Ann's Column: Where were you when

For years “Where Were You When” has been a popular conversation starter, and in my experience, the answers have been  surprisingly interesting. Where Were You when JFK was shot; when the planes hit the Twin Towers; the Cuban Missile Crisis; moon landing? I have been around so long that I remember VE Day and a spontaneous parade in my neighborhood, and as I learned much later, impulse parades were held throughout the town and all over the USA. I can still hear the cans tied to bumpers and the honking horns. I can see the crowds of neighbors and the cement wall my Dad put me on so I could see everything. From time to time, when in Concord , I go by that wall, and I chuckle, but  am always a bit  shocked that it is only two or three feet tall .

In that same decade I can remember going to Southern Railroad tracks to pay homage to FDR when the train with his body came  by so slowly from Warm Springs, Georgia headed  to DC.  I think everyone in town was lined along the track for miles to show respect and appreciation. I am sure folks lined the tracks in Davidson County too.

I remember where I was for all the “Where Were You” questions. For example,  I will always remember my tenth grade class at Asheboro High School when  over the PA system, the principal announced JFK’s assassination. With fear in their expressions, and in unison every head turned to me for help, for comfort, for understanding.  I couldn’t fall apart the way I wanted to; I can still see that classroom.

However, there is a happy “Where Were You” moment many of us remember. It’s July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon. I and a friend were spending the summer traveling by train in much of Europe. Most, if not all, of the stations had some kind of display about Apollo 11, especially in West Germany where we frequently saw elaborate details of the rocket.  On July 20, I was in East Berlin; The Wall was still there. I had just come through the infamous Checkpoint Charlie, and I saw a young man with a transistor radio to his ear. I headed toward him immediately, and asked  him if the rocket had landed.  He handed me his radio, and yes, the first thing I heard was “one small step…” I  am certain that wasn’t the first time the station had played those famous word, but it was my first time hearing them.  I looked around me and saw the drabness of East Berlin; I saw a gray monument and a soldier with a spiked helmet goose-stepping back and forth in front of the memorial. All around me was dreary, colorless, cheerless. The words I heard on the transistor were the opposite. Certainly, that moment made me proud and humble, excited, and happy .  

Now, in 2022 I think of the giant steps we need to take for democracy, for unison, for all Americans.  When I hear news of Ukraine, I can still see that large, cold, colorless area of East Berlin with concrete and no life and a goose-stepping soldier.