IN BETWEEN

Happily, we had a couple of occasions to meet back with our friends from the trade mission. One such time was at Cape Canaveral, that same summer. Here were all our Florida friends along with Frank and Studibert. It was a validation to the reality that we had indeed been to Poland together. My new friend John B. was there with his friend George B. and we just had such a great time catching up and recounting our adventures in Poland and what we had been doing since.

Studibert was the speaker at this gathering. He was well-rehearsed and very much accustomed to addressing large gatherings. He recounted his time spent in the White House, with emphasis on his impressions of President Reagan towards the end of his term. Studibert smugly noted that “Ronny” seemed a bit pre-occupied; slept a lot; and seemed a bit “detached” in carrying out his official duties. He made jokes about his mental capacities and his daily tasks until we all began to feel a bit uncomfortable about the trend of his speech. We all eventually stopped laughing at his punch-lines, and began to suspect he was taking every advantage to put the Reagan’s down because of what Nancy’s book said about him.

At the time, Studibert was our “friend” and so we all tried to cut him some of slack. It wasn’t until the Utah Elephant Club’s excursion to Washington, D.C. to dedicate a statue of Filo Farnsworth (the inventor of the modern T.V.) that I began to connect the dots between Judd Blakely’s assessment of Studibert and what the Republican fund-raisers on this trip were indicating: Studibert had left the Bush, Sr. White House abruptly, and not of his own volition! There was more going on here than we could have known.