Arriving in Lawn Ridge, Kansas by Covered Wagon in 1905...and other Childhood Memories of Vernal Halley

 

Vernal Halley Blinn (1898-1971) arrived in Lawn Ridge, Cheyenne County, with her family a few months before the 1905 U.S. Census.   

Joseph E. and M. Sarepta Halley Family, taken in Iowa about 1900 before moving to Kansas

Vernal Halley Blinn, age 27 (1922)

Vernal was 17 years younger than her brother, Lorenzo ("Rennie"), my husband's grandfather.  In 1964, when she was 65, Vernal wrote about her earliest memories of northwest Kansas, including the following passages about their move by covered wagon from Atwood to Lawn Ridge, farm life, and horseback riding. (Edited for spelling, punctuation, and conciseness.) 

My father, Joseph Edward Halley, was to me a wonderful man, as was my brother, Rennie, 17 years older than I.  Of course, I was prejudiced, as they were the only men in such a bunch of girls!  The girls and my mother I rather took for granted. I'm afraid it was not until much later in my life that I realized how wonderful my mother was, too….

[My father] was a farmer and we lived in Iowa when I was born. He was an honest, hardworking man, and he thought everyone else was honest, too, at least his friends. This trust of his fellow man caused him to go broke shortly after I was born.  He cosigned a note for a friend who had left the country, leaving my father to pay the note.  I remember him telling us to never sign a note for anyone, no matter how much you loved or trusted them.  If you had the money and wanted to give it to him, all right, do so, but never cosign a note.

Living in Atwood, Kansas & an Arrest for Hog Stealing

He paid the note, took what he could salvage, and moved to western Kansas. This was about 1900, when that part of Kansas was really the wide open spaces.  He located us in Atwood, Kansas.  Our first house was a sod house just across the track from the depot, which was a good mile or more from the town of Atwood, so we were really in the country.

The trains scared me to bits. I can see them yet-- huge engines charging madly, wildly down the track, shooting smoke and steam, and every last one of them out to get me, when I was playing on the other side of the tracks with the depot agent’s little boy my age. We were together most of the time. I would run madly for home as soon as I heard a whistle. I had nightmares, little as I was, in which I saw a huge engine like a mighty dragon leave the rails and come snorting and battling over the Prairie chasing me.

While we were in Atwood,  we had our only brush with the law—the only time that any of our family was ever arrested.  It happened this way.  We had one hog named Sadie. She was quite a pet and would come squealing when her name was called.   Sadie hated to stay in her pen and would manage to climb or scoot under [the fence] and get out every once in a while.   A big hog rancher  . . .  drove his hogs to the depot to ship them. He didn't live too far away, so driving them was a lot easier than loading them into wagons and hauling them. Since we lived by the depot,  the stockyards were not far from us. This man had to drive his hogs past our house, and Sadie, our dear companion, loving idiot, got out of her pen and joined the gang. [When we told Pa] what Sadie had done, he went over to see Mr. Carter, the depot agent, and told him what had happened.  They took their lanterns and went down to the stockyards.  Pa called Sadie out and took her home.

Somehow, the hog man heard what happened and had Pa arrested for hog stealing. What consternation!  [The arrest] not only rocked our family but shocked the whole neighborhood.  My father was well-liked and known as an honest man.  From the repercussions, I take it that the other man was rather a stinker.  Anyway Pa wasn't put in jail and was acquitted by the judge after the court went to the depot and put our Sadie in the big bunch of hogs.  Then Pa called her out. Not guilty was the verdict and that was that!

….  Sod houses were bad not only for [8-inch] centipedes but also for bed bugs….Ma couldn't stand them and would scrub and use coal oil until we were rid of them, if they were in the house.  Some people seemed to take them for granted, like wind or drought, just one of those things, but not us.  For one thing, none of us could sleep with them biting. They itched so and made big welts …. In those days in western Kansas, bedbugs and fleas seemed to live and thrive on the prairie.  We didn't have insecticides to fight them, so it was no wonder people just lived with them. A very good example of coexistence. . . .

