The Day the Wall Fell Down

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Unless you are at least 60 years old today, you probably had no memory on this day in 1989 of a time when the Berlin Wall did not exist. It was 25 years ago today that the wall was brought down, fulfilling Ronald Reagan's famous 1987 challenge to "tear down this wall."

If you are under 30, you almost certainly have no memory of a time when the Berlin Wall did exist.

But, for anyone who remembers most or all of the years between 1961 and 1989, the Berlin Wall was a constant reminder of the tensions between East and West.

It was a fact of life for seven presidents, from John F. Kennedy, whose administration witnessed the construction of the wall in the summer of 1961, to George H.W. Bush, whose administration saw it fall 25 years ago today.

Most Americans — regardless of age — probably had no idea the wall was about to fall, probably had no understanding of the events in that part of the world that were leading to this day. My memory is that it caught most Americans by surprise. They had heard Reagan's plea a couple of years earlier — if they were old enough, they remembered Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in the shadow of the wall two years after its construction — but such speeches were mostly regarded as symbolic, valuable as propaganda for stirring up the masses. Just as the wall itself was a symbol. I guess Americans were conditioned to believe the wall would always exist. The Berlin Wall took on the same kind of mythical aura as the Great Wall of China — with the added value of armed guards. It was there. It would continue to be there. Never mind that it had not always been there.

("Whatever happened to the kind of inspirational presidential oratory that helped bring down that wall — and Soviet communism?" wonders USA Today's Rick Hamson.)

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After it happened, it was easy to see — as it always is — the progression of events that led to that moment. But, before it happened, the collapse of the Berlin Wall was seen as, at best, wishful thinking and, at worst, delusional fantasy.

Personally, I never thought it would happen. I couldn't imagine a world with a unified Berlin. And today I can't imagine a world in which the wall could be resurrected — yet, with Russian aggression in the Ukraine and militant Muslim aggression in the Middle East, one can only wonder if the last 25 years have been merely an interlude.

Freedom, the adage says, isn't free.

Is it possible there could be another wall — perhaps not in Berlin but somewhere else?

Staying a Step Ahead of the Stalkers

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It is hard to remember Rebecca Schaeffer. I can look at a picture of her today and be unable to place where I saw her — or if I saw her or what her voice sounded like.

When you look at her picture, you can see that she had an appealing smile, a generally engaging demeanor. (Yes, I do think you can tell that from a picture.) But there have always been many of those in the entertainment world.

Of course, it has been more than 25 years since she graced our television screens in My Sister Sam, a sitcom that lasted a couple of seasons in the 1980s. She had a small part in Woody Allen's "Radio Days," but those scenes were cut. Otherwise, she hadn't made much of a dent in her field — yet.

She was 21 years old, still new on the entertainment scene, seemed to possess some star quality. I was aware of her name, but I can't say that I watched either My Sister Sam or the handful of movies she made, a couple of which were released after her 1989 murder — when, I suppose, her commercial appeal was at its height.

But we know that at least one person, 19–year–old Robert John Bardo of Tucson, Ariz., was watching.

He became obsessed with her after the first object of his obsession, a child peace activist named Samantha Smith, died in a plane crash. Bardo stalked Schaeffer for awhile; he even tried to gain access to the studio where her TV show was filmed, but he was kept out by security. For awhile, it seems he lost interest in her and fixated on others, but he zeroed in on her again after watching one of her movies and seeing her in bed with an actor.

Bardo hired an investigator to find Schaeffer's home address, which he did through Department of Motor Vehicles records. Bardo then confronted Schaeffer at her home 25 years ago today. Schaeffer answered the door, gave Bardo an autograph and went back to her apartment. She thought he had gone away when her doorbell rang a second time. She went to answer it, and Bardo shot her in the chest.

Who knows what goes through the mind of such a person? Does he think of the consequences of his crime? If Bardo bothered to think at all about how his act would be perceived by anyone — and, based on my experience as a police reporter, I doubt that he gave any thought to it, especially how it would be perceived by the media or social activists — he probably thought it would be treated like one of thousands of murders that were committed that year.

But it wasn't. It was a landmark legal event that made government acknowledge stalking for what it was. Prior to Schaeffer's murder, my impression is that stalking was treated as a "boyfriend/girlfriend" thing. Even if the two were not lovers, even if one was a total stranger to the other. Those were merely details.

It wasn't taken seriously. It wasn't treated like a real crime. Of course, it was and is a real crime. Schaeffer's death was a flashpoint for that realization. A public epiphany.

Laws were changed to protect the privacy of citizens, prohibiting state Departments of Motor Vehicles from releasing personal information about licensed drivers.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. The advent of the internet, with its online address search services, significantly eroded that law's impact. Today, anyone with access to a computer and the know–how to use it can do what that investigator did for Bardo 25 years ago.

Evolving technology has changed most things, and those who would rather such private information is not so readily available to potential stalkers need to be steadfast in their resolve.

For all the Rebecca Schaeffers out there, we must stay a step ahead of the stalkers.

Tank Man's Victory for Humanity

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No one seems to know for certain who he was — or is — after 25 years.

He has come to be known as "Tank Man" — TIME magazine dubbed him the "Unknown Rebel."

It was a Sunday morning in Beijing in early June 1989. It was Saturday night in Texas where I was working for a daily newspaper.

My memory is that it was around 9 or 10 at night, a couple of hours from our deadline for the Sunday morning press run — which would have made it 10 or 11 on Sunday morning in Beijing.

