Just two days ago, the free world remembered and celebrated that night the Berlin wall came down on November 9, 1989. I remember sitting in my living room and watching, thinking it was a joke or some kind of hoax. When I realized what was happening I began crying tears of joy as I watched the people celebrate. I was writing opinion columns for the Springfield News-Leader at that time so I was acquainted with the events surrounding the wall and the political unrest and especially the deaths of those who had tried to scale the wall without success. My mind went back immediately to June 12, 1987 when once again I sat transfixed before the television screen to watch President Reagan’s motorcade take him to the historic Brandenburg Gate where tens of thousands of people awaited. He later wrote in his diary there were “people stretching as far as I could see”. In his speech that day he said, “Standing (here) before the Brandenburg gate (today), every man is a German, separated from hi