The speech U.S. President Reagan delivered that day, standing at the base of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, all within earshot of East German sharpshooters guarding the sinister ribbon of the Berlin Wall, is considered by many experts to have affirmed the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the fall of communism.
But the Wall, that international symbol of oppression and tyranny, would not come down for another two-and-a-half years -- 20 years ago tomorrow.
Only then did the impossible and the improbable collide.
And I was there.
Much like those who believed they would never live to see a black president of the United States, so too believed those of the post-war generation that they would go to their graves with the Berlin Wall still standing, even as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev appeared to soften.
Even today, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of its dismantling, it still seems unbelievable.
But it also seems like yesterday.
On the morning after that unfathomable night before, with thousands tasting freedom for the first time, a bulldozer arrived at the end of East Berlin's Oderberger Street, and came to a halt at beginning of No Man's Land.
Oderberger Street dead-ended at The Wall.
Within minutes, however, it became another path to freedom.
The bulldozer rammed it from under the shadows of fading street lights, past buildings that still carried bullet holes from World War II, and punched out a 10-metre hole before it tore away at the barbed wire beyond.
For 28 years, no man or woman had ever walked there. It was fatal ground, surveyed by East German border guards perched in gun towers ... a free-fire zone.
A death alley.
Twenty years ago this week, I walked through that newest hole in The Wall, and picked up a reminder of what was once stood as a barrier to freedom.
And, as I put that piece of cement-encrusted brick into my jacket pocket, East Germans cheered.
They cheered because they, too, were walking through the Wall -- past the debris, past the barbed wire, and into No Man's Land which symbolized their repression for so long.
Walking to the other side.
And the queues stretched for miles. At the new gateway at Oderberger. At the S-train station. At Checkpoint Charlie. At every passage, new and old.
HISTORICAL SCENE
There were East Berliners going west and West Berliners going east.
It was an unbelievable historical scene.
Like pack rats, bag ladies and inner-city hermits, most journalists are collectors.
Those of us who have been privileged enough to have taken our laptops on the road save hotel keys pilfered from faraway places, accreditation tags to exotic conferences, boarding passes from treacherous Third World airlines and expired passports filled with their wealth of stamps and visas.
It's for the memories, for the proof of being there.
Two of my most prized mementos as a journalist are now within hours of being 20 years old.
One is the press card, now framed, which was issued by East German security police so I could attend a press conference in East Berlin that evening which, if like all others previous, would likely yield no story of any great significance.
It is dated Nov. 9, 1989.
The other is that largish piece of the Berlin Wall that came from the end of Oderberger St.
There were only a handful of western journalists in the East German press building when Politburo spokesman Gunter Schabowski entered the hall around 8 p.m. on Nov. 9, 20 short years ago. We were all there by the luck of happenstance, none of us knowing what was about to happen or how it would so drastically change the world.
Back then, I was the European bureau chief for Sun Media, based out of London. I had just finished interviewing Lech Walesa in Gdansk, Poland and, after Berlin, I would be off to Czechoslovakia to cover the Velvet Revolution being led by author-poet Vaclav Havel, And then, after Christmas, to Moscow to write of Mikhail Gorbachev's pro-democracy announcement that the Communist party no longer had the sole right to rule the Soviet Union.
By morning, however, thousands of journalists and TV crews began arriving in Berlin and, within hours, it was the satellite dish capital of the world.
FREEDOM HAD ARRIVED
And the world could not believe its eyes.
According to Schabowski, East Germans were supposed to line up at police stations the next morning and receive travel permits.
But it was too late. Freedom had been unleashed.
When I arrived at the scene, hundreds were already dancing atop the Wall as anxious East German border guards stood in their towers fiddling with their assault rifles, miraculously resisting the urge to shoot.
Within minutes, hundreds became thousands and, by dawn, tens of thousands of East Berliners were walking the streets of West Berlin, wide-eyed at the bounty of goods displayed in retail windows.
Then, the first bulldozer and backhoe pushed through from the east side into No Man's Land. A passage was cleared of land mines. Razor wire was ripped down and pushed from harm's way.
The entire Soviet Union virtually crumbled that day.
Out of the blue.
MARK.BONOKOSKI@SUNMEDIA.CA OR 416-947-2445
