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The Fall of the Berlin Wall was the most significant moment recorded in an era when it became obvious that the winds of freedom were about to sweep through Eastern Europe and around the World.  It came without warning at the end of a rather boring press conference when the Communications Director for East Germany read a final statement ending the press conference that if East German residents wanted to leave they could and if they wanted come back they would be allowed with a VISA, but all applications would be accepted. 

Suddenly, the very symbol of oppression throughout the world, The Berlin Wall, that seperated the East Germans from the West Germans basically meant nothing. The East Germans came through the gates like a tsunami over a broken sea wall. It was a flood of people and a flood of emotions for the German people who had been separated by that wall for 28 years. 

For so many people alive today, who did not live through the Cold War, the significance of the moment, may be hard to explain.  Since the end of World War 2, the world had been divided between the free people's of the World and the people trapped in a Communist system that stifled innovation, and controlled every aspect of the people's lives. The results were nowhere more evident than simply looking on one side of this wall and comparing it to the other. On the West side of the wall was a thriving , bustling West Berlin , full of opportunity, prosperity, and the freedom to live life as you chose, on the East side was a drab, decaying, city in economic despair and where the people were trapped inside the borders of their own country.  

My step father, Larry Bulmer,  was in the  Canadian military and his memory of the era was that of the horrified East Germans driving the ragged , old, limited Soviet made automobiles in terror as they tried to navigate the German autobahn, being passed by the modern West German cars doing over 100 MPH.  It was a dramatic change, and welcome one for the world, and it marked the beginning of the end of the Communist rule over Eastern Europe.  

All of this momentous change occurred  under the cautious, watchful, magnanimous leadership of George. H. W. Bush, the single best manager of government we have seen in our lifetime and to paraphrase the famous  Carly Simon song,   "Nobody could have managed it better" 

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