When World War II ended, the Soviet Army refused to relinquish Berlin. As Europe rebuilt after the war, Berlin remained a captured pawn in a larger global conflict. The Soviet Union insisted that East Germany become one of its \u201csatellite\u201d nations. Berlin stood isolated and vulnerable to ongoing communist threats of aggression. West Berlin remained a free city, but it was caught between the Soviets\u2019 red sickle and hammer. Desperate and faced with starvation, West Berliners turned to America for help.<\/p>\n
The newly created U.S. Air Force flew numerous missions in the 1947-48 Berlin Blockade and Airlift to provide food, clothing and fuel to Berliners trapped by the Soviets. My stepfather was a navigator in the 8th Air Force and proudly remembered those flights. East Germans kept fleeing their country and heading west, so in 1961, the East German, Soviet-supported government, ironically named the German Democratic Republic, built a wall.<\/p>\n
At first, no one was sure what the purpose of the wall was. Why build a 105-mile-long, 14-foot-high concrete wall separating East and West Germany? Then it became clear. The wall, and the no-man\u2019s land dividing the two Berlins, was to prohibit communication and commerce. Still, Germans sought freedom from communism. Dozens died trying to scale the razor wire-topped wall. East German soldiers shot to kill.<\/p>\n
The wall stood as a symbol of a failed economic and social system. On the west side in political protest, artists covered it with graffiti. Finally, 28 years after the concrete barrier went up, it was breached on Nov. 9, 1989.<\/p>\n
Veryl Goodnight\u2019s sculpture began as a dream after watching dramatic television footage of the wall coming down. It had been built to keep East Germans in and to keep freedom out. Goodnight\u2019s dream was to use running horses as a metaphor and to have bronze horses trample barriers between peoples.<\/p>\n
She had the dream. She had the artistic skill. She began her project. Meanwhile, President Bush worked to bring the two Germanys together at a time when reunification seemed economically and socially fraught with uncertainty and huge expense.<\/p>\n
Last month, as world leaders gathered to praise President Bush, The Wall Street Journal<\/em> wrote that he had made his \u201chistoric contribution\u201d at the end of the Cold War and would be remembered as \u201ca consequential one-term president who set an example with his integrity and sense of patriotic duty.\u201d Politicians do their work, and so do artists.<\/p>\n \u201cTo commemorate the victory of free people over the forces of totalitarian rule, artists from all over the world offered pieces of art to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Berlin refused all these offers except one, the sculpture \u2018The Day the Wall Came Down,\u2019\u201d says Roger Brooks, Goodnight\u2019s husband. \u201cBy Veryl using horses to represent Germans breaking through a barrier to their own freedom, this sculpture also represents other people seeking to overcome obstacles to their own personal freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Donors funded the $250,000 casting fee for the 14,000-pound, 30-foot-long, 18-foot-wide and 12-foot-high sculpture. Simultaneously, Joe and Betty Hiram Moore urged President Bush to have his presidential library on the Texas A&M University campus at College Station. As Bush approved the placement of his library and archives, he met Goodnight and Brooks and also agreed to the placing of a casting of the sculpture at his library because 10 months after he became president, the wall came down.<\/p>\n One casting of the four leaping mares and one stallion stood for a year in front of the Currigan Exhibition Hall in Denver. The second casting became part of the 1996 Olympic Games near Atlanta. As it came time to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift in 1998, Brooks wondered if the U.S. Air Force could deliver the sculpture.<\/p>\n Gen. Ron Fogelman, Air Force chief of staff now retired to Durango, supported the idea as part of a normal supply flight to Germany. After speeches, flags, bands and a Colorado National Guard F-16 flyover, craftsmen wrapped and separated the sculpture into four sections for loading into a large C-17 cargo plane, aptly christened \u201cThe Spirit of Berlin.\u201d<\/p>\n Denver children tied candy to the sculpted horses symbolizing the \u201ccandy bombers,\u201d which dropped candy and precious food for families in Berlin during the airlift. My stepfather liked to tell that story, too. Artists work in symbols and the USAF delivered Goodnight\u2019s sculpture as part of the 50th anniversary of the Berlin airlift, an important patriotic symbol.<\/p>\n Once the plane landed, the German Army transported the horses in a military convoy. Former President Bush, former U.S. Army Air Commandant of Berlin Gen. John Mitchell, and Berlin\u2019s mayor, Eberhard Diepgen, gathered for the unveiling.<\/p>\n The horses leap into the air. Below them, painted to look like graffiti on concrete, lie broken stretches of the wall, part of the bronze casting. Painted on the sculpture\u2019s base are words and designs documented by photographers before the concrete crumbled. In Texas, the horse sculpture is the favorite exhibit at the Bush Presidential Library on the Texas A&M University campus. The sculptures are identical, but with a significant twist.<\/p>\n On the base of the sculpture at his library, President Bush wanted the names of East Germans killed trying to escape. It was his request. He wrote Goodnight, \u201cI found that the names of those East Germans, gunned down trying to get to freedom, made your marvelous bronze even more powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, he wrote, \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how pleased Barbara and I are that your wonderful sculpture, \u2018The Day the Wall Came Down,\u2019 now stands in the plaza of our Presidential Library Center. The message that you convey \u2013 \u2018The Berlin Wall \u2013 Courage \u2013 Freedom\u2019 \u2013 is particularly important to me, and I am confident that it will be seen and remembered by everyone who visits the library.\u201d And in a handwritten postscript, he added, \u201cIt looks absolutely sensational placed in the courtyard.\u201d<\/p>\n Goodnight has public art in front of the Colorado History Museum in Denver; at the Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Cheyenne, Wyoming; at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas; and across America. But one of her favorite sculptures stands in Berlin.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s huge. And there are so many personal layers to the sculpture. With public art, it doesn\u2019t matter who did it. It\u2019s the beauty that counts. Most folks who see this sculpture don\u2019t know I did it and that\u2019s fine. Art is completed by the viewer,\u201d she tells me in her studio.<\/p>\n \u201cHorses represent freedom in many cultures, certainly in the American West. As a Colorado native and a Westerner, I\u2019ve always felt that running horses have symbolized freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n In her book, \u201cNo Turning Back,\u201d Goodnight wrote, \u201cWe will always remember West Berlin, that little island of freedom in the heart of communist Europe. \u2018The Day the Wall Came Down\u2019 sculpture stands in honor of Berlin, the city that made the fatal tear in the fabric of the Iron Curtain.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, the sculpture also honors President George H.W. Bush.<\/p>\n