Your Daily News

Good morning everyone! I was just typing up some excerpts from  few of the articles published about the Raynor adoption in 1953, for a presentation I'll be making at the Fulbright Junior Researcher Conference on Jeju Island next week, and thought you might find them interesting:

The Huronite and the Daily Plainsman, Huron, South Dakota 

ST PAUL - It looks like “Jimmy,” the five-year-old Korean orphan who helplessly watched the Chinese Communists behead his mother, may soon cross the Pacific Ocean for a new life with an ex-Army Sergeant in South Dakota. 

A 25-year-old bachelor, Sgt. 1-c Paul Raynor of Huron, S.D., legally adopted Choi Kyung Hyun - now named Jimmy P. Raynor - as his son while he was  with the Seoul City Command in Korea on May 22, 1953. 

But the lanky soldier didn’t calculate that Army regulations and America’s immigration and naturalization laws might set up barriers to his plan to take Jimmy home with him ...” 

The Morning World-Herald, Omaha, Nebraska 

A 5-year-old Korean War refugee and the only daddy he has ever known met  for the first time in five months at Omaha Union Train Station Depot Sunday at  4 a.m.  Clutching a fire engine, two cowboy pistols and candy, the youngster had eyes  only for Paul Raynor, Huron, S.D., GI who adopted him while with the Army  in Korea. 

There was no hint in the reunion of the red tape that for months separated the  orphan, named Jimmy, and his father, who was granted an unprecedented  ruling by the Attorney General of South Dakota before the boy could be  brought from Seoul, Korea, to the United States. 

When Mr. Raynor and Jimmy saw each other they embraced, exchanged  greetings and the ex-GI remarked, “Boy, does he look good ...”