. Volume 12, Issue 11

Inside this issue:

President’s Corner 2

40 Year Celebra-

tion Held in

Lichtenfels

2

Election of Board

Members

4

Oktoberfest

Results

4

2017 Membership 4

2017 Gemütlichkeit 4

Announcements 4

The Sister Cities Scoop Lichtenfels Vandalia Prestwick

November, 2016 Editor: Ann Kimmel

November’s

Gemütlichkeit

November’s Gemütlich-

keit will be held at the

Senior Citizens Center.

The address is 21 Tionda

Dr. S. Drinks will be pro-

vided. Please bring

snacks to share.

Gemütlichkeit is held im-

mediately following the

monthly membership

meeting. All are wel-

come to attend.

Check out Vandalia Sister Cities online at www.Vandaliasistercities.org Page 2

The Sister Cities Scoop

President’s Corner

What a trip. First of all, many greetings from

our friends in Germany to you.

It is hard to describe the feeling at the Cele-

bration Banquet with all five sister cities in attend-

ance. There were approximately 50 members vis-

iting from Prestwick, Scotland, Aricca, Italy,

Cournon, France, and Vandalia, Ohio. The Ban-

quet was a showing of all sister cities joining to-

gether as one family. A big thanks to Roland Dier

for a great job planning our activities while we

were in Lichtenfels.

We were able to have lunch with Vynesa Ev-

anson and spent time together visiting the Coburg

Castle. Vynesa is settled in and going to lan-

guage classes so she can go to Bamberg in

March to attend the university.

We are still in need of two people to serve on

our Board. Please give me a call or email me.

Harvey

Wayne & Susie Wright Honored in

Lichtenfels

Wayne and Susie Wright

were each presented a

plaque at the Celebration

Banquet which read as

follows:

Proclamation

In recognition of the excellent work to preserve, pro-

mote and develop the positive relationship between

Sister Cities of Lichtenfels/Germany and Vandalia/

Ohio/USA over 4 decades

Hereby bestows upon the Sister Cities Committee of

Lichtenfels r.a.

Mrs. Susie Wright and

Mr. Wayne Wright

The Award of Honorary Lifetime Member

Sister Cities Committee

Lichtenfels r.a.

Lichtenfels, October 22, 2016

Monika Faber, President

President Harvey Kimmel, Wayne and Susie Wright and Ann Kimmel traveled to Lichtenfels to attend the 40 Year Celebration of their Sister Cities partnerships. A banquet was held on Saturday, Oc-tober 22nd. Following are the speeches given at the banquet by Harvey and Wayne:

Harvey’s speech:

Good Evening,

It is an honor to be here helping to celebrate 40 years of friendship with Lichtenfels.

Greetings from all of your friends in Vandalia.

I believe this is the first time all 5 Sister Cities have been together.

This is the true spirit of Sister Cities. We are the vision of Presi-dent Eisenhower, promoting the

“People to People” program.

I was going to talk about the friendship with Lichtenfels, but I had a better idea. I asked your friend, Wayne Wright, to talk about our friendship.

Wayne’s speech:

It was 1976. The United States of America was 200 years old. During that 200 years, the largest group of immigrants to America had come from Ger-many, and they had integrated into American socie-ty and become a major part of the American fabric.

35 years earlier, America had become in-volved, for the second time in the 20th century, in a terrible war with Germany. That war left over 400,000 Americans dead, many of whom were of German decent, and many millions more Germans, Russians, French, Dutch, Italian, and British citizens dead or maimed. The great cities of Germany, as well as many in other European countries, were left in near total destruction. In 1945, a peace treaty was signed, leaving Germany defeated, partitioned, and totally humiliated on the world stage.

The German people, however, finally free from the grip of the Nazi regime, were not demoral-ized. Because of the incredible work ethic of the German people, together with the incredi-ble generosity of the American people in the form of

(Continued on page 3)

40 Year Celebration Held in Lichtenfels

Check out Vandalia Sister Cities online at www.Vandaliasistercities.org Page 3

The Sister Cities Scoop

the Marshall Plan, the German nation had, by 1976, become a prosperous, free, and full member of the European community again, even though it was still divided by the infamous Russian built wall, separating East and West Germany.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, before be-ing elected president of the United States, had been the Supreme Allied Commander overseeing Germa-ny’s defeat. In 1956, he initiated an international organization he called “Peace through People.” It was meant to foster goodwill between the people of all nations, and hopefully make it much more difficult for rogue leaders to drag their citizens again into world war.

Peace through People later became “Sister Cit-ies International”. It was through this organization that the mayors of Lichtenfels and Vandal-ia, Dr. Gunter Hauptmann and Mr. Walter Lakin, met and formed a partnership that has lasted now for over 40 years. We are here tonight to celebrate those 40 years.

