Originally from Stuttgart, Arkansas (settled by German immigrant farmers), I had been an exchange student at Uni Hamburg in 1974-75 and had participated in a government-sponsored trip to Berlin for foreign students. The government organized and paid for two-thirds of our trip, which included a chance to see von Karajan direct at the Berliner Philharmonic, a luncheon at the Kempenski Hotel and tour of the Reichtstag, and we were able to listen to various politicians and professors tell us about the history of the Berlin Wall. We also toured East Berlin and visited some relatives of our fellow students who were "trapped" in East Berlin, taking them real coffee.

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(© BPA)

While I had been back to Germany a few times in the 14 years between 1975 and 1989 for personal visits and work, my trip as a student to East Germany and the divided Berlin was always an incredible memory.

Fast Forward to November 11, 1989, I —as an account manager for an American software company—had spent six weeks in Germany and Switzerland, attending a trade show in Munich in late September and visiting clients in Basel and Zurich.

I was supposed to have gone back to Houston in early November, as I was getting married November 25. I needed to have my dress fitted and portrait done and take care of other "minor" wedding details.

My boss called around the first week of November and extended my trip so I would be in Frankfurt to represent our company at a Digital Equipment Corporation conference. I would be flying back to the states on November 13, putting me back in Houston, jetlagged, just two short weeks before the wedding. It seemed a horrible inconvenience that I would have to make the best of. Instead, it was a wonderful coincidence for me (the grown-up German major) to be in Germany when the Wall came down! Of course, I watched everything in real time on TV in the hotel, then got to speak with all the "astonished" Germans in Frankfurt first-hand.

I have the International Herald Tribune from November 11, 1989—kept it all these years as a symbol of "Hope Springs Eternal."

We lived in Düsseldorf from 1992-1995, and I made several trips back Berlin during that time, the last one in March of 2005, when one of our friends took my teen aged son and me to see Potsdamer Platz. The atmosphere in Berlin is incredibly energetic. I could again tell my story of how I managed to be in Germany when the Berlin Wall came down.