Kimberly Mitchell was just 10 months old when her life was transformed by a U.S. airman serving Vietnam. Overwhelmed by the hardship and destruction he witnessed in the southeast Asian nation, James L. Mitchell decided to visit the Sacred Heart Orphanage in the coastal city of DaNang.
The moment baby No. 899 was placed in his arms, the Kentucky native was in love.
“There were hundreds and hundreds of orphans, from babies to young children,” Mitchell said. “I was the lucky one that day.”Her adoptive father’s military career took the family from Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, where the couple adopted a baby boy, to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas before James Mitchell retired after 23 years of active duty and settled in northern Wisconsin.
Kim Mitchell flooed in her father's foootsteps and attended the U.S. Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, R.I., before being accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. She was 19, excited about the world opening up to her, when tragedy struck. A week before Mitchell was due to report to the academy, her beloved father was hit by a bolt of lightning on the family farm and killed.
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