The Teacher Who Brought Him to the Heart of the Cold War -- and the Berlin Wall Itself

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Visit www.NissanUSA.com. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. It's time for our final thought 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 Bader, 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.

Fall 2014. Dear Eberhard, You and I have never met, but I knew your sister, Erica. I'm sorry I missed your 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, but such a great reward too. She also changed me because she's the one who got this Scott to go to college.

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. 31 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 Herr Prein, discussing World War II and his experience of being forced into the Hitler Youth. We drove north through empty woods to Die Grenze, 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 Die Maurer. That infamous graffiti-adorned wall that surrounded and separated that city. The expanse of no man's land at Potsdamer Platz, that 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 Kurfinstendammstraße, West Berlin's equivalent to Times Square, contrasted with the dull gray of Alexanderplatz, 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 binoculars 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, is 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 eleven o'clock at night, Alexanderplatz is a mass of humanity, young and old enjoying a balmy evening of street performers and endless food tents. Potsdamerplatz is now a temple to modern high-rises, glitzy 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 Trabant, that ubiquitous East German car, is at a special museum that could actually fit perfectly with the Kichikoni island boardwalk.

It even advertises where nostalgia is guaranteed. Apfelmann, the iconic symbol that was once used by the East Germans to epitomize the importance of work, now has its own capitalistic-infused retail store opposite the Franz Josefshodom, the old Berlin cathedral which lays 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, DiGio, Zara, H&M, and Kenneth Kohl's stores lined the streets still bathed in the blue reflection off the Kaiser Wilhelm 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 on 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 Die Maurer came down. Now here I was back. Those early days had been sobering experiences. Now, thirty-one years later, I'm in Berlin.

I watched my children whiz through the Brandenburg Gate on bikes, soaking up the sunset in the populated plaza without a care or first-hand appreciation of how that place has changed. I had to stop, and through misty eyes, reach out, and I had to go back to the place 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, still having an impact.

I miss you, as do many others. Thanks, Lawson. The power of one teacher to change a life, Lawson Bader. It changed his and his view toward freedom.

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