Today, I’m thankful for those who end division by taking down a wall, piece by piece.
Before I build a wall, I’d ask to know
What was I walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
The famous poem, Mending Wall, by Robert Frost tells the tale of a New England laborer conversing with his neighbor about the stonewall that separates their two adjacent farms. As the two men walk the line that separates their two properties in an effort to identify those sections that require mending, one of the neighbors feels compelled to ask if their work repairing the stone structure is worthy of the effort. As they have no cows grazing on each side of the boundary, what purpose does the wall truly serve? However, his pragmatic neighbor gently reminds his inquisitive neighbor what his wise father once told him: ‘Good fences make for good neighbors.’
When my family first moved to our neighborhood nearly two decades ago, my wife and I put up a fence separating the property line between my home and that of my widowed neighbor. My neighbor had just built a small lily pond in her gorgeous yard filled with colorful azaleas and other amazing green specimens, and my wife and I had just given birth to our first son. Naturally, the fence seemed justified. However, as we would soon discover, the 8-foot wood structure would accomplish one thing only: It alienated us from my neighbor. As we grew apart, I realized the wall was more necessary than ever. After nearly 15 years of divided separation, my neighbor would downsize to a smaller home. In due time, a lovely young family occupied the home. As the fence aged and weathered over the year, the time had come to replace it. However, after receiving multiple estimates for a fitting replacement to the barrier, I became like the curious farmer in Frost’s poem, and I began to ponder why the wall was needed.
Today, I’m reminded of a famous day in the history of the world – the day the Cold War truly came to an end.
After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime was soundly defeated in June 1945, several conferences were held between the Allied leaders at that time – Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin – in places like Yalta and Potsdam to distribute the ‘occupation zones’ of their victorious armies. The decision as to how to best separate Germany was long debated, until it was finally decided that the US, Great Britain, and eventually France would occupy the western portion of the country, and the Soviet Union would lay claim to ‘eastern’ Germany. As for the capital of Germany, well, it too was separated into 4 similar occupation zones, even though the border for the country itself was a distant 100 miles away. Despite an initial calm, the situation with the city of Berlin became extremely complex in the late 1950s, with the advent of the Cold War. As millions of educated Eastern Germans began fleeing the Communist-led German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, decided to stem this massive loss of talent. By August 1961, the Soviet Premier decided to put an end to mass exodus by closing the border for good. Initially, barbed wire was used to divide the city, followed thereafter by an impenetrable, concrete block wall that took nearly a decade to build. The situation had become somewhat grim that even the US sent an unlikely (and somewhat ironic) envoy, Robert Frost, in an attempt to reason with Khrushchev, but to no avail. As Western leaders continued to protest the wall’s existence, including every US President from Kennedy to Reagan, the divided city of Berlin remained a stark reminder of the broad differences between Eastern communist and Western democratic thought. However, with the rise of Gorbachev to power and the gradual easing of tensions between the two opposing sides, the Eastern Berlin Communist Party opted to make a change in November of 1989. In fact, on this day (Nov 9) 31 years ago, citizens of GDR were permitted to freely cross the borders for the first time.
The decision to permit such peaceful crossings was not just met with an endless movement of people on both sides – some say as many as 2 million in the first weekend – but also with a most amazing act of symbolic defiance. Thousands took to the wall with their hammers, chisels, and other small implements and began to tear asunder the concrete structure piece by piece. These deconstructionist architects, affectionately coined ‘wall woodpeckers’, chipped away at the massive structure until it finally was no more. Of course, some well-positioned bulldozers and heavy cranes also provided necessary support to the task at hand. Nearly, a year later, Germany would be united as a single nation – an event that celebrated its 30th anniversary just last month.
Irrespective of what Robert Frost proclaimed in his notorious poem back in 1914, I wonder Whether his subsequent experience with the Soviet Premier in 1961 gave him pause. Sometimes the best thing good neighbors can do is tear down the walls that divide us.
So, you’ll be happy to know that after my family took down the fence that separated our property with that of my neighbor, we opted to let things remain open, without a physical barrier separating our adjacent properties. I’m no Robert Frost, but I guess I’d say with a fitting and somewhat corny rhyme:
No fence makes the most sense.
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