The Berlin Wall…..

November 9th, 1989 – The day the Berlin Wall fell…….

I was just a baby when we moved to Berlin, Germany but my memories of that place are very clear.  I remember the apartment we lived in, the playground behind it, the train rides to Stake Conference.  My baby brother, Jymn, was born there.  We were there almost 4 years.  It wasn’t far from our home that the wall stood.  In my memory it was behind the apartments across the playground from us but it must have been a bit farther….maybe not.   I remember a flag stand that my dad had, he’d found it in an old Nazi bunker (to my recollection).  On top sat a red piece of stone surrounded by black barbed wire.  I could never tell the story of how it was taken as well as my dad but in short, he snuck to the wall one night with some friends and cut pieces of the barbed wire fencing off to keep.  They were a mere 20 feet from the East German guards.  As a teen I remember visiting my father in Germany and standing beside the wall looking over.  It seemed so ominous to me, so sad.  Just a year later it all happened.  I remember sitting and watching in wonder as the waves of people flooded out of the gates and into the streets of West Germany.  I remember the tiny cars they drove, the Trabants (or as most called them Trabies).  They were so tiny!  My dad told stories of them being abandoned all along the roads leading out of East Germany.  Of people lifting them up and putting them in dumpsters.  My father made his way to the wall and happened to be there the same time as a German newspaper.  He has these amazing photos of his moment as a Wall Woodpecker (as the German’s called them.) 

 

I have a piece of that wall.

I will never forget what it stood for…

…and what it fell for.

This was posted on a MSN this week.  It’s a short version of my Dad’s story……….