My Cold War Begins


My birth coincided with the birth of the Cold War. I was born at an Air Force base hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1953. My parents were both serving in the military when they met and got married, but by the time I was born, my mom was a civilian again.

When the Cold War finally ended, like many baby boomers who grew up in the sixties my life had been affected in many ways by the mid-century power struggle between the United States and the USSR.

By 1991, when the hammer and sickle flag was taken down from the Kremlin for the last time, I had been in the Air Force myself, assigned to Tempelhof Central Airport—which had been the main American airport during the 1948 Berlin Airlift.

I used to walk by the Memorial to airmen who died supplying Berlin whenever I walked to the bus stop to go to the Ku'damm.

One thing that has surprised me in the years since I lived in Berlin is how many people, places, and things in America were connected to the Cold War, in ways I never thought had anything to do with it.

If it hadn't been for the Cold War I wouldn't even have been born.

Welcome to my cold war. Dobro pozhalovat' tovarichi!

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