The Teacher Who Brought Him To The Heart Of The Cold War

00:00:12
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habeeb, and this is Our American Stories. It’s time for our Final Thoughts series, where we bring you the final thoughts from loved ones to those who’ve passed: an obituary, a eulogy, a note. And today’s comes to us from Lawson Beader, who paid tribute to his late teacher, Erica, and he did it in the form of a letter to her brother. Let’s take a listen to Lawson and his letter.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: Fall 2014. Dear Eberheart, you and I have never met, but I knew your sister, Erica. I’m sorry I missed her memorial service. I did manage to go online and sign the obituary page, and I included myself in the Facebook group. But I feel compelled to write this two years after her death because of what my family and I were just able to do. You see, I was one of Erica’s kids. I know she had many of them, but I also think that I was part of her original gaggle, the ones who traveled with her to Germany that first time. We were her guinea pigs, as she called us. David was also in my class. In fact, he and I had been in Montessori school together in the early 1970s. I probably met Erica then, but I had no idea who she would become later in my life. She changed my world. I know that’s an overused phrase, but it’s true, and not just because I learned to appreciate another language. Well, at least I tried learning German. She thought it fairly ironic that it actually became a college minor of mine later on. She was also instrumental in helping my brother through some rough times, but that’s his story, not mine. Now, she changed my life because she made it so clear that the best teachers are the ones who know you, really know you. It’s why I learned so much. I married a teacher, a seriously great one. So I appreciate Erica even more now that I see what’s going on in the background of the best teachers. There is a cost to being a great teacher; such a great reward, too. She also changed me because she’s the one who got this Scott to go to Germany. As you know, we were the group that did that first exchange. We lived with families who, in turn, became a family. I spend a lot of time these days working among people and groups that are committed to promoting the causes of freedom. I have had what I would call many interruptions in my life that have led me down that path. Erica is one of those interruptions, and I would simply not be as content with what I’m doing today without her. So allow me to tell you about it, even though I’m really telling her. Thirty-one years ago, we first visited Berlin. Do you remember, Erica? And in Berlin, I was changed. I loved being in your city of Hamburg, entertaining long evening hours with Hair Praying, discussing World War II and his experience of being forced into the Hitler Youth. We drove north through empty woods to Degrenza, that ominous fence separating East and West Germany, and I saw Helga weep at that tragic reality of her separation from the village where she grew up, which we could just see over the fence a few kilometers away. I wonder how you felt when you journeyed away those many years ago, and then you took us to Berlin. In Berlin, the past collided with the present. The bullet-riddled Reichstag, the old German parliament building, which backed up to Demauer, that infamous graffiti-adorned Wall that surrounded in rate in that city, the expanse of No Man’s Land Pottstemmer Plutz, a great public square covering what remained of Hitler’s Bunker while providing an open firing range for the East German snipers. The contrast between colorful nightlife with the Kurfensten Damstrasse, West Berlin’s equivalent to Times Square, contrasted with the dull gray of Alexander Plutz, which was the East Berlin response to Times Square, which, as you know, wasn’t really much of a response. Frankly, on wooden scaffolding, we would gaze up and over the Wall and beheld anonymous binocular staring back at us from behind cement-block watchtowers. Thirty-one years later, earlier this month, I returned to Berlin. It was a bit strange to be back. This time, I was with my children, the youngest of whom, Margaret, was now the same age I think I was on that first visit. We spent most of our two days exploring what used to be the Soviet sector. We walked to Checkpoint Charlie, which, of course, marked the end of the American sector and the beginning of the Soviets’ claim on the city. But we approached it from a decidedly different angle than I first did in 1983. Today, a large McDonald’s dominates the intersection; the Golden Arch, replacing what was once a tense set of switchback plates and armed guards. At 11 o’clock at night, Alexander Plots is a mass of humanity, young and old, enjoying a balmy evening of street performers and endless food tents. Potsdammer Plots is now a temple to modern high-rises and gleaming and dismissive of what once lay beneath its foundations. A solitary guard tower remains, though tucked away on a tree-lined street where for a few euros you can have your photo taken with East German soldiers playing dress-up. Now the only place to see a Tray Band, that ubiquitous East German car, is at a special museum that could actually fit perfectly with the Kichikney Island Boardwalk. It even advertises where nostalgia is guaranteed. Opfomann, the iconic symbol that was once used by the East Germans to epitomize the importance of work, now has its own capitalistic and infused retail store opposite the Friend Zosischedom, the old Berlin Cathedral, which lay so quiet and empty those many decades behind the Wall. Late one evening, we all took the subway to the Kudam, which is still the central shopping district of Berlin, just as it was in the 1970s and ’80s. Gucci, Dijo, Zara, H&M, and Kenneth Cole stores lining the street, still bathed in the blue reflection off the Kaiserville Helm Memorial Church windows. But unlike the last time I was there, it was quiet. I wasn’t looking for a metaphor; maybe it was there, the capitalistic West becoming stale as it gives way to entrepreneurial energies from the East. Or maybe it was just a quiet night in August when many folks were on holiday. There was no need to make it more than it was. And you and I never agreed in our politics anyway. Thirty-one years ago, you took me to Berlin. In the years that followed, I made multiple trips, but my last visit was just before Demauer came down. Now here I was back. Those early days had been sobering experiences. Now, thirty-one years later, I watched my children whiz through the Brandenborg Gate on bikes, soaking up the sunset and the populated plaza without a care or firsthand appreciation of how that place has changed. I had to stop and, through misty eyes, reach out and touch it. Erica, I touched it, profoundly grateful that their first visit to Berlin brought with it such greater promise and hope than did my visits those many decades before. Anyway, I thought you’d appreciate hearing that something you started decades later is still having an impact. I miss you, as do many others.

00:10:21
Speaker 1: Thanks, Lawson. The power of one teacher to change a life. Lawson Beader. It changed his and his view toward freedom. Our Final Thoughts series: Lawson Beader on his final words to his German teacher, Erica, here on Our American Stories.