Memories Shaped By History

A little mind shaped by monumental events

The U-Haul truck smelled of staleness and exhaust, but I’d been enjoying every minute of the ride. We were moving to a new city. It was a big adventure. Perhaps the biggest one of my life up until that point. It was January 28, 1986.

We’d stopped at McDonald’s to pick up something quick. My dad wanted to get back on the road so that we’d have plenty of time to unload the truck and get settled into the new house before bedtime.

The truck had one of those old manual radio interfaces. A man’s voice filtered through the speakers, announcing a historical event. A regular person was going into space. She wasn’t an astronaut. She was a teacher with a room full of kids watching her make history on the Challenger.

Of course, 73 seconds after takeoff, the flight took a devastating turn. The shuttle simply blew up, killing everyone on board. I didn’t watch it on TV. Instead, I listened silently in the truck with my dad. After a few minutes, he turned it off.

It will forever be a memory shared by the world yet shared only between me and my dad.

It was early June 1989. Summer break had just started. My sister and I weren’t allowed to go outside when my parents weren’t home, so we were watching TV. It was probably The Price is Right, but that aspect of my memory is a bit faded. That game show was our jam for years.

The news cut into the programming. Not long after a news reporter spoke, we saw the image of a sole man standing up in front of a row of Chinese tanks.

The front tank made a few small efforts to creep forward, but the man was undeterred. The tank tried to move around him, and the man shifted in front of the tank.

He stood his ground despite being faced with horrible consequences. Just the day before, the military had massacred hundreds of protestors. Yet here he was.

Now, I researched this man. It turns out that this man was only 19 years old. A student. And nobody knows with certainty what happened to him.

In November 1989, the news replayed a section of Ronald Reagan’s speech from a few years ago. He said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The speech was more than two years old, but it added to the drama of the situation.

Little did I know at my young age that Reagan spoke of a 66-mile wall that encircled West Berlin. It had several hundred watch towers as well as bunkers and trenches. Its purpose — to keep fascist players from entering and corrupting West Berlin. It was a physical barrier that defined a divided German.

After living with this wall for 28 years, the Germans had enough. They tore the wall down themselves. I recall the passion and joy as the people broke off the wall part by part and as they ran across the bridge.

Through the innocent eyes of a child, I failed to grasp the full meaning of the event. I didn’t understand the purpose of the wall and the significance of unifying Germany.

What I did understand, though, was that people had the power to literally tear down walls and take control of their lives.

Read Converge: Circumstances of Fate.

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