Published: November 10, 2009 03:46 pm      

RANDOM THOUGHTS: The fall of the Iron Curtain remembered

As an avid newspaper reader it is datelines more often than headlines that push my brain’s memory button. USA Today’s cover story on November 4 did just that. It was the story of the Berlin wall 20 years later and Fulton, MO was the dateline. On September 27, 1983 I was in Fulton to visit the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library and the restored Church of St. Mary Aldermanbury where outside the life-size statue of Churchill welcomes visitors.

Westminster College had been a part of Fulton since 1849 when the Presbyterian Church founded the school there. President Truman changed Fulton forever when he invited Churchill to speak there. Truman wrote, “It is a wonderful college in my home state and if you consent to speak, I will go with you to Fulton and introduce you.” On March 5, 1946 Churchill delivered his momentous and prophetic Iron Curtain speech on the campus of Westminster College.

There was never a doubt that Churchill and those words must be memorialized. President Kennedy headed the Memorial Committee and it was proposed that the church which had been destroyed by German incendiary bombs in 1940 and the remains were slated for demolition should be brought here and restored. When Churchill heard about the proposal he wrote Westminster College officials on November 22, 1962. He said he was honored and “It may symbolize in the eyes of the English-speaking peoples the ideals of Anglo-American association on which rest, now as never before, so many of our hopes for peace and the future of mankind.”

For more than 800 years the church St. Mary had stood on a corner of the Roman Wall surrounding the Old City of London. It was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 but Sir Christopher Wren began rebuilding it soon after. It was considered the best of his architecture. After the 1940 bombing all that remained were a bell tower, twelve stone columns and the outside walls.

In 1965 the work began. 7,000 stones were cleansed and numbered. Skilled artisans reproduced the elaborate, ornamental designs of Wren. This gift from the Diocese of London to the people of America crossed the Atlantic at no cost thanks to two shipping firms. More than $1,300,000 was raised in the States to help preserve this church as a living memorial to Sir Winston Churchill.

The undercroft of the church holds the museum, gallery and library. This is the only center in America devoted to Churchill’s life and the history he helped shape. It was dedicated in 1969 and designated a National Historic Site in 1972.

Even as the work to preserve history was going on disturbing history was made when the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. In his 1946 speech Churchill declared, “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” The wall was a stark reminder of those words.

On a visit to Berlin in 1987 President Reagan spoke those unforgettable words, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” On November 9, 1989 the world watched the destruction as East and West Berliners began chipping at the hated divider. Fulton, MO received the largest (32 feet) original section of the wall outside Berlin and it was placed next to the National Churchill Memorial. It was the granddaughter of Churchill, sculptor Edwina Sandys, who had it sent there. She cut out shapes of a man and a woman escaping and named the piece Breakthrough. On November 9,1990 Reagan went to Fulton to dedicate the sculpture. Two years later Mikhail Gorbachev visited and standing in front of the wall said that the end of the Cold War was, “a shattering of the vicious circle into which we had driven ourselves.” Then as the crowd cheered he stepped through the hole in the wall.

On November 9, 2009 in Fulton crowds gathered at a replica of the wall which had been built in the shadow of the original section earlier. They joined thousands around the world in reliving the destruction of the wall twenty years ago.