Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev & Me: The Forrest Gump Adventures of an Ordinary Housewife

I had to start somewhere, to put down in writing what happened to me. It started in March 1988. Gorbachev, Prime Minister of the USSR was scheduled to meet President Ronald Reagan for a very historical Peace Summit. When President Reagan had been elected to the Presidency, he took a very harsh stance towards the Soviet Union, labeling them as “The Evil Empire.” His tough foreign policy had ultimately proven the strength that could bring about the end of Communism in the world, as we knew it and an end to the “Cold War.”

No, it started before that, all this Forrest Gump stuff, but I want to start at this point in time, because it was here that I realized what an incredible journey I was embarking on. I want to talk about the Arrival Ceremony of Primier Gorbachev on the White House Lawn, because even though we had no idea about how this would impact the world very shortly, the truth is, I really had no idea how this would impact me personally. One thing all of us on that lawn did know and understood, was that this was historic. There was an air of revolution, of magnificant change, and we all huddled together to get a glimpse of the event -- to breathe it in and let it become a part of our very beings.

At first, I didn’t care too much about any of the politics of this. All I knew is that I was going to accompany my husband, to witness the Arrival Ceremony of Gorbachev on the White House Lawn. We were able to do this, because my husband had done some favors for one of Reagan’s lackey’s in the line of doing his job as a Delta Airlines employee. The lackey’s name was S.M. Studibert (not his real name). He was Reagan’s Advance Man, and though I didn’t know it at the time, he was also a subtly-insideous self-serving man that used politics, politicians, and opportunity to advance his personal-aggrandizement agenda.