A couple of months ago, a long-sought photo from my college years at UT surfaced on Facebook. It was me and eight of my compatriots from The Daily Beacon in the lobby of a hotel in Washington D.C. surrounding Pulitzer Prize winning reporter/ author Carl Bernstein. Bernstein, of course, along with Bob Woodward, brought us the Watergate scandal and All the President’s Men. We were thrilled. Most of us towered over Bernstein. He looked at all of us and asked, “What do they feed you all down there?”

The reason we were all there was for the Investigative Reporters & Editors College Conference. Bernstein was the keynote speaker. Ten of us had piled into an official UT conversion van early on November 9, 1989, and scooted up I-81 to D.C.

We weren’t due at the conference hotel until the next afternoon, so we spent our first night in Arlington. As we gathered in one room to make plans to head out for dinner, someone turned the television on. Probably to CNN, but I don’t remember. But plans to go out immediately changed with the headlines: the Berlin Wall was coming down. For a bunch of young newsies, this meant pizza delivery and some cold brews.

The Daily Beacon Crew in D.C. 1989: John Jackson Miller, Beth Kinnane, Patrick Donovan, Marshall Ramsey, Carl Bernstein, Nathan Rowell, Clint Brewer, and Wendy Farmer, with Laura Atkinson and Catherine Crawley in front. Photo likely taken by fellow Beaconite, Sam Cristy, property of Patrick Donovan.

We were all on the early end of Generation X. We didn’t understand Watergate when were young, it was something that interrupted our favorite TV shows. During our formative years the Berlin Wall was a stark symbol of the Cold War, and its fall was the first chink in the armor of the Iron Curtain. Right there, right then, watching the world wake up to history. Or so we hoped. The nuclear fallout boogeyman was taken down several pegs that day.

The next morning, we got up fairly early. We couldn’t check in to the D.C. hotel just yet, so we (wisely) decided to visit Arlington National Cemetery. It was Friday, November 10, the day before Veterans Day. It was the appropriate thing to do. We took a quick tour of Robert E. Lee’s old place, visited the eternal flame for John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert buried next to him. Among my many photos is one I took of the grave of heavyweight champ Joe Louis.

Arlington was the first national cemetery I had ever visited. Its effect on me has repeated whenever I have visited others, most notably the American Cemetery in Normandy, France. Before we crossed the Potomac River, we stopped to view the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider. It is an exercise of precision surrounded by quiet remembrance. There were stands in place for Veterans Day ceremonies the next day.

We had a lot of history jammed into our first 18 hours, and we hadn’t even darkened the doors of the conference yet, which we attended hit or miss other than all of us making sure we got to the keynote speech with Bernstein.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery-1989 (Photo by Beth Kinnane)

There was something about the beginning of the end of the Cold War coming right on top of Veterans Day that has always stuck with me. Both my grandfathers served in World War II, but only one of them saw combat, oddly the older of the two. My grandfather Kinnane was in the 29th Infantry. He was 35 years old when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He saw a lot in the four months he was fighting across France, into Belgium and onto Germany. He was wounded on Friday, Oct. 13, 1944, during the Battle of Aachen. I never knew him, he died eight years before I was born, on Veterans Day 1957. He’s buried at Mountain Home in Johnson City.

Honor all of our veterans today.

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

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