In China, it was the day after the Chinese military forcibly suppressed the Tiananmen Square student demonstrations. That was the lead story on the front page of our newspaper, as it probably was for nearly every paper, but, considering the time difference, it was also a developing story, and we were trying to keep an eye on it.

Back in that newsroom in Texas, most of the pages were done, and we were sort of killing time while we waited for whichever articles we were expecting locally — but we knew that, if events began to unfold rapidly in China, we might need to substitute a revised version of the wire story we had on our front page — possibly at the last minute.

That's how it is sometimes in the news business. Well, actually, that's how it always is. The nature of news being what it is, anything could happen at any time, and a newspaper's editors have to be ready for the unexpected.

With Tiananmen Square, we had the luxury (if you want to call it that) of knowing where to watch for dramatic events to unfold — but we didn't know the when part, and that is just the way it is. Most of the time, when you're working the copy desk, you just have to hope that, if something dramatic does happen, it happens before your deadline.

Well before your deadline.

And a major event did unfold that night.

As we watched the TV in the corner of the newsroom, "Tank Man" walked out into the middle of the avenue and confronted a column of Chinese tanks. I watched in stunned silence with the rest of my colleagues. If someone had asked me about it at that moment, I would have replied that I expected to see the tanks roll over that man live on TV.

It had already been a bloody weekend in Beijing.

But the lead tank tried to go one way, then another, rather than crush the man. The man moved each time so that he remained in the tank's path. Eventually, the tanks' crews shut off their engines.

Tank Man then appeared to scold the tanks and their crews.

In the aftermath of the event, some people identified Tank Man as being an individual named Wang Weilin, a resident of Beijing, but that has never been confirmed, and no one seems to know what became of Tank Man after he was taken away. Some say he was executed; others say he is alive and well.

Back in Texas, we had to remake the front page to run a picture taken by Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener. Turned out to be one of the most iconic images of the 20th century.

But it was one of those events that can't really be captured in a single photograph. You have to see the video; in 1989, that could only be done via television. The advances in technology in the last quarter of a century have revolutionized the news business. In the 21st century, a newspaper can post a video to its website that expands on articles and photos in its print edition.

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Tank Man carried no weapons when he confronted the tanks, just two shopping bags. I couldn't tell what they contained.

It was almost comical at times, the way he chided the tanks. I was reminded of a father bawling out misbehaving children.

But the Chinese military was hardly made up of children, and I suspected at the time that Tank Man probably would be taken into custody and executed.

I hope he is still alive.

But, even if he is not, Tank Man was a reminder of words that were spoken by educator Horace Mann 130 years earlier: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

On this day a quarter of a century ago, Tank Man did win a victory for humanity.

Reagan's Farewell Address

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"I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."

Ronald Reagan
Jan. 11, 1989

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Twenty–five years ago tonight, Ronald Reagan delivered his farewell address to the nation, a little more than a week before he was to hand over the presidency to his successor, Vice President George H.W. Bush.

As I have mentioned here before, I was not a Reagan fan during his presidency — or at any time in his lifetime. We rarely saw eye to eye on anything, and I never voted for him, but it is beyond historical dispute that he was popular with other voters. In the last 30 years, only Reagan has received the overwhelming endorsement of the American people in a presidential election. No other victorious nominee — in either party — has ever come close.

(In fact, few have ever exceeded the 58% of the popular vote Reagan received in 1984 — and none have matched it since he did it. Richard Nixon got nearly 61% in 1972; so, too, did FDR in 1936 and Warren Harding in 1920, and Lyndon Johnson got slightly more than 61% in 1964. Herbert Hoover nearly matched Reagan's share of the popular vote in 1928.)

Historically, presidential farewell addresses are rather rare. Typically, they are made by two–term presidents, at least in modern times — Bill Clinton gave one and so did George W. Bush. One–term presidents usually don't give farewell addresses (although Jimmy Carter did give a farewell address in 1981), nor do presidents who die in office — for at least one very obvious reason.

Unless one counts Nixon's address announcing to the nation that he would resign the next day (or his speech to the White House staff before his departure for California the next day), Reagan's farewell address was the first by a two–term American president in nearly 30 years. Nixon, after all, was elected to two terms as president; he just didn't complete his second term.

Next to a president's memoirs, I guess a farewell address is a president's best — and, officially, last — opportunity to justify his actions in office. Unfortunately, most outgoing presidents can't resist the temptation to indulge in some last–minute self–promotion.

The farewell addresses that I have found to be the most memorable are the ones in which the president focused on the nation's achievements more than his own or spoke of the challenges the nation still faced and tried to impart some wisdom.

George Washington may have delivered the finest of the presidential farewell addresses, which was appropriate, given that he set the standard for so many facets of the presidency. Washington spoke of the presidency's "arduous trust."

Dwight Eisenhower, the last two–term president to give a farewell address before Reagan, memorably warned of the influence of the "military–industrial complex" on public policy.

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In his "aw, shucks" way, Reagan spoke in his farewell address of the nickname "The Great Communicator" that had been given to him.

"I wasn't a great communicator," he insisted, "but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow; they came from the heart of a great nation — from our experience, our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries."

He said he was willing to accept the label "Reagan Revolution" for what had occurred on his watch, but he gave credit for his presidency's achievements to the American people.

"I've had my share of victories in the Congress," Reagan said, "but what few people noticed is that I never won anything you didn't win for me. They never saw my troops, they never saw Reagan's regiments, the American people. You won every battle with every call you made and letter you wrote demanding action."

Before closing, Reagan spoke of "the men and women of the Reagan Revolution."

"My friends: We did it," Reagan said. "We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all."