Lucky Break in Red Tape Lets Daughter Exit Vietnam

For eight years, Mai Barlow had been telling her husband, Bernard, that she had a sister in Vietnam. Finally, Mai confessed that the sister, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Linh, was actually her daughter by an American serviceman she believed had been killed. Barlow, who had also served in Vietnam, became a man possessed, determined to bring Linh to their Massachusetts home. Six years and an enormous paper trail later, the Barlows, both 35, were still no closer to getting Linh out. Their big break came last month, when Mai and Bernard joined the first tour of Vietnamese-Americans returning to Vietnam, and Mai was reunited with her 19-year-old daughter, who was working in rice fields, earning 30 cents a day. The Barlows appealed to Vietnamese officials in Ho Chi Minh City to allow Linh to leave, but they were told that only one official, who was in Hanoi, had the authority to grant the exit visa. Miraculously, as they were leaving the government office, the official came walking in on a surprise inspection. He granted the passport, and on Aug. 6, Linh was on a plane to her new home. “He (Bernard) was persistent,” said Greg Kane, an organizer of the tour. “He was persistent, and he was lucky.”

--It was a meeting of hearts and minds. Dr. Robert K. Jarvik, the inventor of the artificial heart that bears his name, wed Marilyn Mach Vos Savant, whose IQ of 230 has brought her billing as “the smartest woman in the world.” Science writer Isaac Asimov, who also has a genius IQ level, gave the bride away in a ceremony Sunday at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Robert Weil, a friend of the bride, said the two met about a year ago after the doctor saw Vos Savant’s photo in a magazine. Weil said that Jarvik “went through hoops” to get her unlisted phone number and that Vos Savant had confided to him that Jarvik proposed to her five days after they first met in Los Angeles a year ago. She waited several months before answering. The marriage is the second for Jarvik, 41, and the third for Vos Savant, also 41, the author of several books and a column that appears in Parade magazine.

--New York Mayor Edward I. Koch would like a best seller. Cardinal John J. O’Connor has some illusions of Shakespearean grandeur, but “Milton will do.” The two have announced that they will write a book detailing their positions on a host of issues, including abortion, child care and homosexual rights, that will be titled “His Eminence and Hizzoner.” Royalties from sales of the book will go to Catholic charities and the city, the authors said.