Moving by Covered Wagon to Lawnridge, Cheyenne County, Kansas

My folks wanted land of their own. When they rented the place in Atwood, there was still homestead land in other parts of Kansas, so they decided to get a homestead.  The government would give a person 160 acres if they lived on it for three to five years and did a certain amount of work on it each year.  So, Pa went farther west to look around for land.  He found acreage that already had a two-room house on it.  Some hopeful soul had built it and for some reason couldn't stick it out the full time, so they left.   I don't know how it was arranged, but I think we paid a certain amount of equity in the place and then had to finish out the time on it.

We moved in two covered wagons, and Elva and I thought it was a ball at least part of the time.  We sat in the back of the wagon looking out through the oval opening left for fastening the canvas and watched everything going on.  It must have been this trip that aroused an ambition in me to ride horses.  I greatly admired my brother Rennie and the girls as they drove the stock.  Rennie was thrown from his horse one day and got a broken big toe out of it. Of course, it could have been much worse, but it made it hard riding, as the pressure of the foot on the stirrup must have hurt as badly as walking.

I don't remember when I learned to ride. My first memories of it are of sitting behind the saddle, legs stuck grotesquely on each side, arms around a big sister or my big brother, and clinging like a leech for dear life to the one in front of me.  

We finally arrived at a new home [at Lawn Ridge township]. It was choice farmland, level as a floor, near St. Francis, KS. Did I say near? To us children, it was far away.  Our place was only 11 miles south of town, which in this auto-conscious day is a deep breath and a pint of gas away.  However, it was a long, drawn-out trip for us.  Two hours was considered a good time for the trip, as we usually made it in the lumber wagon.  We nearly always had a load coming or going.  The spring wagon was used only for special trips, like the 4th of July and Sunday school picnics. Later, we had a buggy without a top-- it sure was snazzy to us girls.

Living in a Sod House

We had only two rooms for eight kids and two parents.  Pretty crowded. Yes, I suppose it was, but to a child, any space is big, so I wasn't bothered by it.  The rooms were big.  I think the kitchen was about 14 by 25 and a bed was placed in it for my parents. The bedroom was divided into cubby holes by sheets hung on wires that formed the walls of our “bedrooms”-- one for Rennie. Just think, he had a bed all by himself. Then a room for Sarah and Mary, another for Eliza and Hazel, but us three little ones—Edith, Elva, and I slept three in a bed.  In the winter, we took turns sleeping in the middle, and on those cold winter nights, I was always tickled to death when my turn came for the middle. It was so cozy and warm.  If I slept on the outside, either my front or behind froze, or [whatever part of me that] stuck out from under the covers. . . .

Cattle Business and Riding Horses

In those days, there was still open range in western Kansas, so my father and his brother Arthur decided to try cattle raising.  Uncle Arthur furnished part of the capital, Pa the rest. Rennie and the girls did the riding, at least most of it anyway. Papa could certainly ride and did, but he never went for the bronco busting.  Then came the fourth drought. What faithful words in the early days of Kansas.

The drought played the dickens with our cattle business. We had a windmill, and if the wind blew, we could water quite a lot of cattle, as we had three big tanks.  But the wind wouldn't blow.  Pa and Rennie made plank covers for the tank so their supply could be conserved for the work stock and the milk cows.  The big herd had to be driven to the water holes. Soon, those nearest to us were dried up.

In those days, there were a lot of buffalo wallows or lagoons scattered over the prairies. Settlers said big herds of buffalo made them in the following manner: Their herd came to a low place in the ground that held some water after a shower.  They liked to roll in it, packing the dirt more solid to hold more water and packing off a good bit of mud in their hides. Thus, the little puddle grew larger and deeper.  When we first moved to Lawnridge, the name of the township where we lived, there were quite a number of these.  They held water for weeks--usually from one rain to the next. . . .

