Two East German border guards atop the Berlin Wall look westward

Terry Irving
Senior Producer
CNN Washington Bureau

I was in Berlin for a week in 1989. Three days before ‘The Opening,’ three days during, and one day after. My memories are fragmented – not only by 20 years of time, but also by a near total lack of sleep during the week that marked the “end of history.”

I was working for ‘Nightline’ at ABC News at the time. After a busy period, the bosses decided to give me a “vacation” – two weeks covering the London bureau. Since nothing was really going on in the world, I decided to fly my wife and little girl over to see the Peter Pan statue and wander the little streets of London. As they were waiting for the taxi to the airport, I called and said I was being sent to Berlin. East Germans were streaming across to the West through other – less restrictive – countries in Eastern Europe and it looked like there was enough material for a good story. I think my daughter still hasn’t forgiven me.

While flying into Berlin, I looked down on Templehof Airport. The only other time I’d been to Berlin was to cover Ronald Reagan’s famous “pull down this Wall” speech. He’d flown in and out of Templehof which was a fantastic display of Nazi architecture – designed in the shape of an eagle with spread wings – and almost completely unused. It had been replaced by two newer airports and still had no jet ways – just canopies. You could almost see the ghost of the prop planes of the Berlin Airlift lining the empty tarmac. In the strange fashion of political and military locations, it was kept in perfect working order. I spoke to the manager and asked, “On an average day, how many flights come out of Templehof?” He thought for a minute and said, “Well, on an average day…none.”

I checked into one of the best hotels in Berlin and met up with my correspondent, the incredible Barrie Dunsmore. He was doing stories for both ‘World News Tonight’ and ‘Nightline,’ which meant I had to do the field reporting so that he could craft it into a story. I gathered up a camera crew and driver (all German) and a young interpreter. All the German citizens had to pass through one checkpoint into East Berlin and I would have to go through the American one – Checkpoint Charlie.

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