AH, IT'S AMERICA

In June 1965 as I was finishing my year in Europe we traveled through Russia, into Finland, Sweden and being broke, hitchhiked from Stockholm to Uppsala and caught a ferry to Copenhagen. Phil Hosterman and I arrive at 1am, asked a fellow for a ride to the nearest hostel, but he dropped us off in the red light district. We weren’t interested and found a park with benches and prepared to sleep the night there. It began to rain, we noticed light coming through an open door on the edge of the park and made out way into a an official-looking building labeled “The Botanical Institute.” We stretched out on a couple of benches in the foyer and tried to sleep. A fellow came down the stairs and we asked if it was all right to spend the night there and he said he didn’t know, he wasn’t a professor at the institute. He disappeared upstairs, but returned a few minutes later and told us to follow him. He took us to the top floor, into an apartment and introduced us to his wife, who was on the faculty of the Botanical Institute. The told us that we could stay with them. This family put us up, fed us, and drove us all over Denmark for three days demonstrating all the historical landmarks dear to them. This act of kindness– where did it come from? We were told that when the Nazis occupied Denmark, the Gestapo ordered all the Jews to wear armbands with the Star-of-David identifying them as Jews to aid the deportation process to the death camps. I haven’t been able to verify this but we were told that all the Danes put the arm bands on. Where did this act of solidarity come from?

In 1969 a notice appeared in the student lounge at the University of Minnesota Medical school that minifellowships were available to study for three or four months in Yugoslavia. I had a wonderful experience in Yugoslavia in 1965. This area was a fusion point of Islam, Christianity, Greek and Russian Orthodox religions, and was ruled then by a Stalinist era Dictator named Marshall Tito. The country was still recovering from the ravages of WWII caused by the Nazi occupation and subsequent liberation by the Russian and Allied armies. The suffering and horror of war was fresh in every ones memory. I was anxious to get back to Yugoslavia and this fellowship looked like a promising entre. I applied, was accepted, and joined 30 other medical students from the US in Beograd in September 1969 for three months of study in a Communist system health plan. The stipend for this came from the Yugoslav government as a way of paying America back for the food sent there to ward off starvation shortly after WWII. I joined up with a fellow named Jim Everett from Emory Med School and a Yugoslav medical student named Mile Mejandjia, who acted as our guide and translator. We were told to set up a medical research project and report back in three months with a written paper and give an oral report. The Communist system had passed laws that all citizens were guaranteed access to free medical care and a special system was in place to see that all pregnant women were seen regularly during and after the pregnancy. We decided to look at infant mortality in a rural province near the Romanian border to see how the system worked. We went to a central record keeping office and with the intercession of a Beograd Medical School professor got a list of the names and addresses of all (35 in all) the children that had died within one year of birth in 1968. Over the next two months we scoured the province for the parents of these children and delicately asked details of their health care and circumstances leading up to the death of their child. We were never turned away and often invited in for meals or offered a bed for the night when it was explained that were from America. We learned that the caused of infant mortality in Yugoslavia were the same as those in America and the rest of the world: poverty, lack of education, poor access to health care in spite of the promises of the government, and racism. Infant mortality was high among the Gypsies who were dark skinned, clannish, commonly lived outside the law, and reviled by the general population and this racial group avoided the official system and had their babies at home on a dirt floor.

On a free weekend we traveled to Split, a small city on the Adriatic sea. We rented a room from an elderly gentleman and he offered us a seafood dinner for a nominal cost. He prepared a bed of coals from dried vine cuttings from his vineyard and roasted us tuna, peppers from his garden, and we washed it down with his wine. Midway through the dinner he posed a question. “Do you realize that America is the only country that never invaded us?” He went on to detail three thousand years of Baltic history recounting successive invasions, occupations, suppressions of local cultures, and the build up of resentment and desire for retribution and revenge. He went on, “we have a superlative in Yugoslavia, ah, it’s America, which means it’s the best in the world.” We didn’t explore the full depth of this sentiment offered by this elderly man but we knew that the sacrifices of our grandfathers, fathers, and uncles, and countryman, many of whom paid the ultimate price to rid Europe of brutal tyranny, followed by food and aide for the starving underlie the hospitality and warm kindness we received in this Communist country.

This is a bit of a rant, and I apologize. We were given a legacy of worldwide good will by our grandparents and parents through their vision and sacrifice. I didn’t do anything in Denmark or Yugoslavia to warrant unusual kindness but received it none-the-less. I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it’s significance at that time, but now sense that we have let the prize wither and see it slipping away. What will be my generation’s legacy to the world? A Hellfire missile fired into an open doorway from a Predator drone 65,000 feet in the air? Or an open hand reaching out to all people saying, “how may we help?” Are we joining the ranks of those who call for retribution and revenge that plagues Yugoslavia still and we witness to our horror in Iraq on an hourly basis? Do we fuel this mindset or ask of people to look to a greater and higher purpose for our short sojourn on earth? I know my children and close friends yearn for leadership that asks the best of us. My Rotary Club gives me faith that many people want to extend that hand of kindness and hope to the rest of the world. We have the talent and resources but need the “lense” that concentrates the sun beam to focus our will and energy toward that highest purpose. Is there a Lincoln, Roosevelt, or Martin Luther King out there who can be a lense for America, or is it up to each of us individually?