As small individual contributions from across the state flow in, Amb. Quinn details his efforts to identify how best to deliver urgently needed food and medicine to the thousands of Cambodian victims in Thailand. With the help of a dynamic Catholic priest, the Catholic Relief Service in Bangkok organizes an Iowa SHARES convoy that carries life-sustaining food and urgently needed medicine to Sa Kaew and other areas where the victims of genocide where languishing. With coverage by a Des Moines Register reporter, the Christmas day edition of the newspaper carries the headline “Our Gifts Reach Refugees.” Amb. Quinn describes how this seemed a perfect culminating moment of 1979, which had been filled with so many issues and events that comprise Iowa’s humanitarian heritage.
THE ARCHIVE OF AMBASSADOR KENNETH M. QUINN
FROM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE MEKONG