says she plans to become a lawyer.

She has yet to visit the schools she helped create.

Vitandham says she fears she would not be welcomed or understood.

“I think if it’s the right time, I’ll return – peacefully,” Vitandham says.

In 2006, Vitandham finished her first book, an autobiography entitled “On the Wings of a White Horse,” a fantastic – critics say fantasy-filled – retelling of her survival as a young child in Cambodia during Pol Pot’s murderous rampage and her subsequent battles with homelessness and abuse in Long Beach.

In the book, Vitandham tells of a prophesy given to her that she would return to Cambodia on a white horse, from which the book’s title is derived, and bring peace to the country.

Blasdell says Vitandham’s fear about returning to Cambodia is not unusual among survivors.

As far as criticisms aimed at her for not visiting the schools, he thinks they are unfair.

“When she talks of a grand return, she believes it,” Blasdell says. “But she has returned to Cambodia, by opening the schools. I’m a facilitator, but this is her dream. She’s worked hard for it and in essence she has returned to Cambodia.”

Tomorrow: Staff writer Greg Mellen reflects on his time in Cambodia.

Greg Mellen can be reached at greg.mellen@presstelegram.com or (562) 499-1291.

Learn more about “On The Wings Of A White Horse“