Having tried privately and failed to persuade Secretary Shultz to take a small step in the new negotiations with the Soviets, my friend and I have decided to go public. My friend is James Symington, former ambassador, Congressmen and lately a Washington lawyer not unskilled in diplomatic maneuver. I am a former journalist, assistant in the LBJ White House, and, more recently, head of a small liberal arts college on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. My involvement in this episode arises from a keen desire to educate my students in world affairs. Alas, I little reckoned the difficulties.
It began nearly two years ago at a dinner in Symington’s home attended by the venerable Soviet ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin. During a quiet moment, I informed the ambassador that I was now living and working not far from the Soviet weekend dacha. I live in Kent County; the Soviet estate, formerly belonging to tycoon Jacob Raskob, is in Queen Anne’s, across the Chester River.
“I know Washington College well,” Dobrynin replied with his customary ebullience.” “My granddaughter and I pass the campus almost every Sunday night on our way to the Pizza Hut. She has a great passion for pizza.” Though chastened that my school now entering its third century should have served as landmark for an eatery, I invited the ambassador to drop by and sample our culinary offerings. Students and faculty, I urged, would love to engage him on the issues of war and peace. He replied somewhat noncommittally. Soon afterward, the Korean airliner was shot down by Soviet MIG’s and Dobrynin returned to Moscow for a spell.
Then, during the autumn of 1983, the US State Department posted a revised listing of localities in America where Soviet emissaries would be denied travel. Kent County, home to both Washington College and the Pizza Hut, was added to the forbidden territory. I was confounded. We are the smallest, and probably least populated part of the Delmarva Peninsula.Our largest commercial enterprise is a branch plant of the Campbell Soup Company, where chicken parts are boiled down. An old SAM site, relic of earlier strategies, is now available for sale or rental.
Why were we thus singled out? The College is exclusively devoted to undergraduate education. One of our chemistry professors, currently on leave, is expert in pyrotechnics but conducts his research elsewhere. No, I concluded, not Washington College but the Pizza Hut had provoked the embargo. In the Machiavellian game of tit for tat that engages U.S./Soviet relationships, the Sunday night forays of the Ambassador and his granddaughter must have caught the attention of a Foggy Bottom bureaucrat. Someone had moved with vengeance to cut off the Dobrynins’ pizza.
What was to be done? There was idle talk of establishing a half-way house in Queen Anne’s County to which Sunday night nourishment could be ferried. But our real objective was to nourish our students and, perhaps, to convince our government that an open society gains little by aping Iron Curtain behavior.
These were the arguments my friend Symington included in a letter to Secretary Schultz. Time passed and a routine reply came from someone bearing a long subsidiary title. Making no mention of Kent County, the letter merely reiterated that the United States engages in travel reciprocity with the Soviet Union. No hint that the loosening of travel bans might offer a topic for fresh beginnings.
I do not wish to grow obsessive. Even if Kent Count should be reopened to Soviet traffic, Dobrynin has made no promises to Washington College. And the Pizza Hut is doing quite nicely without him or his granddaughter.
Yet the thought lurks that when Schultz and Andrei A. Gromyko meet in Geneva this January, they will be hard pressed to find the tiny steps for tiny feet that can lead out of the current impasse. What can anyone propose that has not been haggled and rehaggled? Just suppose Mr. Schultz were to announce as Mr. Gromyko’s habitual gloom begins to darken that we have an offer to lay on the table. Unilaterally, without ifs, buts, or maybes. Henceforth, in Kent County on Maryland’s lovely Eastern Shore, we will forsake all claims or reciprocity or weekly visual verification. Let the pundits proclaim that this constitute a bold new policy of pizza in our time.
Judie Berry Barroll says
Loved reading this again!
Jenifer Emley says
Wonderful. Thanks for posting this!
Patsy Hornaday says
I am a native born St. Louis, Missourian who married a native born Washingtonian and we have lived in Chestertown since 1992
in our home purchased 1985. I applaud President Obama’s swift action stating in no uncertain terms his displeasure in Russian
hacking. President Trump may or may not join the same opinion. This hacking is an invasion of United States Communication
Territory and should any guest in one’s home apply such insult, they would and should be asked to leave immediately. The
President has generously allowed 72 hours. James Symington is a former Congressman representing where I was born & raised.
He is generally thoughtful and considerate of his constituancy in Missouri or Washington D.C.
Samuel Tomlin says
Great! This is wonderful!
MARY WOOD says
Thanks — If the Spy were the only spy there was – we’d all have Pizza in our time.