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Fwd:Princess with a Cause, Part IV



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Subject: Fwd:Princess with a Cause, Part IV (Final)

Comments by: U Win@Counseling@OCC
Originally To: Inrternet[reg.burma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Original Date: Monday, July 1, 1996 at 6:57:08 pm PDT
Originally From: U Win@Counseling@OCC
Comments:


-------------------------[Original Message]--------------------------
(Continuation)


In 1962, the princess didn't want to accept those terms.  She thought that by staying, she had a better chance of finding the prince.  But she kept getting conflicting reports, first one saying that Sao was alive and well, then another saying he'd been executed.

"If it hadn't been for the children, I would have joined the insurgent forces to fight in the jungle, which would have killed me very soon," Sargent said.  "That was very much in my mind, that anger, that I was going to get even."

By 1964, she had spent two years under house arrest.

Occasionally she snuck out to track down leads and confront military leaders about the prince's whereabouts.  Her efforts to find Sao, or even learn what happened to him, failed.

The princess decided that her search might have more success from abroad. The army was willing to let her go, but not her daughters.  She was an Austrian citizen, but the girls had been born in Burma.  And she was unwilling to leave without them

Finally, a friend obtained a forged Austrian passport for the two young princesses.

In the conclusion to "Twilight over Burma," Sargent is boarding a Pan Am airliner with Kennari and Mayari, ages 3 and 6, fearing that the phony passport will be discovered at the last minute.

But they board unchallenged.

When the pilot announces that the plane has left Burmese airspace, all the passengers cheer.

"I am still chilled when I think about it," Sargent said.

The princess and her daughters moved to Denver and then Boulder, where she worked on her teaching certificate and ultimately took the job at Fairview.

With more than three decades of perspective, the former princess has no regrets about leaving the country.

"It was absolutely the right thing to do at the right time,"  she said.

In 1968, at her request, a Boulder judge declared Sao dead so she could marry Tad Sargent, a computer scientist she met through her Colorado College roommate.

For the longest time, the judge's decree was her greatest guilt.  "Having someone declared dead -- it's almost like being part of the death," she said.

Her daughters, now 37 and 40, graduated from Fairview High School, went on to college, professions and marriage.

"I used to have nightmares," their mother recalled.  "I am with the two children, and we are running, and they (the soldiers) are shooting."

Writing the story of her life as a Shan princess helped eliminate her nightmares.

Her day-to-day efforts to aid those she left behind in Burma help keep them away.

"Now," Sargent said, "I am really at peace with my decisions."

END