Pretty soon, they were all dried up. The nearest water hole was on the South Beaver, the little stream 15 miles away, and what it had left was going fast.  As for the grazing, there wasn't any, so my folks decided to sell all the range cattle.  The nearest market was at Goodland on the Rock Island railroad, 24 miles south of us.

Driving Cattle to Goodland During a Drought

This was a real major undertaking, as the cattle were in such poor condition that we could only drive a few miles a day.  They had to forage for food, and I'm sure we were not the only ones making the drive, so it must have been awful for Pa with starving cattle and worn-out kids.  Hazel and Edith got to go with Rennie and my father.  They took several days to market. Then, of course, after they started, the rain came. Wouldn't you know it?  It was too late to help any, though, as the water without food won't feed cattle through the long winter. They were rained on nearly all the time during the trip, but they got to Goodland, where they sold the cows. I think they got $5 or $7 a head.

While the range stock could use the water holes as long as they lasted, the other stock at home had to be watered.  Our well was about 200 feet deep and supplied plenty of water—if only the wind would blow, but that year, it wouldn't blow.  With a big cistern to store water and the big stock tanks, there were times when the men had to man the pump. It was really hard work to pump water up 200 feet by hand. My sisters took their turns at it, working it two at a time. I could fling my body on the pump handle, as hard as I could, and it would not budge.

As I learned to ride, I could stay on a horse if the girth of the saddle was strong.  Thank goodness it always was, for I was a real hanger-on.  I was never thrown off a horse as long as the horse wasn't thrown.  No matter how fast he ran or quickly he dodged, I hung on. I seemed to have had an uncanny sense of knowing when a horse should shy at some foolish thing, so I was glued fast.  As long as I had the saddle, I was all right, but ride bareback, you might as well try to carry a peeled hard-boiled egg on a grease platter at a run (if you think that's easy, just try it!) as to expect me to stay on a horse bareback.  I could at a walk, but any faster,  a trot for instance, shattered me. I jounced from one side to the other, expecting every jounce to be the last. I hated it; besides, it hurt.

Barney the Pony Bucks off Two Little Girls--Elva and Vernal

One time, Elva and I went together to round up the cattle. We were about 12 and 13 years old. I don't remember why we both went or didn't saddle Barney the pony we rode. We piled onto Barney bareback— Elva in front, I behind. I wanted to ride faster than a walk. I suppose having Elva to hold to gave me confidence, so I started kicking Barney in the ribs. He didn't like this a little bit.  He started to buck.  At the first jump, I went flying, naturally, and also naturally, I was hanging on for dear life.  The object I hung onto in this instance was Elva, though she went flying right along with me.  I, being a tough cow hand, or so I liked to believe, wasn't hurt a bit, but Elva's back was hurt real bad. I caught Barney and managed to push and boost my sister up on his back, and with her giving a little grunt with every breath, I was scared to bits.  I just knew she would die and it would be all my fault because I kicked Barney and hung on to her.  She was laid up for a week or so. I'm sure it was the cause of her back bothering her for years.

Twice, I had horses turn a somersault with me when the horse stepped in a badger or gopher hole when going at a full gallop. The first time I had a cracked rib and the next time I hurt my spine between my shoulders.  I was teaching school at the time and was so sick I couldn't teach for a week. I never did know just what the injury was, as I didn't go to a doctor, but it has bothered me off and on all my life so far.  Maybe I'll outgrow it?  After all-- I'm only sixty-five.

Left to Right:  Lorenzo "Rennie," 2nd wife Zella, Vernal, and ? (please contact me if you know her name)

Velva Halley Follett, Vernal's niece (my husband's aunt) added to this story around 1985. I will post it later.  