In 1976 we were strangers. No longer enemies, but certainly strangers. Dr. Hauptmann brought a band, our be-loved Fanfarenzug, to Vandalia to march in our bicentennial parade. Two of those band members, Jo-seph and Irmi Springer, who were newly married, were among the Lichtenfelsers traveling to Vandalia. They had been as-signed to stay with Wayne and Susie Wright during the two weeks they would be in Vandalia.

Joseph was a machine worker in Coburg, and Wayne was a dentist in Vandalia. In German socie-ty, dentists were considered to be in a different level of society than machine workers, and so Sepp and Irmi had some angst about staying with the Ameri-can dentist.

A plane load of strangers landed in Vandalia, greeted by a group of other strangers on the tar-mac waving German and American flags. No one on either side was sure about what we could expect. After all, only 35 years before, our parents had been shooting at each other, and some of the American hosts had actually dropped bombs on German cities.

Even though the Germans could speak hardly

any English, and the Americans, of course, spoke no German at all, very soon the strangers became friends, and before the two weeks were over, the friends had become family....bonds that have grown ever stronger over the years. We have come to weddings and birthdays. We have celebrat-ed the births of our “German and American grand-children”. We have grieved together over the loss of loved ones, and traveled together both in Europe and America.

Sepp and Irmi even went home from Vandalia in 1976 pregnant with a little girl! They later named her Susanne, after their hostess, Susie Wright.

In 2001, an official visit of Vandalia to Lichtenfels was scheduled to begin on September the 12th. The day before, on 9-11-2001, the worst attack on Amer-ican soil since Pearl Harbor, had occurred at the World Trade Center in New York and at the Penta-gon in Washington, D.C. All flights in the United States were cancelled, and so too, was our visit to Lichtenfels. Germany and the world grieved with us, and Lichtenfels honored Vandalia by leaving a space in the Basket Fest Parade where we should have been marching. An American flag was carried in the parade, lowered to half-staff in respect for the nearly 3000 people who had lost their lives in that attack.

Our story is not unique. It happened among most, if not all, of the participants of that 1976 Fanfarenzug visit to Vandalia. Now, 40 years later, there are many families, both in Lichten-fels and in Vandalia, who are truely internation-al families. They now have unbreakable ties and bonds that cross the Atlantic, and those bonds will continue on as long as we and our children live. There are young people, not yet born in 1976, who have also developed this intense and incredi-ble feeling, that they too, have families in Vandalia and in Lichtenfels.

We must all, young and old, work to keep those bonds alive and well, in the coming years. If we do, and spread the idea of “peace through peo-ple”, there will someday be no more wars.

(Continued from page 2) 40 Year Celebration

Page 4

Peace thru People

Save the Dates

Here are several important dates for

you to note on your calendars:

Board Meeting:

November 2 at 7:00 p.m.

Membership Meeting:

November 9 at 7:00 p.m. Meetings are held at the Vandalia

Senior Citizens Center located at 21

Tionda Drive S.

Deadline for December’s Scoop articles is November 26th.

Happy November Birthdays!

Louis Almasy ...................... 6

Thea Chiles ........................ 9

Christine Hawley .............. 10

Bill Hibner ......................... 18

Sue Corrigan .................... 21

Kelly Blakesly ................... 24

Jean Miller ........................ 27

Suzanne’s Sunshine

Report

Thanks to Suzanne Jordan, a little

sunshine was sent to brighten

someone’s day:

Long time member Bill Case passed away

on Saturday, October 15 at the age of 94.

Dave Starline has been in the hospital

several times in the last month.

Joe Evans was in a Troy Rehab facility.

Joann Shaner passed away due to vari-

ous complications.

Please report news on our mem-

bership to Suzanne at 898-2703.

November Membership Meeting

The results of the 2016 Oktoberfest will be

reported at the November membership

meeting on November 9th. Please plan to

attend to see the results of all of our hard

work at the Oktoberfest.

Election of Board Members

The election of two Board Members will take

place at the November General Membership

Meeting on November 9th. If you are interested

in one of these positions, please contact Harvey

Kimmel at 901-6032 or

harkim@woh.rr.com. Please

step forward and get involved

with a great organization by

becoming a candidate for one

of these openings.

Membership

Thea Chiles has resigned as the Member-

ship Chairperson. Thanks Thea for your

years of dedication.

Thank you Brenda Windel for volunteering to

take her place.

It's that time again

and memberships are

due! $20 for families

with children up to

age 18; $10 for sin-

gles, 18 years of age

and older. You can

pay at the November

meeting OR mail a

check with your perti-

nent information to: Brenda Windel, 185

Ginghamsburg-Frederick Road, Tipp City,

OH 45371. Thanks. Brenda

2017 Gemütlichkeit

A signup

sheet will be

passed

around at

the Novem-

ber Member-

ship meeting

for the 2017

Gemütlich-

keits. Call

Ann Kimmel at 901-6031 or email at

annkim49@gmail.com to host a Gemütlichkeit

next year or sign up at the November meeting.