The man who saved my life

Few people have heard of Lieutenant Colonel Stanislava Petrov. He was a system engineer assigned to Servikov-15, a command-and-control bunker outside Moscow that housed the Soviet Union’s brand-new early warning system for detecting Western ICBM launches. I learned this week that this man potentially saved my life and the lives of countless millions in September 1983.

I was living in Upstate New York, in the city of Syracuse, as an exchange student at the time. As I’ve previously posted, 1983 was a year of heightened Cold War tension. President Reagan had called the Soviet Union an evil empire in March. He’d also announced the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), better known as ‘Star Wars’, in the same month.

Then, on 1 September 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet fighter jets, resulting in the loss of 269 lives. The plane had strayed into a region filled with Soviet naval bases, which months earlier had been subject to mock attacks by the US Navy during FleetEx 83, a huge maritime training exercise involving three aircraft carrier battle groups.

So, how did Petrov save my life? On 26 September, alarm bells started ringing inside Servikov-15 shortly after midnight. The early warning system had detected the launch of an American Minuteman ICBM, which was heading straight for the Soviet Union. Petrov determined the warning a false alarm as ground radar hadn’t detected a launch. Then, soon after, the system detected another four launches. Petrov calmly decided to ignore standard protocols and declared this another false alarm.

Petrov didn’t normally run the control centre. A colleague had called in sick that night, and he offered to stand in. As luck would have it, Petrov knew the new system intimately. He was conscious of its shortcomings and felt strongly that it had been rushed into service. As a result, when alarms began ringing, he was hesitant to accept their data.

Petrov wisely concluded that a five-missile attack made no sense. Training scenarios always assumed a first strike consisting of hundreds, possibly thousands, of missiles. He saw no logic for the reported launches. Thanks to his in-depth knowledge of the system and conflicting information from other sources, he prudently concluded the system had suffered a computer glitch. He showed extraordinary presence of mind amid pandemonium.

Months later, it was confirmed that an early warning satellite had picked up the flare of sunlight glinting off clouds. Had Petrov simply followed orders, reported the attack without caveats and encouraged a pre-emptive counterattack, a devastating nuclear war would have started two days before my eighteenth birthday. Upstate New York contained several first strike targets. It was also due east of the jet-stream passing over the ICBM fields of North Dakota. As a result, Syracuse would have been smothered in deadly radioactive fallout. 

I’ve always thought that Australia and New Zealand were the perfect place to hunker down after a nuclear holocaust. How ironic, then, that I was living in the USA when the world came closest to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union years later that we learned of Petrov’s actions that September night.

I've illustrated this post with photos I took during a private tour of the Titan Missile Museum outside Tucson, Arizona. Garry and I visited this extraordinary facility in September 2011.

Country No. 2 (and No.3)

The United States of America was the very first name added to an ever-growing list of countries I’ve visited over the years. In July 1983, I flew to the USA as an American Field Service (AFS) exchange student and lived with a host family in Syracuse, New York. In October of the same year, I also visited Canada, making it the third on my list. New Zealand, my country of birth, naturally tops the list.

I spent my year in upstate New York living with the Kimball family. Bill and Mary were wonderful host parents who welcomed me warmly into their home. Their three teenage daughters, Debbie, Marcia, and Sharon, also sacrificed a lot to have a foreign teenage boy live among them. My year in the USA was a profound life-changing experience. Without a doubt, much of who I am and who I became was shaped by my time with the Kimballs.

My mother once summed up the significance of my exchange year when she said, “You left home a boy and returned a man.” I often describe how momentous the experience was by simply listing the contrasts I experienced upon arriving in Syracuse. 

Overnight, I went from a household dominated by males (my father and his three sons) to one dominated by females (Mary Kimball and her three daughters). I’d also relocated from a tightly regulated, partially socialist economy to one dominated by laissez-faire capitalism. 