Please contact me if you see any errors, want to add a post, or want to be placed on my contact list. cdburrwriter@gmail.com

 Vernal Halley Blinn's family (1940s photo)

Back row:  Helen Elaine (1931-1997), Doris Dawn (1928-2010)
Middle row: Mary Florence (1932-2009), Vernal (1898-1971), Chester Burton Blinn

 (1899-1958), Chrystal Vernal (1934-2001)   Bottom Row: Margaret Lemoyne (1936-1990), Barbara Burta (1936-2017)

 

According to her Death Certificate, Vernal Halley Blinn lived in Cottonwood, Arizona, for 34 years before her death on January 21, 1971. 

Obituary found on FamilySearch:  Funeral services for Mrs. Vernal Blinn, 72, who died January 21 (1971) in Lawrence Memorial Hospital, were held Monday in the Verde Valley Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.  Burial was in Valley View Cemetery. Westcott Funeral Home was in charge.

Born in Iowa and a resident here 35 years, she worked as a cook in the Black Hills Restaurant in Clarkdale until she retired in 1958.

Survivors include six daughters: Mrs. Doris Guinn and Mrs. Barbara Connolly, both of Cottonwood; Mrs. Helen Lacey of Blemington [sic], Calif.; Mrs. Mary Page of San Antonio, Tex.; Mrs. Crystal Kahn of Rialto, Calif.; and Mrs. Margaret Beard of Salt Lake City; two sisters: Mrs. Elva Williamson of Escondido, Calif.; and Mrs. Edith Kyle of Denver, Colo.; and four grandchildren.

respectively submitted by

--CD Burr

Also see other posts on this blog: Lawn Ridge Homesteader, Margareta Sarepta Kulow Halley

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A Must-Read Book: The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany (2024)

My fifth-grade teacher gave us an assignment on Friday afternoons:  listen to TV news or read newspaper articles over the weekend and share a current event on Monday morning.  It was 1965, with plenty of civil rights news, which helped us understand the importance of a free press in a democracy.   By the time I was thirteen and toured communist East Berlin in 1968, I realized, with a deep sense of injustice, that countries behind the Iron Curtain—including East Germany and the Soviet Union—controlled the news and considered a free press as the enemy of the state. 

These days (2025), I support the press by buying subscriptions to newspapers and recommending books that highlight freedom of the press, such as The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany (2024) by historian Pamela D. Toler.

Within a week of my request, my local library purchased Toler’s nonfiction book about a female European correspondent in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power.  The author explains on her website that her writing and research travel “beyond the familiar boundaries of American History” by introducing historical figures who have faded from attention but have powerful stories. 

The Dragon from Chicago surpassed my expectations in content, style, and pertinence to our time.  

Toler resurrects the story of Sigrid Schultz, a young American-born female reporter living in Berlin spanning two world wars. Toler’s scholarly book is well-documented but not overly pedantic or lengthy.  At 288 pages, it reads like a novel, featuring a beguiling female protagonist, infamous villains, entertaining plot twists, and cited facts that Toler deftly weaves into the story’s fabric.  An occasional author’s comment distracts from the narrative but does not occur often enough to dismiss Toler as a trustworthy historian.

Similar to many World War II histories and novels, The Dragon From Chicago mentions Nazi atrocities, however, it does not overwhelm the reader with numerous detailed examples. The focus is on  Schultz and her reactions to events leading up to Hitler’s rise to power in Berlin, the escalating war, and her undaunted determination to report the truth in a male-dominated profession while embedded among some of the most ruthless leaders in history.

Fluent in Five Languages, Schultz becomes Chief Correspondent

Schultz is portrayed as an articulate, engaging, and ingenious journalist.  Fluent in five languages (German, French, Italian, English, and Norwegian), she became an asset to the Chicago Tribune’s Foreign Press (Berlin Bureau) in the 1930s and eventually convinced her male editors in the U.S. to name her Chief Correspondent.  She broke through a male-dominated profession and culture by socializing and drinking hard liquor with male informants and journalists at bars and state-sponsored events.  Although her health suffered, she continued to work nonstop, always seeking a scoop.  Nazis took notice of this petite woman who “dropped the working girl meekness” and asked brazen questions at press conferences. Hermann Göring, a powerful Nazi leader, enjoyed verbally sparring with Schultz and dubbed her “the Dragon from Chicago.”

