Personal Narrative: An Interview With My Uncle

For my project, I interviewed many different people of all different ages. My Grandpa, Vern, born in 1942, remembers most of the cold war. Our family friend, Terry Markuly, was born in 1950 and she also remembers most of the Cold War events. My Uncle and my Mom, both born in 1967, do not remember many of the big Cold War events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, but they still have memories of the events that they were alive for. Vern lived in Wisconsin for the entire war and still lives there to this day and my Mom also lived in Wisconsin for the entire war, except for two brief periods right after the war where she lived near Berlin. Both Terry and my Uncle also resided in the Midwest for most of the war, but Terry lived in St. Louis, Missouri and my Uncle lived in Indiana. Their experiences were different with each event and place but there were also many similarities among their experiences.

Everyone that I interviewed felt that all of the presidents during the Cold War handled the situation confidently and safely. My Uncle’s first presidential election that he remembers was when President Reagan won. Both my Mom and Dave thought of President Reagan as the most confident, smart, and good with words. Since the Presidents were overall confident in their leadership, the cold war did not affect my interviewees a lot. Vern remembers not

being very frightened, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis because he did not know very much about the situation at the time. Vern never realized how close the U.S. got to a nuclear war until after the fact, so it was not as scary at the time. My Uncle, who did not live through the Cuban Missile Crisis, was also not affected by the events going on at the time. He had a high school history teacher that kept him up to date with the news and gave his opinion on what the country's future would look like if we went into war with the Soviet Union. Similar to the others, the war never affected my Mom on a daily basis because it was constantly going on, but it was still scary to her knowing that there could be a catastrophic event at any moment.
Having been born towards the end of World War II, Vern remembers most of the Cold War, but the first major event that he remembers from the war was the Berlin Airlift.

Terry was not alive for the first three years of the war so the first major event that she remembers was the Cuban Missile Crisis and Nikita Khrushchev’s quote to the U.S., “We will bury you”. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were not very many major events that affected the U.S. so the first major event that my Uncle remembered was the destruction of the Berlin Wall. This signified the end of the war, which had been happening for as long as he could

remember.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vern did not remember doing any bomb drills, but he remembered movies and ads regarding ‘Duck and cover’. Even though Vern lived in a very tiny town in Wisconsin, it surprised me that he never did any drills. Further South, in St. Louis, Terry remembers doing citywide bomb drills periodically. Neither Dave nor my Mom remember having drills in school because the immediate danger of a Nuclear war was no longer a threat. After years of bomb threats and near-nuclear war experiences, there was finally a joyous moment for the U.S. citizens. Vern, Terry, and Dave all believed that the Berlin Wall affected their life the most because it gave them a sense of relief that the war was now over. After the war, everyone I interviewed did not notice any changes in the world around. All of the U.S. felt relief that there would not be any more bomb threats. In the interview, Vern compared the end of the war to the Packers winning the Superbowl, there was a lot of joy, but the next day everything went back to normal.
Soon after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, in 1992, my Mom went to live in Switzerland and went to Berlin. She remembers visiting East Berlin which was devastated, poor, and undeveloped. Six years later, she went back to East Berlin, but this time, the town had become a tourist town with museums about the wall.
By interviewing my family and friends I learned a lot about the cold war that no textbook could tell me. It is so weird to think that what I think of as history, was current events for my grandparents and even my parents. I was also surprised that the Cuban Missile Crisis affected everyone less than I thought. I had assumed that everyone would be in constant fear, but then my Grandpa compared the events in Cuba to terrorism in today’s world. The Cuban Missile Crisis was much more threatening and potentially more destructive, but it was similar to terrorism because it is unpredictable. This comparison puts everything into perspective for me. After interviewing my friends and family I now have a better understanding of the Cold War’s events as they relate to the people’s emotions.