COEUR d'ALENE - Forty years ago, George Carnie was the heart behind an effort that brought hundreds of orphans from Saigon to America during the Vietnam War.

Carnie, 81, returned home to Coeur d'Alene this month after working more than 60 years as a tireless advocate for children both overseas and at schools across the nation. He said his life was spent making decisions that led to larger opportunities, beginning when Carnie graduated with a master's degree in agriculture and chose to enter the field of education instead of farming.

At 27, Carnie was hired to be the superintendent of schools in Hagerman, Idaho, and said he applied for any grant he could to get more funding into the rural school system. His efforts caught the eye of a philanthropist in Denver, who offered him a job traveling the country exploring the key ingredients involved in the making of a successful school.

Carnie jumped at the opportunity and, with his late wife, Deanna, relocated to Colorado. At the same time the couple, unable to have children of their own, ran into roadblock after roadblock in their efforts to adopt.

They began volunteering with a Boulder, Colo., adoption agency called "Friends for All Children," which helped find loving homes for kids in hopeless situations abroad. He was named chairman of the board and Carnie's new role with the agency took him to Saigon, where he worked with an orphanage flooded with children during the final years of the Vietnam War.

In 1974, the couple adopted two infants from Saigon - Malia and Zachary. Tragedy struck after they returned to America when Carnie awoke to find Zachary had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome the previous night.

Carnie said he and Deanna wanted to raise more than one child, so he returned to the orphanage in Saigon in the spring of 1975. One day, a VW bus loaded with children from rural, war-ravaged areas arrived at the facility and Carnie watched as 1-year-old twins were carried from the vehicle.

"I fell in love with them immediately," he said.

Initially Carnie was told the twins were supposed to be adopted by a German couple, but when that fell through he began the adoption process. Every day, Carnie and the staff at the orphanage could hear gunfire getting closer and closer to Saigon and the knowledge that the city would soon fall left everyone worried about the fate of the children.

There were about 300 orphans at the facility in Saigon. After lobbying the United States military, Carnie was able to get the kids and their caretakers on a Lockheed C-5A Galaxy as part of "Operation Babylift" - a government effort to handle the mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to America.

On April 4, 1975, the C-5A was flying to its first stop in the Philippines at 23,000 feet when the locks on the rear loading ramp failed, causing the cargo door to open in an explosion that filled the cabin with fog and debris. Half of the flight of 313 was in the lower half of the plane when the door blew open.

"Quite a few of the kids and staff went right out with it," Carnie said.

The pilot attempted an emergency landing at Tan Son Nhut Airbase in South Vietnam. The effort failed and the plane went through rice paddy after rice paddy before coming to a halt, buried in mud on the banks of the Saigon River.

Carnie learned about the crash when he received a telegram that said his children had perished in a plane crash. Knowing the plane was also filled with children his organization was finding homes for made the news hurt on both a professional and personal level.

"I felt terrible," Carnie said. "These kids were dead and they were such beautiful kids."

What Carnie didn't know was that, just minutes before takeoff, a caretaker onboard who had grown attached to the twins had brought them to the top half of the plane. After the crash, another caretaker threw the infants out a window away from the flaming wreckage.

They laid covered in mud in the rice paddy for two days before being discovered. Carnie then received another telegram from Saigon telling him that the twins had actually survived.

"I couldn't call over there and find out for sure so I didn't know what to believe," Carnie said.

Along with the other survivors, the twins waited in the orphanage for salvation while Saigon fell around them.

"I went on all the national networks and pleaded over the airwaves," Carnie said. "I told them we need someone to step up to the plate and help us help these kids."

Bob Macauley, a businessman from Connecticut, responded to the plea by calling Carnie and saying, "we'll get those kids out of there." Macauley mortgaged his home to put up the needed $250,000 to charter a jet and get the kids out of Saigon three days later.

Carnie flew to San Francisco and sat with Ford in a bus for an hour, chatting while waiting for the children to arrive. The president took the first child off the plane, and Carnie waded through the media and fanfare to get his twins.

"It was really exciting to see them alive," Carnie said.

Hugh Hefner flew his Playboy Jet to San Francisco and flew Carnie, the twins, and other orphans to Denver. Carnie smiled as he recalled women dressed in bunny outfits helping care for the orphans during the flight.

Once in Colorado, Carnie assisted in locating homes for the orphans while raising his three children. The family eventually settled down in Colville, where Carnie worked as a public school superintendent.

The twins, Landon and Lorie, are grown up now. Lorie lives in Colville, near her sister Malia, and Carnie said 13 years ago Lorie went to Hanoi, Vietnam, to adopt a little girl.

"I was so thrilled," Carnie said. "I never thought she would do something like that."

Landon earned a master's degree and now lives in Vietnam, where he teaches English at RMIT University.

"Most of the kids that came off that flight were so impacted that a lot of them chose careers in the helping professions," Carnie said. "Their future was so bleak and they felt so grateful for all the help they'd been given to avoid that."

Carnie said he plans on enjoying retirement with his second wife, Beverly, at their new home in Coeur d'Alene. But the retirement won't be solely spent on leisure - Carnie is already looking for ways to get involved in the community so he can continue to serve as an advocate for children.