Iolan witnesses fall of Berlin Wall

Some vacations are memorable because of an unforeseen event that lays to waste even the most meticulous and thought-out travel plans.
Carl Slaugh’s was a doozy.
Slaugh and his family were stationed at Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, West Germany — he was a major in the Air Force — and decided on a family vacation to Berlin.
It was November 1989. History was about to happen. The Berlin Wall was about to come down.
Weeks of preparations had gone into the excursion, explained Slaugh, now Iola’s city administrator.
Not only would they need passports to cross over into East Germany, but Slaugh, his wife, Cheryl, and their five children needed numerous permits to follow the 100-plus-mile excursion through the heart of Communist-occupied East Germany.
The Slaughs had visited East Berlin four years prior, during Carl’s first tour of duty in West Germany, and had decided against a repeat trip by train. This time, they were riding in the Slaugh’s full-sized, 1979 GMC van.
They traveled the Autobahn out of Frankfurt to Braunschweig, and then east to Helmstedt, at the border of East Germany, and the first of several checkpoints — Checkpoint Alpha — for all Allied forces traveling by highway to East Berlin.
From there, they slowly made their way to Berlin through a series of East German and Soviet checkpoints before arriving at a family friend’s home in West Berlin.
“It was not unlike visiting a prison,” Slaugh recalled of the inspection process.
The Slaughs had been warned that demonstrators in East Berlin had gathered en masse on numerous occasions in recent weeks and months.
Undeterred, they spent a largely uneventful day visiting a number of shops and tourist destinations before re-entering West Germany through the famed Checkpoint Charlie and back to their friends’ house.
The news reports started trickling in the next day. The East Germans were going to allow, for the first time since the city was split more than 40 years prior, unfettered access from East to West Germany.
The Wall was about to come down.
The family had two choices. Head on home ahead of any ruckus sure to follow; or go back into Berlin to see first-hand history in the making.
“I guess I’m just an adventurous sort,” Slaugh said. “We decided to go back to East Berlin.”
Easier said than done. Almost as quickly as they were granted permission, the East German government reportedly changed its mind.
But as afternoon arrived, it was evident something was up.
“People everywhere just started walking in one direction,” Slaugh said. “It was almost like they were following the Pied Piper.”
They were headed to the Wall.
Throngs converged on Checkpoint Charlie, which was going to be reopened — for good, as it turned out.
With only one access point through the wall, traffic crawled to a stop.
“Remember, we were in a large van, and we couldn’t go very fast for fear of hitting someone,” Slaugh said. “You could feel people pushing on the side of the van from outside.
A caravan of troop carriers drove past.
“It was then we wondered, ‘What did  we get ourselves into?’” he said.
His fears were quickly allayed. Despite the mobs, there was no fear at all. Only euphoria.
Slaugh’s son opened a van window, and recorded footage of jubilant East Germans heading to their neighbors to the west.
It took about three hours — from 7 to 10 p.m. — for the Slaughs to travel about three blocks in their van.
“It was hard to describe the feeling of being among people who were being released after being confined behind a wall since 1961,” he said.

ONCE THEY MADE it back into West Berlin, the Slaughs decided to head back to the Air Base.
The 100-mile trip also became an ordeal because of persistent traffic jams.
“The final 30 miles before Checkpoint Alpha was stop-and-go traffic with people stopping to go to the bathroom on the side of the road, then drink some more champagne, hoop, holler and visit,” Slaugh said. “What a great experience.”
Grocery stores also were emptied.
“Remember, these people had lived for decades of oppression under a Communist regime,” Slaugh said. “For some, it had been years since they’d been able to taste a citrus fruit like a banana. That’s why the stores were emptied.”
The Slaughs decided on one final trip to East Germany a year later, on Oct. 3, 1990. Unity Day.
“We wanted to see what the rest of East Germany was like,” Slaugh said. “It was amazing. It was almost like time was at a standstill for 30 years. The buildings hadn’t really been maintained since the time the Wall went up.”

SLAUGH RETIRED from the Air Force in 1993 after serving 20 years as a pilot and flight instructor.
After that, he pursued a career in city administration because of its similarities to his work environment in the military.
After earning a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Kansas, Slaugh was hired as a capital improvement coordinator in Merriam.
From there, he served four years as city administrator in Hiawatha and three more in Basehor until 2009.
He was hired as Iola’s city administrator in 2011.
Slaugh’s children also reflect occasionally on their experiences, he said. On Slaugh’s desk is a homemade calendar made by one of his children that shows a photo of the Slaugh family in front of the Wall.
“That was one of the best parts,” he said. “They were pretty young the first time we saw the Berlin Wall, but they were old enough to understand what was occurring when it was opened.”