Remember, these were the nadir years of New Zealand’s Third National Government, led by Robert Muldoon. At the time, the nation had strict import controls (you couldn’t bring many things into the country without a government quota license), highly regulated wage and price controls, and comprehensive “cradle-to-grave” social security, including universal health care.

Furthermore, a larger, more liberal economy had clearly generated a higher standard of living for my American host family. Their home had a swimming pool, cable TV, ducted central heating, a grand piano in the living room, an expansive basement with a table tennis table, and cupboards filled with an array of consumer goods and specialist products I'd never seen before. At the time, my New Zealand family had none of those things. 

In my final days, I took a photo of the numerous cleaning products under the kitchen sink to showcase this consumption-driven economy. Comments I wrote on the back of the printed image reference a similar scene under the bathroom vanities and in the laundry. I'm sure my host family, had they known, would have considered this a rather curious thing to do.

Syracuse was a Rust Belt city of more than 382,000 people, compared with my sleepy hometown’s population of 5,120. It had high-rise office buildings, freeways, malls, and a 55,000-seat domed sporting arena. This was also the era of Ronald Reagan, a time when Cold War rivalry was generating increasingly vitriolic geopolitics. In March 1983, four months before I flew in, Regan had described the Soviet Union as an evil empire. Then, barely a month after arriving, the Soviets shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, killing 269 people.

On the first day of my High School social studies class, the teacher began the lesson with a lengthy monologue extolling the virtues of the American system while pillorying the Soviet Union's communist regime. I was shocked. I'd never heard a teacher expound their political views before, or tender such a blatantly biased viewpoint. It was a confronting introduction to America's political discourse and a revealing insight into the nation's education system.

With so many contrasts to absorb, it was inevitable that I suffered some culture shock. This dislocation was further magnified by the simple fact that externally, I looked and sounded normal. That is, I spoke English fluently, unlike students from South America and Europe the school had previously hosted; I dressed like an American and was familiar with many of the cultural touchstones that shaped American life.

As a result, people around me failed to appreciate that I was often overwhelmed and disoriented in the early months of my exchange year. It also didn’t help that Sharon, the Kimball’s youngest daughter, wasn’t keen on hosting a male exchange student. To make matters worse, she’d given up her room to accommodate me. 

For the first few weeks after my arrival, Sharon was the only sibling in town and made it clear my presence really wasn't appreciated. Although, in fairness to her, I was a rather quirky teenager with limited social skills, so I didn't exactly endear myself to her. I’m sure the entire family will happily testify to the many challenging moments we experienced in those early months.

My host father, Bill, was a warm, gregarious, and extroverted man. He welcomed me with open arms. At first, his tactile and engaging manner was a little disconcerting. However, by the time I left the USA, he’d become one of my closest companions. Years later, my mother commented on how this experience transformed the dynamic between my father and me.

As an aside, Bill was also an incredibly confident driver. Some would say, assertive. I'd regularly grip the car seat as he boldly weaved his way through highway traffic. My mother said that my driving skills improved dramatically during my exchange year, even though AFS banned students from driving. Apparently, I'd become situationally aware and very astute at checking car mirrors while driving. 

In short, my year in the USA set me on the path I’ve travelled ever since. I returned, resolute in my determination to attend university. Before that, I’d had little interest in higher education. At university, I met the Wallis family, who influenced my decision to relocate to Australia, which led to me backpacking through Europe and ultimately settling in Sydney. 

My university degree then got me in the door at IBM Australia, my first career role, which led to other roles in the IT industry, where I ultimately became the Chief Operating Officer of a global company. This career, in turn, gave me the opportunity and resources to travel the world, ticking country after country off my bucket list.

This exchange year opened my eyes to a wider world, broadened my horizons, and set in motion a passion for travel and cultural discovery. In essence, the year in Syracuse emboldened me to test myself and push boundaries, knowing that I could endure and thrive. The self-belief it instilled in me gave me the courage to move to Australia in 1990 and then to the UK in 2005, before returning to Sydney in 2011. It taught me to strive and experiment in ways that have served me well in the decades since.

