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| Photo courtesy of Doris Lee A. |
A Story from the Life of Doris Lee A.
Ghostwritten by Emma R.
Meeting Fear with Friendship
“No. I don’t want to go. I’m sure those Germans have something up their sleeves.”
When Charlie had called me from the private jet he was traveling on with some of the other people he worked with, I did not expect him to tell me that he had been asked to leave his post as president of Sherex Chemical Company and to move to West Berlin to run the International Chemical Business there. I had just flown back from a tennis camp with a group of my girlfriends when Charlie had dropped the bomb, and so I was feeling pretty good, but I did not feel good about going to Berlin, Germany.
At the time, Germany was divided into two separate cities by a wall that was 66 miles long and 3.6 meters tall. On the west side of the wall, it was the Democratic side and the east side, it was the Communist side.
I let the idea set and a few days later, I called Charlie at the office and told him that I would think about this idea of going to Berlin. No more than two minutes after I hung up, the phone rang again. It was Charlie.
“They have tickets for you and I to fly over to Germany in three days Doris Lee so we can look things over and find an apartment.”
Everything was happening too fast. One moment, I was relaxing after returning home from a grand time with my girlfriends, and the next I was about to embark on a journey to a war-torn, divided country where the people have never been the friendliest. How am I supposed to make friends in a place like that? Unknown to me at the time, this moment in my life was just the start of the plan God had laid down for me to follow.
When Charlie and I flew over, we were able to find a modern, two floor apartment that was across from the German Subway. When we had gone to look at it, it was still being built so we would be the first people to live in it. On the first floor, there was a bedroom, a half-bath, a living room, a dining room and a winding staircase that took up one-third of the whole first floor. I thought that the apartment was poorly designed. I mean, who would make a staircase that big? Upstairs, there was another bedroom, a tiny study for myself, a study for Charlie, and a room to keep the ironing and laundry in.
The Germans didn’t let Charlie and I bring over our furniture to Germany, so we bought all new furniture for the apartment.he only downside was that the Germans got to keep the furniture. We asked for a decorator to help make the apartment more color coordinated. Although I left all of the furniture at home, I was able to bring along with me pictures, accessories and most importantly, my christian books and my Bible.
When I arrived in Berlin, a few of the wives of Charlie’s coworkers showed me around, but in the German culture, wives don’t really get to know the wives of their husband’s coworkers, and so after they had showed me around, I did not see them again. But, while they were showing me around, they took me over the military base that was set up in West Berlin, and it was there that I met Mary Saveley.
Mary was the wife of Colonel Saveley, who was the head Chaplain of the Americans forces in Berlin. When we met, one of the first things Mary said to me was; “You don’t have a support group.”
“I know it.” I responded. After that, Mary became on of my closest friends in Berlin. Anytime that there was a chance that she could include me in a social activity she held at her house, Mary would.
It was Mary who introduced me to Protestant Women of the Chapel, a group of young military wives who met to discuss the Bible. These women were in their mid to late twenties, many were expecting their first child and their mothers were back in the States. These women needed a mother figure to confide in and encourage them through life until the day they would be able to go back to their own in the States.
I became that person for them.
Just as Mary became my rock to lean on while I was in a strange country, I became the rock for those women. Mary was something that I didn’t expect to find in a walled in, divided place, but in her, I found a good friend.
When I had first been told that I was moving to Berlin, I thought that I was to going to be as isolated as Berlin was after World War II. But, I ended up discovering that sometimes situations that seem like the end of the world, end up being on the greatest influence in your life.