Toler’s research reveals more than Sigrid Schultz, the foreign correspondent; we also learn about Schultz the woman: her fascinating parents, social and love life, personal hardships of war, and the determination to host modest, cheerful dinner parties.  

The appearance of a “normal” life was essential to Schultz as she honed her journalistic prowess and honored a self-imposed censorship. The Dragon often feared for her life, understanding that the Nazis could charge her with treason and sentence her to be hanged for reporting anything offensive to Hitler. She complained to her editors about being stalked, interrogated, and “muzzled.”  Nazis questioned her several times about Judaism in her maternal line, which she denied.  Through hardships of war, such as near starvation during severe rationing and bombs exploding near her office, she never wavered in her task to get the news out.  She understood the value of her job—the value of a "foreign" free press.

Covering Hitler's Abuse of Power

Early in her career,  Sigrid Schultz broke story after story about Hitler’s abuse of power, hoping the United States would help curb the spread of fascism. Based on trusted informants,  she revealed the “Euthanasia story”—Hitler’s plan to save the state money by killing 80,000 insane and crippled people.  She also wrote an article titled “Hitler Gazes at Stars to Guide His Decisions.”   She often found herself in a stressful balancing act as she zeroed in on German interest stories directed at her escalating American readership.  On one hand, her editor was an isolationist and feared her stories might be war-mongering; on the other hand, she was compelled to tell as much truth as she could about Nazi terrorism. 

One of the First Women Reporters on the Front Line

 Near the war’s end, the Tribune and  McCall’s women’s magazine hired her to report from the frontline of the war and gather personal interest stories with a German angle.  She was with the American soldiers when they discovered the horrors of a death camp and interviewed the captured Nazi war criminal Göring, who remembered the petite dragon’s fierceness and honesty.  After the war, Sigrid Schultz lost her job and fame, but always feared a resurgence of fascism.  She wrote a book, published in 1944: Germany Will Try It Again. Will the U.S. heed her warning about fascism eighty years later?

 

 --CD Burr

 

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Off to Berlin (1968)  I was thirteen. 

My dad, an Army chaplain, was stationed in Germany from 1967 to 1970.  Several times a year, he packed the family into our 1966 Chevy Impala for a week-long vacation, driving on autobahns and over steep Alpine roads. We toured at least thirteen countries during our three-year stay. I have fond memories of every visit, but one destination holds a firm and passionate grip on my memory: Soviet-occupied East Berlin, a communist stronghold that Mom and I visited in the spring of 1968.  

Mom invited me, at 13, to go with her and a group of officers' wives on a tour of the divided city of Berlin, which was like an island surrounded by communist East Germany.   We planned to stay in U.S.-occupied West Berlin, but to get there, we had to travel overnight by train. Even though our sleeper cabin was comfortable, traveling through a communist country terrified me.  I had been taught at an early age that communists were the enemy, harboring nuclear weapons that could destroy American cities.  Mom and the other women in our group assured me we would be safe, but I was nervous. 

In the middle of the night, when the train stopped at an East German depot, I peeked through our cabin curtain.  I instantly recoiled at the sight of armed soldiers in black coats holding long rifles and scanning the length of the train. Earlier in the day, I had been reading “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and the soldiers within fifteen feet of my window reminded me of the Nazis who murdered the young Jewish girl and her family. Would they shoot me for spying on them? I flopped back on my bunk, wide-eyed and rigid until the train slowly moved forward with a clackety-clack that kept me awake until dawn.