As I look back on the last 40 years, I’m eternally grateful to Bill and Mary for their generosity. Those 11 months I spent living under their roof shaped me as a person more than almost any other life experience. I often wish there were a way to express the magnitude of how transformative and profound the simple act of sharing their home was. Perhaps this post goes some way toward achieving this goal.

I last saw Bill and Mary in 2001. I flew to Syracuse overnight while visiting New York City on business. Before that, in 1993, we'd caught up while they were on vacation in New Zealand. We last spoke by phone in September 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.  As for Syracuse, I last visited the city on a day trip from Canada in 2012. I can't imagine I'll ever go back as the Kimballs have long since relocated.

So, where did I go, and what did I do in Country No.2? I flew into Los Angeles on 25 July 1983. That's me above, departing from Auckland Airport. I flew with Air New Zealand in a Boeing 747-200, along with dozens of other teenagers heading out on their own AFS exchange year. At the time, this aircraft couldn’t reach California in a single hop, so we transited through Honolulu. This involved disembarking in the early hours of the morning and being corralled into a bleak transit lounge while the aircraft was refuelled.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, we joined more than a hundred Australian exchange students for an orientation week hosted at UCLA. I then flew to Syracuse via Chicago with American Airlines, transferring onto a commuter flight at O'Hare with the help of local AFS volunteers. I vividly recall meeting my host family for the first time. I was so overwhelmed by emotion that I found myself simultaneously exhilarated and on the verge of tears. I didn’t know what to do, so in the moment, I simply hugged my host mother, which took her completely by surprise.

In the months that followed, the Kimballs took me on a family summer vacation to Washington DC, and Virginia Beach. On 3 October, the local AFS chapter took me and other exchange students on a day trip to Niagara Falls. During our bus tour, we briefly crossed into Canada to view the Horseshoe Falls up close. This was the first of three trips I eventually took to Canada.

I returned to Canada a week later, from 7-10 October, on a school trip to the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford in Ontario. I recall enjoying productions of the Bard’s Macbeth and As You Like It. I returned to Canada a third time in May 1984. I stayed with a family in Toronto introduced to me by a teacher from my high school in New Zealand. I spent six fun-filled days exploring Canada’s largest city, visiting the record-breaking CN Tower, and enjoying my very first roller coaster ride.

I vividly recall the day I rode the rollercoaster at Canada's Wonderland. It was 30 May. Why do I know the date? Shortly after noon that day, there was an annular solar eclipse. Toronto was outside the path of totality but still saw about a third of the sun get "eaten" by the moon's disc. The phenomenon cast some extraordinary crescent shadows on the ground during the event. It would be another 28 years before I finally witnessed an actual eclipse.

While in the USA, I also joined a school trip to New York City with the Arts Club. I recall staying at the Hotel Edison on the edge of Times Square. In the Big Apple, we visited museums and art galleries, saw a Broadway musical (La Cage aux Folles at the Palace Theatre), and explored many of the city’s iconic attractions, including Central Park, the UN General Assembly, the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. 

We never made it to the Twin Towers. They remained tantalisingly out of reach, visible in the distance as we explored Chinatown. It would be another 15 years before I'd finally venture up the South Tower. That's a story for another blog post.

My time in the USA finished with a road trip involving all the AFS students in my immediate area. Every year, the local AFS chapter used this trip to help students transition back to their old life. After living with a host family for a year, we'd all developed strong emotional bonds. I recall that a lot of tears were shed on that bus as we drove away. 

Over a week, we visited Cleveland, Ohio, for the 4th of July holiday, then travelled on to Old Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut River. It was the height of summer, so the crowds were out in force along the Cleveland waterfront and New England beaches. 

Our time in Old Saybrook included a memorable day trip to Block Island, a popular summer tourist destination off the coast of Rhode Island. We caught a ferry from New London to the island.  As we made our way down the harbour we passed one of the USA's primary submarine bases in Groton, Connecticut, and right next door, the shipyard building the nation's nuclear submarines. It was heaven for a civil engineering geek like me. This was my first and only time in the state of Rhode Island. 

