O.C. Family Keeps Vigil for Student in Beijing

Janette Fletcher of San Clemente is proud her son, Adam, is studying abroad. On Sunday, however, she was wishing it wasn’t Chinese culture--in Beijing.

Adam Fletcher, 23, is with two dozen other California college students at the vortex of a revolution in the world’s most populous country. And as of Sunday morning, all the single mother knew was that the second of her four children was said to be accounted for and hiding in a dormitory at Beijing University, which was surrounded by troops.

“The worst part was, I was watching the news and (ABC News anchor) Tom Brokaw came on, and he said that the army was going to invade the university, and that the foreign students were hiding under the bed, and the Chinese students were making Molotov cocktails, presumably to lob at the soldiers.

“And that,” she said, “is when I fell apart.”

That was around 9 a.m. She called the American Red Cross and said she was told that she could only get information if her son was a serviceman in China. She called the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles and never got an answer.

Finally, about noon Sunday, Fletcher reached an administrator of UC Santa Barbara’s Education Abroad program whose home number happened to be listed in the phone book.

Gloria Blackmore, the program’s associate director, told her that all 22 students who traveled from University of California schools to China were unharmed and accounted for and in the company of a Prof. Chen, the Chinese director of the program at Beijing University.

Blackmore could not be reached later Sunday for comment.

Chen, who lives in a guest house on the Beijing campus, talked to program officials Saturday night and said the students were hiding in one of the dorms, according to Fletcher.

“He said they would get them out, and if they didn’t have the money to get home, they could charge (the traveling expenses) to the professor’s credit card,” Fletcher said. “At that time, they were surrounded by the Chinese army at the university.”

The program abroad began in September and was not to end for a few more weeks but has officially ended now, Fletcher said. She said Blackmore told her that “as soon as it’s safe they will be getting them out one way or another.” For now, however, Fletcher’s only link to her son is a television screen in the living room of her San Clemente home, where the Fletcher family sits riveted around the clock, flipping channels for developments in the student revolt for democracy.

Fletcher, 51, a secretary for the Southern California Edison Co., received a letter from Adam on Friday. It was dated May 22. For the first time the young man, whose fascination with China started with his first job at a Chinese restaurant, said he was looking forward to coming home.

“I’ll just tell you that the feeling is pretty intense here, and everybody is getting into the act,” Adam wrote of the atmosphere in Beijing before troops began firing on protesters over the weekend.

“It just shows that when people act together they can get almost anything done, even in China, where governments have traditionally ruled with an iron grip. Lately, I’ve been doing pretty good. It’s not easy when everybody’s not going to class (foreigners still are), and everybody is marching.”

A native of Paisley, Scotland, a town on the west coast near Glasgow, Janette Fletcher traveled alone at age 19 to the United States, where all but her oldest child was born. Their father is an American, though Fletcher alone has raised them: Bill, 26, an engineer living in Hawaii; Adam; Mark, 21, a construction worker; and Kathleen, 18, a senior at San Clemente High School and part-time waitress. The youngest two still live at home.

All four of her children have at least a bit of wanderlust, Fletcher said, but Adam Fletcher has always seemed “the most single-minded about it.”

From the time he got his first job, busing dishes at the Eastern Winds restaurant in San Clemente, Adam Fletcher was fascinated by China.

He stayed for hours after the restaurant closed, talking with the Chinese waiters about their homeland. One of them arranged for Adam to stay in his family’s home in Taiwan, and he ended up traveling around the country for six months and teaching English. Then 19, he learned to write and speak Chinese.

Fletcher remembers talking to Adam about visiting China someday herself. With some amusement, she recalled Sunday that her son had pointed out that, “It’s an intriguing place, but you don’t go to China for fun.”

Of her son’s college degree--he is majoring in both Chinese and economics and has discussed working in the foreign service or for an American company in China--Fletcher said he is certainly earning it.

“I would say he’s getting the education of his life. It’s something he will never forget. He is seeing it from start to finish.”