West Berlin--Modern, Friendly, and Free

We disembarked in West Berlin, where the United States, Britain, and France secured sections of the former capital of pre-war Germany. We stayed three days in plainly decorated, comfortable, and secure American military lodging. 

When we ventured into the friendly city of West Berlin, I soon forgot we were on a fragile island surrounded by a communist country. It was a modern, bustling city restored with the help of the US, French, and British after bombs decimated it in 1945. In 1968, it showcased neon lights and glass high rises. I stepped onto the first moving sidewalk I had ever seen and was in awe of the up-to-date, colorful mini-skirts and leather knee-high boots in shop windows. In the center of downtown, the bombed-out, blackened carcass of a cathedral, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, stood erect and defiant next to a contemporary hexagonal-shaped church. The contrast was startling. 

1968 Berlin, from a postcard I saved

I had many conflicting feelings during our stay in Berlin.  I felt like an adult when Mom told me to stand tall as I followed the women into a dance hall one night and dined with them in a swanky restaurant at the top of a high-rise tower on another evening. I felt like an eight-year-old after she ordered me to scrunch down as she bought tickets for children under twelve before visiting museums and boarding tour buses. I was entranced by mummies and Egyptian artifacts, especially the 3,000-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti displayed in a museum, and filled with dread as our tour bus drove past the bunker where Adolf Hitler took his life at the end of the war.  We were told that some people think he fled to another country — an idea that horrified me.  Could he still be out in the world plotting more destruction and evil?*   

The Berlin Wall and Communism

I harbor other distinct memories of our tour as we traveled alongside the Berlin Wall, a part of the 4,200-mile Iron Curtain. The wall bore the scars of the communist rapid takeover in 1961 when Soviet soldiers herded people out of their homes at gunpoint, marching them away from an invisible line dividing East from West Berlin, like a surgical dissection through the city.  Under the Soviet Union's direction, the wall grew solid and menacing, fracturing family units and splitting friends apart for years.  In 1968, communication between family and friends separated by the wall was forbidden—no visits, no phone calls.  Those trying to scale the wall were shot, a number that reached 140 by the time the wall came down over twenty years after our visit.

Photo of memorial taken with my Kodak Instamatic 

Crude components of the hastily constructed 1961 Berlin Wall remain etched in my memory: bricked-over doors and windows of homes and businesses, old stone walls topped with shards of glass, and memorials featuring crosses and photos. In 1968, the wall encircling the free Western part of the city had been expanded outward from the bricked-up building facades.   The Soviets planted explosives, installed flood lights, and spread tangles of barbed wire between spikes. Armed soldiers surveyed the grounds from several towers.  

After an hour, our guide informed us that the next loop of our tour was located behind the wall, through the streets of East Berlin. He warned that if the idea was too frightening, now was the time to exit the bus.  No one would be allowed to get on or off the bus once we passed Checkpoint Charlie, the main guard station.  I chose to stay with the group of American women, who repeatedly assured us that we were safe.  I was tense but curious, and I reasoned that I would have amazing photos to share with Dad after we got home.  I didn't hear the instructions not to take any photos.

Our bus inched its way up to Checkpoint Charlie--on the edge of the Berlin Wall--past the barbed wire and x-shaped barriers into East Berlin, and came to a stop.  Two stone-faced Soviet soldiers boarded and walked down the aisle, asking for our passports. They warned us not to get off the bus or open the windows to speak to anyone outside.  My heart pounded as I witnessed them take the stack of passports off the bus and into an office.  Would they give them back?

As the bus rolled away from Checkpoint Charlie and a vibrant, colorful metropolis, we entered a grim cityscape devoid of color and high-rises. I worried that we would be detained on the communist side. East Berlin seemed hungry to imprison more people. The experience has always reminded me of The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy woke up in monotone Kansas after dancing and singing through technicolor Oz. Only East Berlin was not Kansas. 