My exchange year finally ended on 14 July 1984. I flew out of JFK on 12 July, stopping in Los Angeles and Honolulu, and arriving back in New Zealand on election day. Sadly, I couldn’t vote in my first election as I hadn’t been in the country for 24 hours. This election saw the New Zealand Labor Party return to power for the first time in nine years.

Under the leadership of David Lange, the Fourth Labor Government radically reformed the nation’s economy. Within a few short years, the economy was dramatically transformed from a conservative, highly regulated model. Later that year, Ronald Regan won a second term in office, setting in motion events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. 1984 was clearly a transformative year for more than just me.

NOTE: 20 November

I've scanned several old photos to illustrate this post. Some of these images have stood the test of time better than others. Several, such as those of the Mony Tower and the Carrier Dome, have all but faded to red. It took a lot of Photoshop manipulation to restore the more life-like colours you see here. 

I’ve also used AI software to colourise the opening image. The original black and white photo was published in an old Bank of New Zealand staff magazine. The final result isn't too bad, all things considered. Digital photography clearly has its advantages.

One final observation. Looking back through my photo albums from this period, I'm struck by how few images there are of people. I recall my mother making a similar observation. "Where are all the people?" she said when my final rolls of film were developed.  Forty years on, I can finally appreciate the absence she'd noted.

Two things stand out about this observation. First, a large chunk of my exchange year was relatively lonely. I struggled to find my place and establish my identity. An absence of people genuinely reflects this experience. Second, their absence is a tangible manifestation of my introverted nature. I spent much of my childhood immersed in books and working alone on hobbies and projects. Few of these activities were ever people-centric. 

Looking back over hundreds of posts published in this blog, I see the same pattern repeating itself. That is, a procession of images focused on a world that's often void of people. Sadly, I never think to take photos of group settings and often regret this oversight long after the fact.

NOTE: 30 November 2024

I stumbled across the image above today. It was taken during a reunion with Bill and Mary in New Zealand in 1993. This was the first and only time they met my parents.

A trip down memory lane (aka Interstate 81)

In July 1983 I travelled to the United States of America to spend a year as an exchange student. For almost 12 months I lived with a regular middle-class family in the city of Syracuse. It's a small regional city located in upstate New York, about 6.5 hours north of New York City itself. The experience was life-changing.  My mother has often said I left New Zealand as a boy and returned home as a young man.

Since 1984 I've returned just once to see my teenage hometown.  I made a weekend excursion to Syracuse in early 2001 courtesy of the then-recently launched budget airline, JetBlue. Today I returned for a second visit, this time my parents came along for the ride. It seemed the obvious thing to do while we were staying in Gananoque, Ontario. Syracuse lies only 110 miles south of the border, an easy drive straight down Interstate 81.

We began our day with a brief stop at the Skydeck on Hill Island, one of the 1800 islands that give the Thousand Island region its name.  The Skydeck is an observation tower, a mere 500 metres from the Canadian border, that offers spectacular views of this incredibly scenic location. My parents loved the vista, as did I. The tour guide that escorted us was even able to help Mum spot a distant freighter traveling through the St Lawrence Seaway towards Lake Ontario.

We then crossed the border into the USA. The crossing was quick and easy with only a few cursory questions about our intentions before we were on our way.  Two hours later we found ourselves wrestling with a confusing maze of freeways that encircle Syracuse. As my navigator, Mum's had to learn how to use software maps on a tablet computer in real-time.

I made our first stop the Fairmont Mall, one of my favourite teenage haunts, before heading across the parking lot to Wegmans Supermarket to buy lunch. The supermarket was just as I remembered it.  For a young man from a small country town in New Zealand, its mind-blogging array of groceries and fresh food was an awe-inspiring testament to the power of American capitalism.

