4/4/2007 - AFS and Its Lifetime Impact: Who ever knows “What could have been”?
Editor’s note: Jim Ramsey, who was an AFS exchange student to Sweden in 1960, recently received a request from the international AFS organization. The request, made of AFS members world-wide, asked respondents to explain how they got interested in AFS, what one event that they experienced in their host country was extremely memorable for that decade, and how did the AFS experience change their lives. Below is the essay Ramsey wrote and submitted.
Who ever knows “what could have been”?
I was headed for a career in science and technology, like all my friends at Oak Ridge High. Our schools emphasized music and art, but science was de rigueur. Humanities were professed in terms of “’50s priorities” — it was the Cold War Sputnik era!
My upbringing took place within the perimeter of the “Manhattan Project” reservation, during wartime.
Although the community was dedicated to scientific research, not fighting, Oak Ridge was nonetheless a military base. It was decidedly a mission-oriented existence all we wartime children experienced.
Further, while our childhood was comfortable and not without its recreational opportunities, every neighbor was without exception assigned to “the Project” in support of — or were in fact themselves — “rocket scientists.”?
Everyone worked to “split the atom” for the “war effort.” It was a cocooned existence for us children of World War II, and in fact secrecy was enforced even afterwards.
So in my youth, insulated and unknowing, I had much in common with my peers elsewhere on this war-torn planet:? we knew of the world only what was at hand, what was told us, and what we had to do, of necessity.
AFS changed all that. I learned about choices. This, I understood only gradually; but the foundation had been laid.
Interest in AFS came when I met several students from “over there” before my own opportunity arose in 1960; I liked them, admired them, and respected them especially for their broader understanding of things I had only read about.
My first experience abroad was an eye-opener: I had brought with me irradiated dimes from the “Atomic Museum,” as souvenirs of the “Atomic City.” Cool! Right? I had been prepared by AFS not only to absorb the culture, but to explain mine. The Swedish response to my offer of these glowing (figuratively speaking) souvenirs of my hometown was, “You carried those here in YOUR POCKET!?”
Education poses more than one question, I discovered.
Perspective from abroad showed me “Bull” Connors hosing the “Freedom Marchers” in Alabama, and loosing the dogs; I saw news for the first time of a Buddhist Monk immolating himself in “Indochina.” In 1960 this was not news I received at home: again, an eye-opener.
I have learned since that President Eisenhower had encouraged much in terms of international exchange of peoples, not just the “Atoms for Peace” program I knew. I saw something could be done.
Steven Gallati’s program bent this sheltered “twig” and turned my life from a pre-ordained career of atoms, chemistry and physics (all worthy subjects of study in and of themselves), to form a multi-branched human-interest “tree” with a different lifetime mission: people.
I returned home with languages, an open view of social commitment, and idealism of a different kind than material or scientific “progress;” also, questioning. I have since served a gratifying lifetime as a teacher, lawyer, and four decades of service as an elected public official, all an AFS-inculcated personal fulfillment of social commitment.
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