By STEPHANIE BELL, Telegraph
Vance McElhinney has been haunted all his life by what he describes as his “ghosts”. Rescued as a baby from a Vietnamese orphanage and brought to the UK at the end of the war in 1975, he has spent his life questioning who he is and what could have been.
Vance McElhinney with his adoptive parents. (Telegraph)
A tormented soul, he has struggled to reconcile deep issues of abandonment with his immense gratitude to his adoptive parents in Lurgan who have always been there for him.
Racism has also overshadowed his life and he yearns to walk down the street among his own people and for the first time know what it feels like not to be different.
Now 40, Vance plans to visit his homeland of Vietnam for the first time next year in a journey which he hopes will finally bring him some peace of mind.
“I need to lay the ghosts to rest,” he says. “Everything I have tried to do so far in my life has been a disaster because of the way I feel inside.
“I need to go home and know what it is like to walk among people who look like me and I hope for the first time in my life to feel like I fit in and that I don’t stick out like a sore thumb. Just once I need to be in the majority, not the minority.”
Vance has found some healing in writing a book about his life which he is currently working on. He believes everything he has tried to do in his life so far has been overshadowed by hisdeep insecurity – he lost a promising career in social work, battled a gambling addiction and has had two failed marriages. Today, though, he feels like he has reached a crossroads where the path to inner peace is clearly signposted and that his visit to Vietnam will end his torment.
His mum has offered many times over the years to accompany him to Vietnam in the hope that he will find some comfort there but he hasn’t felt ready until now.
He looks younger than his age and has a youthful, upbeat demeanour which belies the terrible conflict which is going on inside him. He is aware of this himself and explains it almost straightaway, putting the depths of his despair into immediate context: “I know I come across as confident and can talk to anyone but it’s when I am by myself I get frustrated.
“Even in my darkest moments, however, I think there is something keeping me here and that is my faith which I got from my parents.”
Vance was adopted by Cyril McElhinney MBE and his wife, Canon Elizabeth McElhinney, and he has two older brothers, Rev Stephen McElhinney (44) and David McElhinney (42).
He knows nothing about his birth parents, only that he was among the 100 orphans airlifted to the UK just a couple of weeks before the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
The Boeing 747 which brought the orphans to England was chartered by the Daily Mail newspaper under editor David English, and was inspired by the American-led Operation Babylift. Most of the children had been in orphanages run by a charity, Ockenden Venture, in Saigon.
He was one of two children brought to Northern Ireland. The other was Tanya Mai Johnston, now an artist living in Belfast, who was interviewed by the Belfast Telegraph last month.
Their care in the UK was co-ordinated by the British Council for Aid for Refugees, which received calls from all over the UK from people wishing to adopt one of the orphans.
Fears were expressed at the time about legal problems such as making sure the children were genuine orphans and that it might have been in the best interests of some children to return to Saigon if the situation stabilised. The war ended just a couple of weeks later.
Vance, who was one-year-old, was brought to an orphanage in West Sussex, where he was among the last of the babies to be adopted six months later.
His dad, who served for many years as national secretary of the YMCA in Northern Ireland, was honoured by the Queen for his work with young people.
He and his wife had seen the story of the orphans being brought to the UK on the news and had prayed about adopting a baby.
“My mum said she came into the room and I was on my own in a big cot by the window and she said she fell in love with me straightaway,” says Vance.
“I was brought up in a Christian family, going to church and Sunday school, and the early years of my life were not too bad, apart from school.
“My family has always been there for me, through my many ups and downs.
“No matter how many times I have fallen down they’ve picked me up and although they haven’t always agreed with the decisions I have made they love me enough to overlook them and help me.
“I have them to thank for the good life I wouldn’t have had if they hadn’t adopted me.”
Vance has also struggled with racist abuse all of his life, starting in primary school. Constant taunts and bullying cast a shadow over his childhood and left their mark.
Also, in his adult years he says he has been made to feel self-conscious about looking different from everyone else.
The scars run so deep that he can’t wait to walk among his own race in Vietnam next year and know what it is like not to feel different from everyone else.
“I knew I was a different colour to everyone else but school was the first time I really became aware of it and I became even more aware of it as I got older,” he recalls.
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