It was then on to the quiet, leafy suburbs of Westvale where my host family once lived. They've long since relocated but remarkably their house is still there, looking just as it did almost thirty years ago. As we sat looking at the home I surprised my parents with an album of photos depicting the exact same view. My mother was delighted as you can see from the photo that opens this post.

Perhaps the most memorable incident of the day occurred when I inadvertently missed a stop sign in Westvale. Within seconds of gliding through the empty intersection, I had blue and red lights flashing in my rear vision mirror. The local sheriff pulled me over and we had a brief road safety discussion before the conversation turned to my life as an exchange student. He sent us on our way with a quiet warning.  Mum later wished she'd had the forethought to ask the sheriff for a quick photo opportunity.

As you can see, we stopped outside my old home for a quick photo shoot. I'm sure that had the neighbours scratching their heads.  We then continued on to my old high school before venturing across town to see the Carrier Dome.  The dome is an indoor stadium that seats 55,000 people. I'd once watched a thrilling college basketball game here and our high school played a regional football championship in its empty confines.

Dad was keen to see downtown.  So our last excursion for the day was a brief tour through the city's civic centre. Unlike cities in Europe and Australia, Syracuse lacks a cohesive central business district and so the heart of downtown is rather soulless.  However, I did my best to show Dad some highlights I recalled from my teenage years. A final stop outside Founder's Park for a few quick photos completed our trip down memory lane.

Today was also our last full day in Canada (and the USA). Tomorrow we drive 300 km to Toronto to catch our respective flights back to New Zealand and Australia. It's been an incredible vacation, one that's exceeded my parent's wildest dreams. We'll return home with more wonderful memories and my father's bucket list is all but complete.

Bucket lists at the ready

My parents have been counting down to the start of our forthcoming Canadian vacation. Less than 24 hours from now they’ll depart from Auckland for Vancouver. My flights to the USA and Canada also depart tomorrow morning. The weather forecast for our first ten days of touring looks promising. Only one day of passing showers is currently forecast late next week. This inclement weather hits us on the day we plan to tour the sights of Toronto. However, many are indoors so the impact should be minimal.

I’m looking forward to sharing many memories with my parents in the weeks ahead. We’ll start our vacation in Vancouver. Garry and I visited here in July 2010 as we prepared to board a cruise to Alaska. The photo above was taken downtown on that last visit. 

 Our travelling trio will then spend two days travelling by train through the Rocky Mountains to Banff where we’ll spend a day touring in a rental car. From Banff we fly to Toronto. Garry and I were last here in 2005 en route to London for the start of our five-year UK adventure. This was my second time in the city as I’d first come here as an exchange student in May 1984. 

This time, while in Toronto, I’ll be taking my parents to Niagara Falls for day. This will be my third visit to the Falls. You may recall that I took a day trip here while in New York last year, almost 18 years after my first visit.

Our journey then takes us to New York for two days where we have a helicopter flight scheduled, tickets to Broadway booked and reservations to view the new Ground Zero 9/11 memorial. From the Big Apple we head back to Canada to drive from Montreal to Toronto via Ottawa, replicating the journey that Garry and I took five years ago. We hope to be there just as the autumn colours hit their peak.

Highlights of our road trip will also include a visit to Boldt Castle, which sits on an island in the St Lawrence River, and a day trip to Syracuse, New York where I was an exchange student in 1983-84. I’m sure this side trip will be special for my parents. They’ll finally get to experience a little of my life as a teenager in America. I’ll be showing them the house I lived in, my high school and the mall I hung out at.

I’ve been back to Syracuse once since 1984. I visited my host parents overnight back in 2001. I recall the experience as being somewhat surreal. It was as if I was being taken on a tour of familiar places but they felt like memories from someone else’s life rather than my own. This makes me a little unsure what emotions I’ll encounter more than a decade later.

Finally, on September 28, we’ll drive to Toronto Airport to catch our respective flights back home. I’ll be returning to Sydney with my long-term career still unresolved, while my Dad will return home with more things ticked off his bucket list. 2012 is certainly turning into a year of unexpected twists and turns.