Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Comment from Bruce Campbell
I was a good friend of John Chrystal's. I went over there in 1992 with the Iowa Program. We went back in the fall saw that the program had failed due to human error. They didn't apply herbicide and bugs ate the corn. In 1994 we sent equipment over and raised soybeans. It was the only perfect field in all of Ukraine. It helped the Ukraine people get $30-50 million worth of soybean sales, helping them get closer to world market prices.
A Comment from David E. Metzler
This was the beginning of a lengthy and very interesting exchange program with scientists in the USSR. I received a travel grant to attend the International Congress of Biochemistry in Moscow in 1961. There I met some people with whom I would collaborate for many years. In 1965 I took my family to live in Moscow for more than five months to attend schools there while I participated in biochemical research in an institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. This was part of a very active exchange program between the U.S. and Soviet academies of science. The U.S. had a good staff at the embassy in Moscow. This fact facilitated our ability to visit many places and to interact with many Russians and citizens of other parts of the Soviet Union. While studying Russian in preparation for this visit I had made the acquaintance of Boris Runov, who was an exchange student in agricultural engineering at ISU. He later became a high minister of agriculture under Mikhail Gorbachev. This was a time when John Chrystal was making regular visits to Russia and I had opportunities to interact with both Chrystal and Runov. I think that the significance of Roswell Garst and John Crystal's friendship with Krushchev and later with Gorbachev were very important in overcoming tensions of the Cold War. I was happy to be able to play a small part in that successful effort. It was Roswell Garst who started it all.
Monday, August 24, 2009
A Comment from Bob Anderson
We ultimately established IPI in Grinnell, IA, and were there when the Soviet-American Peace walk was completed across Iowa.
Later Vladimir and I worked together to create the Iowa-Cherkassy Agriculture and Culture Center, Newton's Sister City relationship with Smela, Ukraine and Oskaloosa's relationship with Shpola. Marshalltown also has a Sister City relationship with (I believe) Zvenyhoroda. Ultimately Iowa created a Sister State relationship with Cherkassy.
I traveled with Dan Clark from the Stanley Foundation to Ukraine and Russia in 1990 and attended a peace conference that was held in Moscow and Sochi. That is when I also traveled to Pytigorsk (also a Sister City to Dubuque) and purchased the oil paintings at what was described by the Jewish owner as one of the first privately owned art galleries in the country.
I created the International Center for Community Journalism in 1993 and focused on federal grants to bring journalists from the former Soviet Union to the United States so they could learn about our free press and what used to be a good journalism business plan. We brought groups of journalists from Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Mongolia and other parts of the world under United States Information Agency and later State Department grants. Vladimir Bassis came to work for me under an H-1 B VIsa as we started that program. It was expanded and re-named IRIS in 1996. We sold our property in 2002 and moved to Ames because Vladimir and Irina were working on graduate degrees there. Vladimir and Irina Bassis are now U.S. citizens. He works for the Iowa Department of Education and Irina is the Communication specialist for Mary Greeley Hospital in Ames.
A Comment from Senator Daryl Beall
A Comment from Jonathan Fletcher
A Comment from Irving Carlson
Friday, August 21, 2009
A Comment from Phyllis Burroughs Heffron
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
A Comment from Ro Foege
My eagerness to attend is that I, together with four of my colleagues from Wartburg College, attended the events at Iowa State College 50 years ago. We were able to hand Mr. Khrushchev a copy of the college newspaper, The Wartburg Trumpet. He put it in his suit coat pocket!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
A Comment from Joan (Hooker) Miller
A Comment from Don Lester
A Comment from Denny Weddle
- How does Iowa farmland compare with that in the Soviet Union?
- What do you hope to gain with your visit?
- Did you know, because of Garst and Thomas, we are the largest seed-corn processing plant in the world? ( I had been told that and hoped it was true--he was impressed) and he shook Bobs hand after the interpreter advised him of that fact.
