An article about Berlin caught my attention last week and, like Proust’s madeleine, it transported me back to a different time and place.
My friend, Bernd Hummel, is a successful German businessman with a fondness for America and Americans. As a child in Germany at the end of World War II he remembers American soldiers handing out candy and gum to the kids in his small town, and he hasn’t forgotten their generosity nor lost his gratitude for how America helped rebuild Germany. He shared that part of his story with me in 2014 and showed me two sections of the Berlin Wall he purchased and installed in the courtyard of his office complex two hours south of Frankfurt. He knew that I had lived in the shadow of The Wall for almost 10 years and that I would be curious to know their back story.
Bob Gandt is a remarkable guy. We first met 40 years ago as Pan Am pilots in Berlin. Bob had been based there for a couple of years when I arrived, and we soon discovered a number of shared interests. We had both flown A4’s in the military, were marathon runners who shared an admiration for Ernest Hemingway’s prose, and harbored our own aspirations to be writers. When Bob found out I was from Ketchum, Idaho, Hemingway’s last home, and knew Ernest’s son, Jack, it was clear we were going to have a lot to talk about.