The east side seemed lost in time, displaying blocks of World War II charred and crumbled ruins. Many lots resembled prison grounds, with concrete gray buildings, gray sidewalks, and gray dirt yards devoid of grass or trees.  Street after monochrome street yielded an apocalyptic emptiness.

 World War II ruins in East Berlin. (Mom scolded me and took my camera after I took the photo.)  

Where were the people? I wondered about the young girls who lived there, who couldn't watch TV or listen to the radio, who probably didn’t know about the Beatles, miniskirts, or bell-bottom jeans. During the hour-long tour, we observed a few late-model gray automobiles and fewer than a dozen pedestrians wearing gray or black coats.  No one looked in our direction.  

When we returned to Checkpoint Charlie, Soviet soldiers ordered us off the bus while armed men inspected the entire vehicle—inside, back, front, and on top. They checked under the hood and beneath the undercarriage with long-handled mirrors on wheels. What if they found someone?  Would they shoot them in front of us? We had learned how escapees hid in dug-out cushions of car seats, so it was no surprise they checked everything. 

At Checkpoint Charley.  I'm relieved to be back in West Berlin

1986 and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

I never thought I’d see that secure wall collapse, but almost twenty years later, I witnessed what I thought was a miracle.  In 1986, President Reagan demanded that the Soviet Union “tear down that wall,” and then it happened on November 9, 1989. I watched the live newscast from my home in Arizona. People danced on top of the walls and hugged relatives they had not seen in 28 years! Tears flowed down my cheeks as I jumped up and down with them, hugging my startled children. 

Seven years after the wall disappeared, a distant cousin whom we had never met had grown up in communist East Germany and now had the freedom to travel to the US. We had no idea we were related to someone on the other side of the wall.

------

What I witnessed in Berlin as a young teenager was extreme authoritarian communism, and the experience cemented within me a deep gratitude for my country — a democratic republic that values "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  By 1969, I was concerned about our country after seeing photos of war protestors burning the American flag.  I thought these young Americans should tour East Berlin; perhaps then, they would be more grateful for our country!  But when the Kent State students were shot while peacefully protesting in 1970, I wondered--how is the brutality of shooting peaceful protestors different from being shot in East Berlin for scaling a wall?  

One hope I had as a teenager for the East Germans was knowing that the United States broadcasted democratic ideas and news to people imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain. A few who listened to contraband radios in secret might spread the word that they had not been forgotten. It was part of the Voice of America, known as Radio Free Europe, which was active around the world . . . until recently.

President Trump has withdrawn funding from the Voice of America, which had always been dedicated to objective reporting.  He believes the press is "the enemy of the people." Our president's promise to end Voice of America brings back all of those old images of a brutal and authoritarian East Berlin, where people were jailed without due process, where a free press was nonexistent,  where people could not visit their relatives a few miles away,  and where dissent and freedom of speech were prosecuted. In contrast, the United States Constitution emphasizes a free press, freedom of speech, and due process in its courts of law.  Those ideals — democratic ideals — have often been in jeopardy with past administrations, but the present administration's glaring hostility toward these rights is unprecedented. 

President Trump has not only smashed his iron fist through the First Amendment's clear guidance about the free press, he has denigrated people like me who have decided to vote for moderate Democrats. He calls Democrats "radical lunatics" and "communists," which is misleading and horribly disrespectful to American citizens, especially to those of us who have witnessed authoritarian communism.  

I refuse to be intimidated by authoritarian, strong-man rhetoric. I will defend the free press, freedom of speech, social justice, and civil rights through my vote and words. Furthermore, 

I am NOT a Communist.

.--CD Burr   

*  Multiple Soviet-influenced conspiracy theories surfaced immediately after Hitler's death and continue to this day.  Reliable witnesses, however, claim the bodies were recovered from the bunker and burned to ashes.  After extensive research, West Germany declared Hitler dead and issued a death certificate in 1956. 

An earlier version of this essay appears in the group blog Elders Speaking

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