- After you receive all of the farming information/tourshow, do you bring that success and increased crop production to your country?
I dont remember the other questions I asked with answers translated back to me from the Premier to Interpreter, but I soon realized I had had great answers, gotten nearly 8 minutes of interview and ACHIEVED my goal. Thanking all three I almost kicked up my heels anxious to put my sloppy left-handed notes to a typewriter and a pretty good chance a reflection of the interview for my Radio-TV class. That I did that night on my folks typewriter. Then the next week I was back at Drake where I could not wait to do my report. It worked out so great, I got an A and Dr. Duncan told the class thats the way to do an interview. Yea, but only because of the kindness of Bob Garst did it happen, and every time I told anybody this historic story I have given thanks for allowing it to happen. To the Garst Family, I again say thank you; it made for a very special event and time in my life.
A Comment from Karen Cutler
Monday, August 10, 2009
A Comment from Richard Jirus
A Comment from Jay Cole Simser
I wonder what the security would be if he were to have come to America today. Seems a long time ago and a much simpler time.
A Comment from Stan Eckert
Thanks for allowing me this stroll down memory lane.
A Comment from Lou Licht
Just wanted to pass on:
1. When traveling for 3 months all around USSR and meeting with agricultural officials in 1977, they were still talking about the Garst event. Corn! Being the only delegate from Iowa, the Kruschiev/Garst meeting was a source of many proud moments.
2. The core concept on what I do - phytoremediation that uses plants to clean pollutants - was first introduced to me by the Ukranians outside of Kiev where they were using wetlands for wastewater treatment.
I hope I can come. Contratulations for this great event which acknowledges yet again the importance of Iowans in supporting the quest for world peace.
A Comment from Louise McCeery
(This is in reguard to) The articles in the Guthrie Center newspaper concerning the activities you are planning for the 50th Anniversary of Nikita's Historic Visit to Iowa on August 29, 1959. My daughter and I attended that event. We lived only a few miles from the Garst Farm which they visited. As we were waiting for the visitors to pass by us where we were standing, it stopped suddenly and one of the visitors from Russia got off of the hayrack and came over to where we were standing. He asked Mary, my daughter, if she would like to ride out to the field with them. He told us he has a little girl about her age and was homesick to see her. Mary was ready to go so (she) took his hand and went on the hayrack onto the Garst field of corn. When they came back, he asked if she would like to eat lunch with him at the farm house. She did, so away they went again, hand-in-hand. Mary was seven years old at the time and is now Mrs. Clarence Leighty. She lives on a farm close to Guthrie Center, and is the high school librarian at the school at Aububon. I am her mother and wanted you to know about our wonderful experience that day.
A Comment from David Maxwell
When I was 17 years old (1962), I traveled through the Soviet Union for 7 weeks as the bandboy for the Benny Goodman Band's tour of the USSR (my father was the first trumpet player). That trip led to me desire to become a diplomat (later channeled into a career as a professor of Russian literature and ultimately a university administrator) and my major at Grinnell College in Russian Area Studies (where I enrolled 6 weeks after returning from the USSR).On July 4th, 1962, the band was invited to the U.S. Embassy's "party house" on the banks of the river in Moscow. At one point, there was a tremendous outpouring of excitement: Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev had shown up to wish us "congratulations on the anniversary of your revolution." He made the rounds of the party and shook hands with everyone - including me -- and was particularly struck by the fact that the first trumpet player (who, at 6'5" and 240 lbs, towered over him), was able to greet him in Russian!Given the political environment of 1962, most people I knew found it hard to believe that I'd actually been in the USSR - shaking hands with Krushchev was well beyond the limits of credibility for most of them!The Goodman Band was the first American jazz band "behind the Iron Curtain," and was seen as an important early step in the cultural and educational exchanges that ultimately -- I believe--had a powerful impact on relations between the two countries, and on political change in the USSR..