Michael Laverty - Manassas, VA
I am an American, and my father was in the U.S. Army. I spent most of the years from 1959 to 1972 living in West Germany. In 1971, I visited West Berlin for the first time. It was an experience riding through the DDR on the American “troop” train, seeing the Russian and East German guards patrolling the well guarded border.
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- (© Michael Laverty, Germany Embassy)
As an adult, I joined the U.S. Air Force, and in 1988 I was stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base in Rheinland-Pfalz. During the fall of 1988, I watched ZDF and RTL every day and saw stories of the East Germans coming through Hungary to Austria. It was amazing to see this happening! On the evening of the 9th of November, I was at work and we had a television turned to the American channel, AFN. An announcer came on and announced that East Berliner's were happily rushing through the gates into the West! For several days after that, I watched all of the events unfolding in Berlin and couldn’t believe that I would ever live to see this happen!
In 1994, I was on a trip to the reunited city of Berlin, and I couldn’t believe it when I realized that my hotel was actually in the former East Berlin. After dark, my companions and I walked a few blocks down the street looking for a place to eat, when I suddenly realized we were standing in the vicinity of what was formerly the Friedrichstrasse border crossing—now all dark with no one around. It was amazing to me the wonderful things that had happened in such a few short years.
